Day 30: Inventory Food Storage (15 Minute Prepping Projects)

Welcome to DAY 30 (THE LAST DAY!) of our 15 Minute Prepping Projects series. Today for our final project we are going to do a full inventory of our food. You may not finish it all today, but you can sure get a start in fifteen minutes!

Every day for the month of September we will celebrate National Preparedness Month by undertaking a small task to help us get more prepared. Do as few or as many days as you want. Jump in at any time. Do them out of order, or more than one in a day. And feel free to share what you are doing!

Click here and scroll to the bottom of the post to view all the past days’ projects.

Doing an inventory of your food is an important task because how do you know where you need to go from here if you don’t know where you are currently? You may not be able to get your entire inventory done but you can get your spreadsheets set up and start going through it a little bit at a time. It’s also a good time to check on expiration dates, look for critters in your storage, and get rid of any food that has gone bad.

Food Storage Calculators

I have a few different calculators that can help you with your inventory process. Figure out what will work best for you, even if it’s just pen and paper, and just inventory SOMETHING today! Each of these calculators will have instructions on how to use them once you click on the links to download them.

Traditional Food Storage Calculator: This calculator is based off of recommendations put out by the LDS church for many years. It provides about a 2400 calorie per day diet of staples like wheat, beans, rice, milk, sugars, oils, etc. You wouldn’t get much variety with only storing items on here, but you would survive.

Modified Calculator Adding Freeze-Dried Foods: This is a calculator we developed to reduce some of the staple items a little bit and replace them with fruits, vegetables, and meats. This provides more variety and more nutrition to your survival diet. The calorie amount per day is still the same as the traditional calculator.

“Healthier” Food Storage Recommendations: This is not set up as a calculator but is simply a guideline to help you edit a traditional calculator with ingredients that are more whole foods and less refined flours and sugars.

Recipe-Based Food Storage Calculator: This calculator is what I use to do 3 month supply planning. You input the ingredients needed for each recipe and how often you want to make it in that 3 months and it will calculate a shopping list for you. There are also tabs for tracking non-food items as well as a list of common condiments and items to keep on hand that might not officially be part of a recipe. It’s robust and can be used for long term foods if you want to plan those based on recipes too.

Hope you have fun doing a basic inventory today. If you are anything like me this might turn into a whole “food storage make-over” as you dig through your shelves and re-organize everything. Try not to get caught up in that and just focus on getting your numbers down on paper FIRST!

Share Your Results

Let me know how long you think your food supply will last once you have your inventory complete. Also if you have a different system for keeping track of it I’d love to see it. Here are some ways you can share:

Instagram: Use #15minuteprep and tag @jodi_foodstoragemadeeasy on any post or story you do featuring your project. You can follow the hashtag to see everyone’s projects and if you tag me I will repost in my stories throughout the day (if your account is public).

Facebook: Comment on the PINNED posts in my Facebook Group (If you are not a member yet I will try to get you added within 24 hours so you can play along). The most recent day should show up at the top and you can scroll to the right to see past days. I will try to share some of these to Facebook stories as well (no names will be used, don’t worry!)

Text me: If you are not already signed up to get the daily challenges via text just text 15minuteprep to 717-788-3663. You can always reply to the daily text with your “report” so I can check in on you.