Stockpiling 101....How to Begin

 If you are an old hand at stockpiling, you may want to bypass this post.  It's strictly for the novice Stockpiler.
--slug

One of the best ways to save money on your groceries is to use the Stockpiling Method.
This entails buying grocery items when they hit rock bottom in your area and storing them until you need them for your meals.  By doing this you can theoretically never have to pay regular full retail price again for the groceries that are stockpile-able.


There is the right way and the wrong way to go about stockpiling.  If you do it the wrong way it can cost you more.  But if you goof up now and again don't get panicky since everyone goofs something up sometimes, especially when they are still learning the ropes of stockpiling.

But how to begin Stockpiling?

First you need to know what is a rock bottom price.

Grocery store sales run in cycles....usually every 6 weeks.  If you watch the price of a few items for 2 months you'll probably see that there is a rhythm to when it goes up in price and it goes down in price.
In order to know when the rock bottom price appears for any particular item, make a PRICE BOOK.

Making a Price Book
Get a pad or notebook and jot down a list of the 25 most common foods your family eats/uses that can be stored.  You probably use more than 25 items but to start, keep it to 25.  You can expand after you learn the ropes.
Some of my 25 items are  a variety of cheeses, pastas, ketchup, canned tomato products, mustard, cooking oil, oatmeal, salad dressing, peanut butter, canned fruit and spaghetti sauce.

Now take that notebook to the grocery store when you go shopping each week(I am assuming you go weekly), and make a note of what store you are in and what that week's current price is on those 25 items.
If you go to more than 1 store each week, make a note on the price that week at each store you frequent.
When 2 months are up, analyze your data....do you see a pattern in the pricing?.....do you see how often the item hits a rock bottom price?

The point is to use these sales cycles to buy enough of a particular product at it's lowest price to last your family until the next time it goes that low.  If you have a stockpile of an item there is no more running to the store because you are suddenly out and paying full high retail price for it.
If you do find that you stockpile but you run out of something before the next sales cycle, try to make do without, change your menu plan or substitute something you have....whatever it takes NOT to buy it full retail!  Paying full retail will torpedo your savings efforts.

How much do I buy when I buy things on sale to stockpile?

This question will vary with each person.  My best advise for a Beginner Stockpiler is to plan for a 2-3 months worth of items stockpile.  A stockpile that size will be enough to start, it won't cost very much money and most anyone can find enough room to store that amount of food.
Some people like to keep 6 months worth of food on hand.  I personally at this point in my Stockpiling journey like to keep a full year's worth of any item.
The Mormons have this system down and are known to store years and years worth of food aka long term storage.  This generally involves buying in bulk and repackaging food in large amounts with oxygen inhibitors, etc.  We are NOT going to this extreme here.
Once you are comfortable stockpiling a 2-3 months supply you can expand your stockpile depending on your needs.  You may find 2-3 months is fine but you like to keep a larger/longer stockpile of some items.
Once you 'get it', make the stockpile your own.

The Four things you must keep in mind when stockpiling.....

1.How much space do you have for your stockpile?

Figure out the amount of space in your home that you can comfortably devote to storing your stockpile.  I have a 4 bedroom house and a 2 car garage and a basement so I can find room all over the place.  Someone who lives in a 1 bedroom apartment will have alot less space available to them than I do.  If you don't have large amounts of free space, get creative on where you can store things.  Under beds are nice places to hide stuff.  If your bed is too low, get a set of bed risers to lift your bed so you can fit things under there.  If your stockpile is scattered throughout your living space in hidden places(closets, drawers, under or behind furniture)it would be a good idea to keep a master list of what is located where so you don't forget items.
Garages or basements or attics with shelving is a great way to store your stockpile.  Just remember that some items don't keep as well if not in a temperature controlled climate and often these 3 areas have wide swings in ambient room temps.  Keep that in mind.
Besides room temp. storage, you can stockpile in your freezer space.  As you get a handle on stockpiling and see more and more savings it might be a wise move to invest in a freestanding freezer.  You can't store much in that little compartment in your combination fridge/freezer.  Having a freezer(or a second fridge as some people have)opens up many more opportunities to stockpile. Freezer space lets you expand into meat, cheese, frozen veggie stockpiling.   Stockpiling meats is where you can see a significant savings over the long haul.

There is also home canning to consider to preserve foods for stockpiling.  I know someone who is an avid canner and grows/preserves most of what he eats year round.  He buys at rock bottom & grows his own in the summer, preserves and saves money in the winter.
There is also a more temporary form of cold storage called Root Cellaring.  This is derived from the way our ancestors kept perishable items like fresh produce and cheese in the days before refrigeration.  You can build a root cellar and keep winter type veggies for many months.  I have one where I store onions I buy at the farm market in Oct/Nov. and they stay fresh all winter.

Figure out the amount of space you have available and don't buy more than you can fit!


2. How much money do you have available to spend on stockpiling?

How much to spend depends on you and how much extra money you have.  When you are starting to stockpile, take it slow on building.  Avoid rushing out and spending a massive amount of money(no matter how much you are saving in the long run)at first.  Take your time and build it with specific items that you KNOW you will use.  Pop-Tarts at .50¢(after sale and coupon savings)are a great buy but if no one in your house eats them, don't take up your valuable stockpiling real estate with them....just pass that deal by!
Sit down with your spouse or significant other(or not if it's just you)and rationally see how much extra cash you have this month to put toward buying extra food or toiletry items that you find for a bargain price but that you don't necessarily need this month but will need in the future.
Use a few pages in your Price Book to keep track of what you spend on stockpiling purchases so you keep within that budget.


3. How much of any particular item will you use?

 Take each of those 25 items you are tracking the prices of each month from your Price Book.  Sit down and realistically estimate how much you will use of that item for 2-3 months or how ever long the cycle is for that item to go through a cycle from high to low.

For example....jarred spaghetti sauce goes rock bottom around here every 3 months. With that sale and coupons, I can buy sauce for $1 or less. Reg. retail is $2.69.  I figure we have a dinner that includes sauce once a week.  3 months=12 weeks=12 meals needing sauce.  Add in an extra jar or two for spontaneous meals and I would need to maintain a sauce stockpile of 14 jars every 3 months.
If I buy sauce at rock bottom, I'll spend $14 every 3 months vs. spending reg. retail of $37.66 on it for a 3 months supply.

$37.66 or $14.00....which would you rather spend?

Now if I were to come across an incredibly low price, like last summer when there was a Catalina deal at Acme where I got lots of items for pennies on the dollar.  Among the items was Ragu sauce and in the end it cost me $.05 a jar, I immediately bought as many as I could stockpile in my space that we would use before the expiration dates.  The expiration dates were 2 yrs. off so theoretically if I went through 56 jars a yr.(14 jars every 3 months=56 jars per year), I could stockpile 112 jars and still use them all before they expired.  I would have paid $5.06 for a 2 yr. supply of sauce(had I bought 112 jars).  Though I had the cash to spare for them, I didn't buy that many as I wouldn't have had space to store them along with everything else I have stockpiled.
IF I had had the space for 112 jars, I could have saved $296.22 over the course of 2 years on this ONE ITEM we frequently eat!
A 2 year supply of sauce for $5.06 on sale vs. a 2 year supply of sauce for $301.28 at reg. retail. 
Now take that savings on 1 item in my price book and extrapolate it out over 24 more items and the savings do become significant over time!


4. How long can you store any particular item before it expires?

Keep in mind when you are purchasing stockpile items that most have a sell by date(when it's freshest)or an expiration date.  By only buying as much as your family will use of any item BEFORE the sell by date on the item you will almost eliminate any concerns about items going 'bad' before you get to use them.
Most dated items don't necessarily go bad at some magical date.  Go check out the USDA's Food Safety website Here for more on what sell by/expiration dates mean to you as a consumer.
As concerns expiration dates--you need to do what makes you comfortable.  If using something past it's date bothers you then just don't buy more than you need/can use before that date.
As for items you stockpile in the freezer--once you deep freeze a fresh item you extend that sell by date.
An items 'life' is prolonged when put into cold storage.  A bag of flour, cheese, as well as many products can be frozen to prolong their life.   If there is 6 months left on the 'use by' date when I put it into the freezer, I can count on having 6 months left to use it AFTER I take it out of the freezer. 

Just don't put cream cheese in the freezer.....trust me, it gets a real weird texture.lol

There is also dehydrating to preserve and store fresh produce.  This method doesn't require refrigeration so it's cheaper than freezer storage for produce as it's shelf stable.  But it limits how the produce can be used once it's rehydrated.  If you are going to use your dehydrated produce in soups/stews/casseroles, it a very cost-effective method of preserving.

If you are buying only as much as you can use within the expiration/sell by dates on the products you shouldn't have a problem with items going bad.
UNLESS you are NOT rotating your stockpile!
You need to practice the rotating system that the grocery stores use...."first in, last out".
For example--when I get a new load of spaghetti sauce in, I make sure I pull what it already in the stockpile to the front and put the new jars in the back.(The only exception to this is if any of the new jars I bought have closer expiration/sell by dates than the jars that are already there.)
Another trick to keep from having items expire on you is to make sure that you stockpile the same items together and make sure you can SEE what you have.  Keeping all the beans or ketchup or spaghetti noodles in the same place will help you to keep track of how much is left and which box/jar/bottle needs to be used first.  Some people use elaborate can stacking/storing systems you can buy to keep their stockpile organized.  You don't need to invest in that level of organizing when you are starting out and you may never need that kind of system.  If you can't store things where you can readily see them all, try keeping a master list with the stockpile items.  When you use something, mark it off the list & when you add something add it on.  If you keep this list current you should have a pretty good system for keeping track of where your stockpile is at any given moment.


So what are you waiting for.....go  get some paper and start making your Price Book.

If you have any tips or additional questions about stockpiling in general or what I do, please feel free to leave a comment!

Sluggy