Have A Plan

When buying items for your food storage, it is important to have a plan before you hit the stores. I have often walked through aisles of food storage items and thought, "this would be a good thing to get, oh, but what about this? And I am sure I will need this...sometime!" Our minds can go crazy trying to sufficiently plan for EVERY situation! One thing to remember is that we most likely will not be able to get everything we might need for every situation, we just need to do the best we can. But making a plan can be very helpful, not only for our minds, but for our pocketbooks!

You can create a plan in a variety of ways.

• One way is by setting a budget, plan to only spend a certain amount of money each week or each month on food storage. When the money is gone, it is gone. This will help with impulse buying.
• Focus on a particular area of food storage each month. For example, one month just focus on Wheat, another on Powdered Milk, another on Water, etc. Don't forget about your 3-month supply and just stock up on a few extra things each time you go to the grocery store.
• Save your money and take advantage of semi-annual case lot sales (particularly at Macey's where they sell a lot of great food storage items). Shopping this way allows you to get a variety of items at once. It will require some discipline though as there are SO many things at such a great price. Deciding what you need before hand will make a big difference.

Taking some time to establish a plan and then really following through with it will help you not only achieve your goals, but will allow you to keep your sanity in the process :)!!