Building a Pantry

This series of posts is for anyone who may be starting to build up the amount of food that they keep in their homes. Due to social distancing, it makes sense to do fewer, larger food shopping trips. It is also a good time to set aside food in case someone in your home gets sick and you need to stay inside for a period of time. If you are able to put a little bit of planning in to this process, it will make it easier to reduce the amount of food you might otherwise end up wasting and stay on a budget as well. My background is as a purchaser and Team Leader at a grocery store so I am offering advice that is about keeping your food shopping and storage streamlined and organized. I have some generic templates you can use to tailor your shopping list towards your own shopping styles and needs. 

Yes, I collect shopping lists!

Yes, I collect shopping lists!

It’s also a really important time for all of us to make an assessment of what our own needs truly are and to determine if there are ways we can strategically share our resources. Learning how to build up a pantry and to cook meals at home can be stressful and challenging. For people without reliable access to food or housing it is literally impossible. When we make our budgets and plans for getting food right now if we have any kind of financial cushion, we can be adding donations to food banks or local mutual aid networks. We can also be reaching out to folks who are vulnerable or who work in essential services and see if they need us to go food shopping for them or if we could make and drop off a meal for them. 

I will break up building a pantry into a series of steps that you can repeat continually. Each step will be broken out into its own post so as to not be overwhelming. They are as follows:

  1. Make a master list, with everything you ultimately want to have

  2. Shop what you already have on hand (to make sure you’re not buying things you have)

  3. First food shop

  4. Keep your food storage organized

  5. Check in with what you’ve actually used, reevaluate your list

  6. Subsequent shopping

  7. Preparing for quarantine

Let’s do this!

Let’s do this!