I prep in secret. My wife knows nothing about by prepping and any discussion of prepping quickly decends into “why do they do that, there’s no need?!”. This is equally true whenever I have attempted to suggest that we keep more food in the house. No ‘rainy day’ argument seems to work. She doesn’t believe that there are only a handful of days supply in the UK food chain and that would be gone in no time in the event of any kind of national emergency.

Because of this, everything I have done to date has been in secret. It’s all stashed away completely out of sight, including around 40 days worth of food! (for a list of food types to stockpile have a look here.)

Since my initial opportunities to build the stocks up, changes in our lifestyle mean it has become increasingly difficult to find enough time to stay on top of the ageing stocks. Many items have slipped well past their best-before dates and use-by dates. I keep a spreadsheet of the stocks which records the dates when I store items and calculates how many weeks they either have left or are out-of-date by.

This week I had a window. It was scheduled and known ahead of time and I had three clear hours to do a resupply. I worked out ahead of time what was going to be replaced and made my shopping list.

Mission Time

The time came and I hit the shops. I filled my shopping list and by the time it was done, I had replaced all out-of-date items. Some of the rice and pasta had discoloured a little but all of the tins without exception were perfect. The perishable items (pasta, rice etc) were bagged up for disposal. I decided to move all of the out of date tinned goods to a couple of new boxes labelled ‘OutOf-Date’. This is working on the knowledge that most best before dates, particularly on tinned goods, are ridiculous overstatements of how quickly the contents degrade. By doing so, I have probably added a good few days of usable food to my prepping stores.

To complete my secret mission, I disposed of the bags of perishables in the skip at work. There isn’t even a trace in the bin at home!

A Question

In the event that the food was needed, I have a decision to make.

  • Keep the out-of-date food until last once the good stuff has been consumed
  • Use it up first to get it out of the way and save the better stock?

What would you do?