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Our whole family was really sick around March and couldn’t leave the house. We had stocked up what seemed like a lot of food, but after 3 weeks it started to fe
by gdubs 6y ago
Our whole family was really sick around March and couldn’t leave the house. We had stocked up what seemed like a lot of food, but after 3 weeks it started to feel really tight. Online grocery delivery wasn’t handling the load, so we just had to wait. In retrospect, our neighbors would have helped — but this was the early days of Covid and we felt like pushing through was the way to go.
Eventually the online grocery systems adapted - just in time for us. But it made me rethink our pantry. As a fan of Marie Kondo, we don’t have a lot of clutter in our home — and we had applied that level of minimalism to our food as well. But given we live in earthquake country, having an extended supply of food on hand isn’t hoarding — it’s a responsible thing to do.
It made me think about resiliency — how a resilient society stems from the household. A family that can get through a few weeks of a disaster on their own helps spare resources for more dire cases.
It also made me think about my grandparents’ basement. It was full of mason jars like the ones described in the article. They had tons of food down there — olives, pasta, beans, etc — much of which was grown in their garden. Like so many WWII era families, they had a victory garden — one they kept over the years.
At the end of the day, I feel a deeper connection with my grandparents’ generation than my own parents’. They lived through a depression, conflict — they had a stronger sense of how precarious society can be. My parents maybe experienced some of that — but they also lived through a boom time where American optimism knew no bounds.
Anyway, makes sense people are buying mason jars. Some things are timeless. The demand will fade, but some of us will hold onto this year for the rest of our lives.
- chiph 6y agoHurricane country here. Yes, having a couple of weeks worth of food and water in the house during the season is the responsible thing to do. Whether it's modern freeze-dried meals, canned food, or just cycling through your common grocery purchases. A few years ago I bought a supply of mylar bags and a heat-sealer. I can put various dry items in them, dropping an oxygen absorber or two in there (more for products that have low packing density), and they're good for a few years. Don't forget to write the contents + date on the outside with a Sharpie before filling! Mom went through rationing in the UK during the war (they heated their house in part by the coal that she picked up along the railroad lines), and she always had a well-stocked pantry. Home canning was too much work for her though, so she just had a lot of store-bought shelf-stable food.
- vvanders 6y ago> having an extended supply of food on hand isn’t hoarding — it’s a responsible thing to do. Yup. I definitely feel like it's something that we've lost in the JIT based supply chains of today. As you correctly pointed out there's plenty of places in the US where earthquakes, hurricanes or other large scale events can introduce quite a shock to local systems.
- johnchristopher 6y agoIt's way easier to be minimalist when you are rich because you can buy things at whatever the price is when you happen to need them. (Also, being poor cost a lot.)
- vagrantJin 6y agoI tend to agree. Also, being poor takes away much of the idea of choice at a very base level.
- akeck 6y agoAs a fellow fan of Kondo, I've come to realize there's a spectrum with absolute minimalism on one end (one each of a few things) and hyper-resilience (hoarding) on the other end. I now think it's reasonable to find a comfortable spot on the spectrum with more resilience, and then use Marie's principles to stay in that spot vs. getting rid of almost everything. Of course, one's comfortable spot changes over time and in the face of other factors like local climate risks.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nondeveloper 6y agoReading about your experience this March (hope you folks are okay now!) and your grandparents reminded me that we each have a personal responsibility to be prepared and resilient. There are political and practical dimensions to this. Not every family can prepare itself; many are severely resource constrained. I volunteer at the Utah Food Bank, which functions as the central distributor of donated food in Utah, supplying many, many smaller food banks in the state. One of the warehouse workers recently mentioned that the facility was turning over more food each week than was normally distributed in months. There is great need for shelf stable foods here, even with relatively low unemployment. For those of us that can afford to prepare, though, it’s imperative that we do so. We cannot and should not expect the government to have the capacity to come to our rescue in every crisis. And the benefit of being prepared means constrained resources can be directed to the neediest when those crises inevitably come. Bonus of having lots of canned goods on reserve: you can donate anything unused to your local food bank if there’s sufficient shelf life!