Permission Granted to Throw Away Your Pantry

Not all of it, but most of it. Okay, don't throw it out, but when it's gone, don't replace it, except for the sundries.

You can unplug and/or downsize your fridge and freezer too when they become empty. Replace the contents with stuff that needs no refrigeration. There are alternatives to freezing, such as dehydrating, curing, canning, jerking, smoking, and so on.

Think of all the money you'd save in energy bills. Heard this before somewhere?

Yep--right here and here. Many times you will find a toaster oven or dehydrator will substitute for an oven, saving more energy. Of course, eating raw is cheapest of all!

Okay--now that you've completed this exercise in your head, look around you: you no longer need so much pantry space. Half your cupboards are empty. Many counter-top appliances have been rendered obsolete. In my case, I'd have a third bedroom I can rent out.

Replace cans, boxes, bottles, and jars with vaccuum-packed dried foods, smoked foods, cured foods, or foraged foods you made for yourself. Learn to use your garden as your main food storage area--on the vine means mother Nature's watching the freshness.

No more worries about expiration dates, coupon fraud, exploding energy bills, commodity prices gone wild, gas prices (as a part of food costs) gone wild, or even the power going out--you've got a whole new layer of food security that even the grasshopper back in Frugal Valley don't have, even with all their running around and reams of coupons.

We no longer need to care about farm subsidies, Fed policy, tax schemes, or what they're doing to food in the name of science--none of it applies to us any more.

In Ayn Rand terms, we've gone Galt, and it isn't necessarily referring to status or intelligence level--just that we've found a suitable place to escape from society. The only thing better would be to have our own planet, which won't happen in our lifetimes.

Things are going to get worse before they get better, so why not find new things? Yes, we've moved forward to ground the consumerati aren't likely to find any time soon, but in practice, we've taken a giant step backward to a place nobody will come looking for us. Don't be scared--politics, economics, media, marketing, and taxes aren't gong to find us here. Private property rights prevent anyone from taxing food grown on our own land, and public lands are just that--public. The king no longer owns the forest, like he did in Medieval times, so he can't lay claim to all that grows or lives there. He can LIMIT activities there, but can't tax you for mushrooms and berries you found.

In the past, Amy Dacyczyn gave us permission to throw away our coupons by teaching us about price books and the cost-per-unit method of shopping. I came along and told you it was okay to throw away your price books. Now it's okay to empty out your pantries, and replace them with primal foods gotten from free (or nearly free) sources, prepared for storage in low-tech ways, and needing little to no power to preserve them.

Emergency food? You bet, but doesn't this qualify as an emergency for a lot of us? Even if it isn't an emergency, you never have to worry about HAVING one as far as food and power go.

Yes, this takes more time, but the resulting lower cost of living means you now can spend less time devoted to work. In essence, you can spend more time working for yourself (through hunting/fishing, gathering, foraging, bartering, and creating) than you do for someone else. Double your food security efforts by saving seeds from the foods you eat, and planting them for larger future crops--this is called seed-saving and sowing, and can turn into a perpetual food machine.

Less work for someone else + less spent in stores = less taxes paid in total. Now it takes less to live a life.

Now you've gained something else besides lower energy bills, more space, and more time: peace of mind and skill to do it yourself, making as much food security for yourself as you had with your pantry, grocery store, and pay check.

I just had a though: remember the lady on the TLC show with the 40-year supply of pasta? I bet that's the only thing her kids inherit--the stockpile of food. The house will probably be foreclosed, condemned for eminent domain, or be reverse-mortgaged back to the bank, and there will (of course) be no money left--only boxes and boxes and boxes of pasta...and her kids will turn out to be diabetics and can't eat it!

The same kind of thing will probably happen to the toilet paper queen: nothing else to pass down to her kids but the toilet paper pile--what an inheritance! Like my husband said when he saw the show: "She's only got one asshole to wipe, right?"