Necie, I googled food storage on $ a week (just like that). Most of the lists I came up with were for the $5/week storage (feeds 2 ppl for up to a year). This was a good one, as it had you varying your purchases, so that if the SHTF before you were ready with your year's worth, you had some variety already instead of ALL wheat and no salt to make the bread rise sort of thing.
Anyhoo, I took all the lists I found and made a Word doc (publisher, excel, etc would work as well) and pasted the lists in columns, side by side for comparison. Then I took the lists and made them into our own liking. I don't know much about wheat, so I'll be buying flour, cornmeal & oats instead, things that I DO and CAN make do with. We have a family of 5, so I took the finalised lists (which never are truly final, you keep finding kickin' lists like this one), and spread them out to meet OUR pay period.
We get paid 2X a month (15 & 28/30/31, pending month), so a weekly plan, even when doubled into bi-weekly wasn't working. I ended up with 3 weeks, IIRC, leftover. I took those weeks and if there were multiple items, I spread them out. For instance, if one of those leftover weeks said 2.5 lbs PB, 2 cans tuna, 5 boxes mac n cheese, I take the PB and added it to a "light week- say week 3 is 2 cans tuna, 4 cans tomato soup (about 3 bucks here), I can get 2 18oz jars of PB on sale and/or with coupons for about a dollar a jar or a big jar (just a couple oz short of 2.5 lbs) for 2. It would look like this:
Their list:
week 3
2 cans tuna
4 cans tomato soup
1 week of leftover:
2.5 lbs PB
2 cans tuna
5 boxes mac n cheese
My new list:
week 3
2 cans tuna
4 cans tomato soup
2.5 lbs PB
Now again, I had to tweak even further. On top of doubling my weeks up with leftover weeks added in, I doubled up again. I actually am buying FOUR weeks worth of stuff. This translates into 2 people’s week’s worth of things as I have to double for the amount of people I need to feed. Every other item on this list I buy an extra HALF of. Ex.-
week 3
2 cans tuna (buy one extra)
4 cans tomato soup
2.5 lbs PB (buy an extra 18oz)
What this does, is help make up for my youngest who will be 3 at the end of this month. We are working on a VERY tight budget, so I have to mind that and still be able to feed us NOW. It will take me just over a year to get basic canned and boxed goods, staples, vitamins and basic first aid to sustain us for a year. I have a tally system on another document. As I get each pound/can/box/quantity of something, I tally it off as bought, this way at the end, if it says on my list to buy PB, but I’ve already max’ed my PB (a good sale can always get things WELL in hand sooner than expected) out, I can get those extra 4 cans tuna instead. I did take the calculator that says you should have ‘x’ amount of each item and multiplied by 2.5. Some things we REALLY like have been x’ed by 3 to ensure good eatin’! LOL…
My next step is to store each day or 2's worth of meals in buckets. For instance, if it takes us 2 weeks to go through a jar of PB, there will be one in bucket 1 & 15. Also in bucket 1 will be a can of tuna & 2 boxes mac n cheese (tuna mac for dinner) PB toast or pancakes for brek, 4 cans soups for dinner. Certain things will obviously not be packed this way like vitamins and flour. This round of preps is new as we just moved a few months ago and we quit shopping abd started eating our stockpile (so we didn't have to move it