Where Should You Hide Your Food Storage?

By Nicole from Ready Store

Store Some of Your Food Storage in Plain View

In the event that your house is broken into, looters are going to look for food in the most obvious spots. Usually, they aren’t going to stick around for longer than they need to. If you make it obvious that you have some food, they won’t look any further in the home since they’ll just take what they can carry. Another piece of advice is to not tell all of your friends and family members that you have a sufficient amount of food storage at your home.

[caption id="attachment_16406" align="aligncenter" width="723"] SHTF Food Storage Maybe a little too obvious?[/caption]

Make Furniture out of Your Food Storage

A few ideas that have been sent in by our customers include using 5-gallon plastic buckets to make coffee tables and raising your bed to store food underneath. Some have also suggested using it as a backboard to the bed. With a coffee table, find a strong piece of plywood and drape a beautiful tablecloth over the surface. Even put some decorations on top to make it blend in even more.

Inside Solid-Colored Boxes

Consider emptying out the original boxes for electronics, appliances, and other miscellaneous items and stashing food in there. Keep the boxes in an area that would be obvious for placing old boxes that have no real use. Most people won’t be looking through boxes that they assume are empty.

SHTF Food Storage

Under Your Garden or in Remote Caches

It is important to keep in mind that if you plan to hide food storage outside, it needs to be sealed well. The last thing you want to happen is little critters getting into your food reserves. When storing food underground, take into consideration that you’ll only be accessing this in an emergency situation. Think about storing emergency supplies like a first aid kit, water packets, flashlights and a weapon.

Maximize Tight or Crawl Spaces in the Home

Whether it be underneath the staircase or in the attic, utilize extra space that is hard to access. Even consider hiding food and water storage behind wall panels that don’t look obvious. To help you think of more creative ways to use space in the home, check out this video of how a local prepper used space underneath his sink.

We understand that everyone’s circumstance is different and not all of these ideas will work for you. Our goal is to help you brainstorm innovative ways to not only utilize empty space in the home but also think of where you can hide food storage from potential looters.

What creative ideas do you have to hide food storage?

8 years ago

Comments

Sheila Orr

8 years ago at 4:12 AM

Paint cans. New ones to be exact, for items that can be stored in the garage. Great for in your face storage. Cookie jars that sit up higher that are pretty and decorative. Rubbermaid storage bins marked Winter Clothes, Christmas, Halloween, Fall etc. mixed in with your actual decorations or clothes storage. Remove the pretty long term food labels off #10 cans and replace with paint labels from old paint cans.

Gregory Faith

8 years ago at 7:14 AM

In my house, I have a large open basement that I use as my food storage safe space. (No pun intended). I've placed my long term foods in commercial moving boxes of various sizes all stacked up neatly and clearly labeled with everyday items so that a scavenger would never think to look into them to find my foods, I've tested this numerous times on some of my friends in a "hypothetical situation" while living here. Everyone looked in the kitchen refer, freezer and pantry closets and no where else for my food. I use to old WWII saying, "Loose lips sinks ships." to ensure no one knows what I have and exactly how much. I do ask any company I use to ship in plain boxes so as not to tip the delivery person/s of what they are bringing to my house. No need to tell them either. They live near by and also have friends too.

Andrew

8 years ago at 7:37 AM

Build a false wall in your house using a floor to ceiling framework with drywall. Build another wall about 15" out from an existing wall and hide the food between the two walls.

jon

8 years ago at 2:41 PM

Lots of good advice! Don't forget mini-storage units. Mark boxes as Christmas tree ornaments and lights. Nobody will waste time on them.

Cynthia

8 years ago at 1:09 PM

Lots of good ideas, especially hiding some things in plain sight. It's sort of the same principle where my mother hid the Christmas cookies in the freezer in a recycled broccoli freezer bag (no one ever found them!) and hid money in a Tupperware container in a stack of similar ones in a locked freezer (this was many, many years ago) back before there were ATMs. My parents were kids of the Depression, and they knew all the obvious places. I took notes. It also might not be a bad idea to keep records of what you have and if/when it needs to be rotated in a notebook that says something like "Owner's Manuals" or "Recipes" with a few of the real things on top.

Kathleen Butler

8 years ago at 2:42 PM

Won't the temperature matter if burying underground or in mini-storage units? If the temperature doesn't matter, I can store mine in my garage apartment which I use for excess storage.

Linda

8 years ago at 12:36 PM

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, my parents put flour, sugar, salt, pasta, etc., in Mason jars and hid them under the stairwell. We didn't go to war, (phew1) and we ate that stuff for decades after.

mike

5 years ago at 9:13 AM

your a moron, really. I notice you did not jam anything under that 4 inch space