My food storage is mostly on shelves. But I do have the typical 5 gallon buckets full of food as well. The buckets stay with my food storage and are filled with pasta, rice, beans, and a variety of foods all mixed in separate bags. This way, if I need to move my food storage, I can grab the buckets and not be stuck eating 100 lbs of flour.

But, if I need to bug out in a hurry and can’t get to my food storage, I keep a heavy duty Rubbermaid bin with my bug out bags. It weighs about 30 lbs and is easily grabbed to throw into the car and go. We all have various food items and MREs in our bags, but this is just something a little extra.

It contains rice, pasta, sugar, tea (can’t live without tea!), fruit, granola bars, fruit snacks for the kids, a variety of spices, water purification tablets, and anything else I wanted to add. Again, this is separate from my bug out bags and wouldn’t do me any good to grab on its own and contains mostly doubles of my bug out bag and food storage.

Its a good idea to keep a little bit of your food storage separate like this, just in case. Your basement could flood, you could be cut off from the rest of your house, you might have one minute to grab the kids and get out or, if your food storage was raided, most people aren’t going to check a storage bin that’s kept completely away from the rest of the food. Give it some thought and see if it works for you.