“Food Storage: Canned Cheese and Mortgage Rates,” Ensign, August 2016, 78
Latter-day Saint Voices
Food Storage: Canned Cheese and Mortgage Rates
Illustration by Stan Fellows
When I got married, I began to diligently store food. My husband and I wanted to accumulate a large supply, but we couldn’t afford to buy it all at once, so we decided we would buy something extra every week. We looked for special offers on the things we bought regularly, especially canned foods.
I loved looking in my cupboard to see my little pile of canned and dried foodstuffs gradually growing bigger. Once we made the mistake of buying canned cheese, which was revolting, but my husband steeled himself and ate a can each week until it was gone. After we had a decent amount of food storage, we began to eat from it, resolving to replace each item eaten with two more items.
Soon our cupboard became quite full, so we bought storage items for our dog and cats. We also began to store herbs and spices, vacuum-packed wheat, water and soft drinks, and anything we used daily that wasn’t food, like soap, deodorant, and detergent.
Then we bought a house, and just before we signed on the dotted line, mortgage rates increased drastically. We had to live on our food storage for almost a year to avoid losing our home.
Food storage is just a part of general housekeeping now. We use it and are blessed by it every day. I am so grateful that we listened to the inspired counsel from the Lord’s prophets because it means that now I can look around in gratitude at my warm and cozy home.