The second part of getting organized before I really get started stockpiling anything is making my home ready for it. I’ve got one attic-y space that is relatively easy to access, and would be a good place for paper goods. I need to get in there, clean it up a bit and make it ready. I have a couple of oddly shaped small closets tucked into corners and such. One upstairs would be perfect for stocking shampoo, soap, toothpaste, and other smallish items, but its got junk in it; I can’t recall the last time I opened that door. Time to clean it out, ruthlessly.
My pantry needs a complete overhaul. I actually had decent organization in it once. If you read much about pantry management,  you’ll see that organizing by keeping like items together (i.e. canned beans all in once place, baking goods together, and so on) is often recommended. And I did do that, when I was first building my pantry when we moved here a decade ago. Over time, my pantry has become an extension of the junk drawer though. I “lost” a shelf to games and science kits, another shelf to a bunch of stuff purchased to make oreo pops for my kids’ teachers – piles of candy melts, double boiler, molds and lollipop sticks, cellophane bags and the like. The entire back third of my pantry is full of lunch stuff. Not food, dozens of lunch pails, bento boxes, shelves FULL of bento making supplies. Under the shelving on the floor is a mish mash of bags, beer (we don’t drink much; I am certain that at least one of those boxes is over 7 years old since its been in there since before my daughter was born (!)), and I don’t even know what. I shudder to think how many food items buried in there are expired. So, that’s another job to tackle.
And finally, there is the garage. There are boxes that have been there since the move, and never opened. That’s more than 10 years. There are bins full of the kids’ old toys. Some of them are worth keeping around for potential grandkids, extensive (and expensive to replace) classic toys. I did get those all binned up and cleared another attic space (I have an oddly shaped bonus room with slanted ceilings and cubbies under a window, and its got 3 separate attic spaces, on either side of the room, maybe 4-5 feet tall, 4-5 wide, but all total, about 40 feet in length) for those. I just need to get through all the stored stuff, and get it all into rubbish or donate piles. Half our two car garage can be used for storage, but only for non-temperature sensitive items. It gets over 100 in there in summer and below freezing in the winter.
Not OFTEN, we actually have a very mild climate but it can happen. We average about 12 days a year over 90 degrees and 26 days at 32 or below. We also get a decent amount of rain, which bodes well for rainwater reclamation, we get precipitation (mostly rain, very rarely snow) ~165 days a year, for a total of ~45 inches.
Anyway, once I get the garage stuff sorted, I can get some shelving and get some storage space in there.
So those are my big projects to get done before I can really think about adding to my stockpile.