Do all preppers have hoarding tendencies, or is it just me?
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not hoarding my toenail clippings in a tin can or old newspapers in piles in my living room. We don’t have 43 cats, just 20 chickens. I have no problem throwing things out, giving books to the library for their sale, or taking things to the thrift shop. I think my hoarding tendencies are limited to prepping stuff. For example, I have a large stock of canned food, ammunition, and nuts, bolts, screws and other fasteners. Also, I don’t consider it hoarding as much as I do stockpiling, but we’ll address terminology later.
Canned Food
I bring up our hoard of canned food because I did an inventory of it this weekend, and I was surprised at how much we had. We have our prepper pantry, of course, but I also had canned food squirreled away in boxes and bins. While my wife purchases canned pumpkin and cannellini beans, my prepping purchases tend towards canned meats and chili.
For example, I was surprised to find we have 102 cans of chicken, way up from the 66 cans we had in February 2022, when I did our last inventory count. We had 48 cans of corned beef hash, down from 56. Our 72 cans of Spam were less of a surprise since I had 64 cans the prior count.
These are all foods we eat at least once or twice a month, so they have been rotated through. As a result, very few cans had expiration dates earlier than 2024. We acquired most of our current canned goods after our 2020 move, buying the bulk during the COVID years when the shelves were often empty and stockpiling food seemed important. Some cans have dates as far in the future as 2028. We eat foods that are beyond the “best by” date all the time, but I threw out two cans of salmon from 2013. That seemed like it was just too long ago for fish.
Based on this inventory, I will hold off buying canned meats for the rest of 2025. Unless, of course, I stumble across deal so great I can’t pass it up…
How Much is Enough?
Forty-eight cans of hash sounds like quite a few, but one can plus a few eggs equals a hearty breakfast or dinner for two to three people. We therefore have enough hash for one year, assuming we eat one can a week. If we have five or six people, then we have only enough for six months, or we have to eat it less often.
That kind of calculation makes me think, “We need more hash!” and drives my desire to stock up. Besides, canned food is often on sale. We’re paying just $2 a can for chicken when we buy a six-pack at Sam’s Club. Hash used to be less than $2 at Walmart, but now it is closer to $3 a can. So all that older hash saved me $1 per can, or so I tell myself.
The great thing about chili, of which we have 43 cans, up from 36, is the many varieties. We have beef chili, Angus beef chili, chicken chili (which is white, not tomato based), no-bean chili, extra spicy chili and even a pork chili. Plus, you can mix a can of chili with some macaroni elbows to extend the meal or serve it over rice to boost the calories and add some excitement to the rice. I consider chili a core food in our prepper pantry. Yes, we have many kinds of dried beans and packets of chili seasoning, and my wife makes a good chili from scratch, but it takes hours. Opening a can is so easy. I’m sure there will be days we do that, especially if there is little or no electricity for cooking.
Ammunition
It is hard for me to walk by an ammo display case without buying ammo. For years after the ammo drought, I would pick up .22LR, but now it is often 9mm since that is what I practice with the most often. I guess I got into this habit of constantly buying ammo back when I was a competitive shooter and would shoot at least 10,000 rounds per year. Now I shoot about 2,000.
Just as I have limited myself to buying one gun a year, I try to limit my ammo purchases. I have done a good job of not buying any more 5.56 or .308. (Although part of me wants more 75 grain 5.56.) Loading and unloading can after ammo can and crate after crate when we moved convinced me I had enough of these calibers. When I consolidated ammo from our house, our retreat, and my storage unit, I saw it all altogether. That helped drive home the idea I have enough. Of course, the competing idea that you can never have enough keeps bubbling up, but I squash it down, thinking instead, “I have enough for now.”
When I built a .300 blackout rifle followed by a pistol, I had a whole new caliber to buy, and I needed both supersonic and subsonic ammo. Let the fun begin! Eventually, I reached a .300BO saturation point.
My next “mistake” was buying a rimfire suppressor. That meant I needed subsonic .22LR ammo. I stopped myself at 1,000 rounds. I cannot see a post-SHTF reason to have more than 1,000 rounds of subsonic .22LR ammo.
My fear (or maybe my secret hope) is that I will buy a 5.7×28 gun, like the one I wrote about in January, and then have an excuse to buy 5.7 ammo.
Fasteners
I know this is a strange thing to hoard, but I have a cabinet full of fasteners. Let’s call it a collection because it has taken me decades to accumulate it.
One shelf is dedicated to screws, another to nails. Then I have air-gun nails, 16 and 18- gauge nails and staples, plus rivets, nuts and bolts, and a collection of specialty screws for things like concrete. I have trays of fasters, and then there is the old cookie tin packed full of random fasteners accumulated over the years.
Unlike food, I did not start my hoard of fasteners for prepping purposes. I started it because my dad had one and it came in darn useful when doing a project, so I just copied the idea. Ever buy something that comes with packets of screws, including fasteners for dry wall? Well, I keep all those extras, just in case.
Some nails and screws are so standard, I replace them when I run low. I like what are generically known as “deck screws,” and have them in at least four lengths. They make good all-around outdoor screws. I also like framing nails, because you never know when you will need to knock together some dimensional lumber. 16-penny nails are also useful for many projects.
Do I expect to be building a barn or other structure after the SHTF? No, mostly because I don’t have that much lumber lying around. But the ability to nail or screw together a couple pieces of wood could come in useful. Meanwhile, having these fasteners on hand saves me from running out to the hardware store.
Food versus Bullets
It’s easier to stockpile bullets than food because they don’t expire, especially when stored in ammo cans. If your box of nails or screws breaks, you have to pick them up, but if a can of diced tomatoes leaks, you can have a mess. Also, my bullets have never attracted vermin or bugs. You can’t always say that about stored food.
I have not seen weevils in flour since I was a kid, but years ago we had some kind of grain moth inside plastic bags of pasta. We don’t know if they came that way from the store, or if they few in on their own. We now store pasta in mason jars or 5-gallon pails. That way, if any moths are born from eggs in our stored foods, they won’t be able to spread into other products.
In our last house, we had a mouse in basement storage room. It ate an entire Snickers bar and pooped on the shelves. I learned to keep traps out, baited with peanut butter. Some years, we catch no mice; other years we catch two or three.
You are not supposed to can anything in half-gallon Mason jars except clear juices, but they make great air-tight storage containers, at least if you don’t live in earthquake country. Half a gallon of rice is about 40 servings. We also store oatmeal in them.
We re-use plastic screw-top containers that originally held nuts from Sam’s Club or Costco. One container will hold three one-pound bags of dried beans. I leave them in the bag so we know exactly what the bean is and have nutritional and cooking instructions. While a larger rodent might eat through a plastic jar, the mice haven’t done so.
Hoarding versus Stockpiling
When the mainstream media writes about preppers, it is often in the middle of a shortage or other crisis. They call us hoarders, as if that is a bad thing.
I will admit that if there is a sudden shortage of hand sanitizer and you go out and buy it all up, cornering the market on hand sanitizer, and then sell it at two or three times the price, that could be considered hoarding in a bad way. That’s profiteering, not hoarding. On the other hand, if you bought a bottle or hand sanitizer every time you want to the grocery store over several months and had enough to share with friends and family when the shortage hit, that would be a good thing.
By having a stockpile of canned goods—or whatever—you won’t be out there competing with folks who have no food in their pantry. This is the type of “hoarding” I do. I am not hoarding canned chicken to deprive others of it; I am stockpiling it to feed my friends and family, and potentially a neighbor or two. Because when the SHTF, whether it is a hurricane, a blizzard, or a war, we’re going to need relationships and reinforcements as much as we will need food and ammunition.
Another difference between hoarding and stockpiling is whether you can stop buying it. I can control my hoarding urges. I stopped buying guns and ammo; I also will stop buying canned meat. Furthermore, I don’t get pissed when my wife takes a can of chicken and makes chicken pot pie or chicken salad, although I will admit it annoys me when she uses the last jar of mayonnaise and doesn’t buy a new one.
