Portuguese Prepper
Apartment Food Storage: How to hide 3 months of food in a small space
Standard preparedness advice assumes you have a spare room, a basement, or a garage. For apartment dwellers, these luxuries do not exist.
However, a small footprint is not an excuse to be unprepared.
The secret to apartment storage is decentralization. Instead of looking for one giant space to put everything, you must find ten small spaces to hide “caches” of food.
By utilizing dead space under furniture and vertical space in closets, a 600-square-foot apartment can easily hold a 3-month supply.
The space under a Queen bed holds ~12 five-gallon buckets.
Closet floors are dead space; stack vertically.
Keep food out of direct sunlight and bathroom humidity.
The “Under-Bed” Pantry
This is the single largest storage area in your home. If your bed frame is low, buy a set of heavy-duty furniture risers. Raising your bed just 6 inches creates massive cubic volume.
You can slide #10 cans of freeze-dried food (like Mountain House) or low-profile plastic bins filled with pasta and rice completely out of sight. A standard bed skirt hides the entire stockpile.
Hiding in Plain Sight
If you run out of hidden space, you must make the storage look like furniture. Storage Ottomans and benches are excellent for this.
You can place a storage bench at the foot of your bed or use hollow ottomans as extra seating in the living room. They are perfect for storing “ugly” items like bags of beans or MRE cases while keeping your apartment looking normal.
Best gear for small spaces
Climate Control is Key
The advantage of an apartment is climate control. Unlike a garage, your bedroom is likely air-conditioned. This extends the life of your food significantly. Just be careful not to store food against a wall that gets direct afternoon sun, as the heat transfer can degrade nutrients over time.
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