How Much Food Storage Do I Need? Let the Calculator Do the Math

The first question almost everybody asks when they decide to get serious about food storage is the simplest one. How much do I actually need?

And it's a hard question to answer on the back of a napkin. A family with two teenagers eats very differently than a couple with a new baby. A month is one thing. A year is something else entirely. It's easy to get so tangled up in the math that you never buy the first bag of wheat.

So I built a tool to take care of that part for you.

A Free Calculator That Does the Math

On this site you'll find the Food Storage Calculator. It's free to use. There's no account to create, nothing to sign up for, and it doesn't store anybody's information. You type in your numbers, you get your answer, and that's the end of it.

Here's how it works.

First, you tell it who's in your household. You can enter adults, teenagers, youth, and infants, because each of them needs a different amount of food. If it's you, your spouse, two teenagers, and a little one, you just put those numbers in.

Second, you choose how many months you want to store for. It can be one month, two months, three months, or a full year. You can do as many as you want. It doesn't matter.

Then the calculator gives you the basics your family needs for that length of time, along with what it would cost to buy them.

What It Costs at the Storehouse

The costs are based on buying through the Church's Home Storage Centers. I usually call them the bishops' storehouses. They're run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the church I belong to, and they're located across the country. The part that sells long-term food is open to the public, so you don't need to be a member to shop there. There's also an online store.

These storehouses are an astonishingly great resource that few people use as well as they could. They sell the staples, things like wheat, rice, and beans, at fair prices, packaged for long-term storage.

The calculator lines up precisely with the order form the Church produces for those Home Storage Centers, and there's a link to that form right there. When you print your results, you'll see exactly what you need and exactly what it costs, in a format that matches what you'll be filling out anyway.

Built on Good Nutrition

I want to give credit where it's due. The Church has done an amazing thing with these guidelines. They've taken all the information necessary and based it on proper nutrition. It's not just a pile of calories. It's meant to give you the protein you need and the other things your body requires to stay alive and healthy.

That matters more than most people think. You can't survive on one thing. You need proteins, vitamins, and minerals, not just something to fill your stomach. I've written a whole article about why "a million calories" is a prepper mistake, because I've seen so many people get it wrong.

When the calculator hands you your list, you can trust that it was designed with real nutrition in mind.

It Adds Up Faster Than You Think

The first time you run the numbers for a full year, it may surprise you. Go ahead and set it to twelve months and look at the results. You'll see how many hundreds of pounds of wheat, rice, beans, and everything else your family would need.

That can feel a little daunting. Please don't let it scare you off. Seeing the real number is the point. It's much better to know the size of the mountain before you start climbing than to guess and come up short when it matters.

Start With Three Months

My stake president has encouraged us to get a three-month supply of food. (In my church, a stake is a group of several local congregations, and the stake president is the volunteer who leads it.) I think that's wise counsel for anybody.

A three-month supply is mostly food you already eat regularly. You rotate it, using the older items and replacing them, so nothing just sits there going stale. Once that's in place, you keep building toward the long-term staples like wheat, rice, and beans that can last for decades. I explain the difference in more detail in my article on the three-month supply versus long-term storage.

So try running the calculator for three months first. Then try it again for a year. Set up your plan for whatever you want to do. The goal is yours to choose.

Food Is Only Part of the Picture

The Food Storage Calculator is just for food. I made it that way on purpose. Everything else, like water, fuel, cooking, and heat, is covered in a second free tool called the Family Planner. There's a little overlap between the two, but the planner will get you thinking about the things people forget, like how you're going to cook all that wheat if the power is out.

Take a look at both. Same deal as the calculator: free, no sign-up, and nothing is saved.

A Thought to Carry With You

There's something humbling about seeing your family's needs laid out in pounds and dollars. It reminds me how much we depend every single day on blessings we hardly notice. A plan on paper won't feed anyone by itself, but it's often the first honest step. I believe God honors that step, and the ones after it, when we take them with faith and a willing heart.