I keep a surplus supply of just about everything my family regularly uses, sometimes up to five-years.

The thing is, I don’t buy it all at once. I build it up over time so I don’t clean out a store and make things hard for other people.

It’s not just for emergencies, either. I have had things I rely on mysteriously go out of stock or become very hard to get for a few months then things go back to normal. During that time I was just eating into my supply instead of stressing that I couldn’t find any.