2 adults
1 child
£120.00
Plan your just-in-case pantry
A hard month
Daily calories needed
5,200
assumes school-age child
Calories planned
145,670
Budget used
£105.90
Your £120 fully covers a hard month for this household, with about £14.1 left over. Spend the rest on the Essentials list below — that's what turns stored calories into actual dinners.
Space audit
What storage space do you have?
Scenario
What are your utilities like?
Power
Running water
Protein
Keeps muscles working and hunger honest. Tins are ready the moment you open them; dried lentils store smaller and cost less, but need water and heat.
| Item | Calories / unit | Shelf life | Cost | Storage | Qty | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peanut butter | 2,006 | 12 months | £17.50 | 4.5L | 10 | Buy on Amazon |
| Red lentils | 1,750 | 24 months | £13.20 | 8.4L | 12 | Buy on Amazon |
| Tinned chickpeas | 640 | 36 months | £2.60 | 1.8L | 4 | Buy on Amazon |
Fits in half a cupboard shelf.
Staple carbs
The bulk of every plan: cheap, dense, and boring on purpose. Rice and pasta are what everything else gets served on top of.
| Item | Calories / unit | Shelf life | Cost | Storage | Qty | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pasta (dried) | 1,850 | 24 months | £10.45 | 9.9L | 11 | Buy on Amazon |
| White rice | 3,600 | 24 months | £7.20 | 8.4L | 6 | Buy on Amazon |
| Rolled oats | 3,700 | 18 months | £5.40 | 8.4L | 4 | Buy on Amazon |
Fits in roughly one cupboard shelf.
Smaller categories
Fats
The most calories per pound and per litre of anything you can store. One jar of oil quietly outworks a whole shelf of tins — that's why it's first.
| Item | Cal | Cost | Qty | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vegetable oil (rapeseed) | 9,000 | £3.30 | 2 | Buy |
| Lard | 4,500 | £10.00 | 4 | Buy |
Fits in a shoebox.
Micronutrients
Calories keep you alive. These keep you well. Small, light, and worth their shelf space many times over.
| Item | Cal | Cost | Qty | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dried mango | 450 | £2.50 | 1 | Buy |
Fits in a shoebox.
Morale
A crisis pantry without chocolate gets abandoned. This is not a joke category — food you look forward to is food you'll actually rotate and eat.
| Item | Cal | Cost | Qty | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dark chocolate | 550 | £4.50 | 3 | Buy |
Fits in a shoebox.
Vegetables
Not for calories — for staying human. A tin of sweetcorn is fibre, vitamins, and the difference between a meal and a ration.
| Item | Cal | Cost | Qty | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tomato puree | 160 | £29.25 | 45 | Buy |
Fits in half a cupboard shelf.
Everything above fits in two cupboard shelves, or one under-bed box. Most households find the space before they find the money.
Essentials and flavour
Salt, coffee, spices, vinegar. Nearly zero calories, but they're what makes week three taste different from week one. Don't skip these.
- • Multivitamins
- • Coffee (instant)
- • Salt
- • Soy sauce
- • Vinegar
- • Dried herbs / spices
Two things this list can't do
It can't store water for you. Dried food is compact because the water isn't in the tin — it's in your tap. If the taps stopped too, you'd need about 3 litres per person per day before any of this list becomes dinner. Food first is fine; just know water is the other half.
It can't guess your kitchen. The storage figures are honest estimates, not measurements. Brands and packaging vary — treat every volume here as “roughly,” and check a shelf's weight before loading it entirely with tins.You don't have to do this in one shop
Nobody buys a month of food in an afternoon. Add one category to your normal shop each week and you'll be fully covered inside two months, without ever feeling the cost. Print the list, stick it on the fridge, and cross things off as they come home.
Then eat it. The best just-in-case pantry is one you cook from and replace — food that rotates never expires, and a shelf you use is a shelf you trust.