Preparing your pantry for a cross-country move

I’ve been thinking lately about how to prepare, food-wise, for moving.  That’s because my family will be moving from Minnesota to Virginia in the near future so that my husband can go to seminary.  And while the prospect of being within weekend-trip distance of my dear sister (as well as my brother and my best friend!) has me doing the happy dance, I’m a bit overwhelmed at all the preparations that are involved in a)getting a house ready to list for sale, and b)preparing to move on a somewhat uncertain timeline.  So I’ve been thinking through, among a host of other things, how to get my pantry ready to move.

First off, I made a list of things that are worth moving, and things that either have to be consumed before M-Day, or given away.

Things Worth Moving:

• Spices
• Homemade Canned Goods (although I’m working on whittling down our stores, and haven’t done any canning this year at all, because I don’t want to move a thousand pounds of canning jars. In fact, Barb just gave me permission to give away my canning jars, on the principle that three years from now, when we will be done with school and ready to move to a place where there’s room to can, I can buy new jars, and not have needed to have a separate storage unit just for all those empty jars.)
• Things that are dehydrated
• Unopened bags of dry goods (flour, sugar, etc.)
• Well-sealed bags of nuts, dried fruit, etc.
• Specialty items that are hard to find, like almond paste, Mexican vanilla, or macadamia nut oil (but find a way to seal/contain these, so you don’t have to deal with a huge mess in unpacking!)
• The basic dry goods that are essential for life the first two mornings:  coffee, maybe a box of cereal, peanut butter, tea making supplies.

Things not worth moving:

• Opened packages of anything
• Things that will be messy (bottles of oil, honey,  generic vanilla)
• Store-bought canned goods (unless it’s just a few things, and it’s going to help me get food on the table in the first few days)
• Anything refrigerated or frozen

So here’s what I’ve done so far:  last week, I took an inventory of my entire food supply–pantry, fridge, and both the top freezer and the storage freezer in the basement. We’ve got frozen turkeys and chickens, bags of pepperoni, gallons of soup stock, frozen fruit and veggies, soup-making kits, a quiche-kit, and some already assembled meals, mostly soup. In the dry goods department, I have several kinds of dried beans, pasta, rice, canned staples like diced tomatoes and cream of mushroom soup and beans, and baking ingredients.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I have enough food to make entrées for approximately 60 meals. (Okay, some of you are goggling at that number and thinking I’m a closet food-hoarder.  You might have a point.  Others of you are nonchalantly shrugging and thinking, “She’s a lightweight.”  If that’s you, you may someday find yourself needing to give away baskets of food in advance of a move.  When one of my food-hoarding friends moved several years ago, she gave me enough food to feed a small island nation, including a gorgeous lamb roast that we enjoyed very much.)  So, I’m in the process of making a plan for how I am going to use all that food.  Once I’ve got a plan for all the main ingredients (i.e. what meals am I going to make with turkey #1?  what am I going to use the dried navy beans in? what will I do with the two cans of salmon?)  I will make a cooking plan–WHEN will I cook the turkey, the beans, etc.?

At this point in the process, YOU might decide you’re good to go, and just start knocking off the ingredients as you go.  But because I am going to be having hip surgery in the middle of house projects/packing/listing the house/getting ready to move  (because getting ready to move just isn’t ENOUGH, is it???) I am planning to have, as much as possible, all of the raw ingredients cooked into meals and stowed back into the freezer before mid-October.  That way, post-surgery, when I am laying on the couch and reading books to my kids, my hard-working husband can pull pre-fab meals out of the freezer with minimal fuss.  So in the next several weeks, I’ll be cooking up a storm, in between packing boxes and painting rooms.

My goal is to do most of my shopping in the next several weeks from my own pantry, only buying produce and milk from the grocery store.  My hope is that the food stores will give out right about the time we move.  When it comes time to move out of the house (which will happen at a date we don’t know yet–we won’t move until the house sells!) I want to pack up only the essential things from the pantry.  Everything perishable, opened, or otherwise not worthy of packing, will be either tossed or given to friends.

I’d love to hear any words of wisdom, hot tips, or other ideas from those of you who have weathered moves.  What things did you do to move your kitchen?  What do you wish you’d kept and moved?  What do you wish you’d just ditched?  What can I do to make the packing or the unpacking more efficient and sane?

Laura