If you are planning to become a prepper and you already started on stockpiling food for emergency situations, know that there are 5 important rules of food storage. All of them are essential to make sure you don’t waste money in the process and, more importantly, you don’t endanger your life.

1. Keep the Food in a Dry Place

Remember: humidity will ruin your food. Even a bit of humidity can affect your entire food reserve, in a chain. If, for instance, apples or any dry food will be placed in a humid room, they will eliminate a gas that alters all the food items near it, in the same room.

2. Set the Temperature

The best temperature for preserving your food is right between 40 and 60 degrees F. Ideally, this is when your food will be preserved best and longest. Of course, in a crisis, that’s something you can’t control. However, there are some little things you can control, like where you initially place them. Put your emergency food in the coldest room in your house, where temperature is constant or where you can set it.  If the temperature fluctuates, the food might go bad.

3. No Light

Your stockpile should not be placed where sun can reach it. The storage room should have no windows. Also, store your food in opaque recipients; avoid glass jars and plastic. The more isolated from light they are, the longer they will last.

4. Variation

Don’t just print out any given list on the Internet with 10 items and buy them in huge quantities. It’s actually very important to have a wide variety of food, not just the cheapest stuff, like grains or canned veggies.

Here is why this is important:

Someone could be allergic to one or more items, which narrows your list a bit. Make sure you find out who’s allergic to what prior to shopping.

If God forbid, you will be isolated for longer than a day or two, you will get sick of eating the same thing and you won’t be getting the needed nutrients. That will weaken you and make you vulnerable to diseases, which is a big problem.

5. Store different items separately

If you put all your food items in the same place and something happens with one of them, it will affect the rest as well.

You can avoid this in two ways:

Use many recipients for your foods and store them in small quantities, sealed. No matter what you use, make sure they’re isolated. Also, you should know that some of your foods will go bad faster than the rest, so take that in consideration when you store them.

You can also rotate your stock. When the expiration date is close, just make something with it, incorporate it in your food so you don’t waste it. Put a fresh one in its place. This way you make the most of your emergency supplies.