You can never have too much food in your house

Joe and I have very different philosophies when it comes to grocery shopping: he thinks you wait until something is gone to replace it and I think you should replace something as soon as your supply is remotely low.  There are things we all know better than to run out of, toilet paper being at the top of the list, but there are plenty of other things you will always find in the Martin pantry.

At all times we have no less than 2 boxes of pasta and 2 jars of sauce, a frozen pizza, frozen chicken, no less than 4 cans of soup, no less than 8 cans of tuna, tostitos, cereal, triscuits, 2 emergency bottles of BBQ sauce, and a minimum of 10 rolls of toilet paper...you get the idea.  Am I a doomsday prepper?  No, but you never know when you're going to have dinner or cocktail guests on short notice and I like to be prepared. (We didn't even get to the liquor cabinet, but know that if you're ever in need of a drink...there will be options for you at the Martins.) Along that same vain we always have a stash of disposable utensils, cups and plates. Joe does 90% of our grocery shopping and he get's annoyed with me if I put plastic forks on the grocery list and he finds another box in there when he's putting them away.  The box in the cabinet is my emergency stash!  If we're having people over and I know about it I get a box of utensils for that party...I never dip into my cabinet supply unless we have spontaneous guests and then I need to go out and replace it immediately the next day.

Joe on the other hand, never notices something is running low until it's gone and doesn't believe in having a backup supply.  For example, I always like to have a backup box of Ziploc bags because we use them every day.  Joe went to the grocery store this morning, and then used the last Ziploc bag this afternoon because he literally just does not notice to how much of something is left until it's gone. Good thing we have tupperware containers that he could use for his sandwich and that wasn't an emergency trip to the store before his night shift, but...if you always keep a spare box and get a new stash as soon as the spare box gets opened you will never run out of anything!!  That's why as soon as we drop below 4 cans of soup, it goes on the list and I never wait for it to get to zero (and the same goes for all our other pantry staples).

Obviously this doesn't work for fresh foods like veggies and fruits and if I'm being honest we still end up at the grocery store at least 3 days a week for some fresh foods we forgot to get or ran out of.  But what Joe thinks of as hoarding groceries I think of as being prepared for guests, a storm, being too lazy to grocery shop for a couple days, ya know whatever comes along. Nothing makes me happier than a fully stocked pantry and someday Joe will be on the same page...