Reader Spotlight Casting Call: Stockpile Stories
April 12, 2012
I love reading all the responses I get whenever I put out a “Casting Call” like this…every once in a while I ask a question or have you all complete a phrase for me. I’ll feature my favorite responses in an upcoming week’s Reader Spotlight. I love that this shorter format allows us to hear from so many different readers who otherwise might not ever volunteer for the spotlight 
.
So for this casting call:
We all struggle from time to time with keeping the stockpile organized and (in some cases) hidden! So this time around I want to know: where is the strangest or funniest place you have hidden away your stockpile? If you have a cute or funny stockpile story, feel free to share that as well!
I can’t wait to see what you guys have to say for this one! Leave your answer in the comments for this post…and ‘tune in’ to upcoming Reader Spotlights to see your name in lights!
hmm I don’t have many strange places just the garage, bathrooms (Health & Beauty items), and the laundry room (is that strange???)
I ran out of room in our spare bedroom so I started shoving stuff in my husband’s bathroom closet (he was less than thrilled). When that filled up, I started putting boxes under my daughters crib and our bed. =) Time for a bigger house!
I would never hide my stockpile. I am very proud to save money.
I dont have any big closets so i have to use my laundry room shelves
When I first started couponing, I had to put my stock pile in coolers in the laundry room which isn’t very big to begin with haha. We were quickly over run with the stock pile.
i don’t know if hiding it would help. my husband built me shelving to store the bulk of my stock in it’s own room. he is so proud, that everyone that comes over to our house gets the tour. he opens every door that just might have stock behind it to show off my crazy couponing skills. i do keep the stuff for my daughters (i.e. diapers, wipies, shampoo ect.) in thier closets.
His attitude is awesome
What an awesome attitude he has towards stockpiling! I think it is hilarious that he gives a tour to anyone who stops by. lol
I live in a smallish 2 bedroom apartment so space is at a premium. The bulk of my stockpile is in teh laundry room on a large garage shelving unit (food and cleaning supplies) and my linin closet (HBA and paper goods). However I still feel brilliant for coming up with this space saver. We all have stockpile items that are smallish adn hard to store, think muffin mix puches adn seasoning packets. Every spare door in my apartnment is now outfitted with with a hanging shoe organizer, the pocket kind. Teh one in the bathroom has extras of bathroom necessities. The one in the laundry room and ldinign room hold food items and the one in my bedroom holds makeup and the like.
Since I live alone many of those doors rarely are opened/closed so that most people who visit never see thoe backs of those doors.
Sorry about that, I would be dangerous if I could type. lol
Our house has an unfinished basement that is about 1500 square feet. My fiancé has 1/3 of it for his workshop, we keep our ping-pong table and other large item in the other 1/3 and the final 1/3 is my storage space. I have shelving and my chest freezer, and sometimes I even use the unfinished walls to store items! -That’d when I know it is time to clear out and make donations to the church and food pantry. My dogs even know what shelf their milkbones are stored on. It is cool and dry down there year round so great for storing. Laundry detergent, toilet paper and paper towels live in the garage though. I was not about to lug bottles of tide and downy up and down the stairs when I stock up! I am so thankful for the wonderful space we have that allows me to stockpile. My fiancé and dad even build an outlet just for my freezer!! My friends always as for a tour of the ‘Downstairs Market’ when they come by. And usually I send them home with some goodies
I’m jealous!!!
after the 50% off Kellogg’s sale, I had so much cereal, I hid 6 boxes in our coat closet! hubby didn’t notice for several weeks.
Since I come from a family of couponers most places aren’t strange to me lol. However my mom was able to score a pegboard that hangs in our living room. It’s an ice breaker with guest for sure. When my family moved into the house we live in now we started using our forth bathroom for all paper products. We have a large family of 10 that’s a mix of my mom with her family, my family, and my brother (this also helps cut down on the mortage rate! always saving!) When I find a great price on paper towels or toliet paper I stock up and it all goes in the bathroom. It’s pretty much unusable to the point that we have enough room for myself (the smallest of the adults) to walk in and put something away or take something out. Most people that visit have no idea and assume it’s just a storage room they have no idea we just stopped using it as a bathroom! Once the three kids grow out of the “use a whole roll for one trip” phase we won’t have as much but until then this works for us lol.
Okay…as we were in our transitional spot before we moved in our new house, we rented a storage space to hold all of my goodies. I think my better half thinks I’m a little wacky, but that’s okay, all I do is save him money;)
I had to hide toilet paper inside my ottoman because my room mates kept stealing it! lol Oh and my mom had to store her extra free fiber one cereal in her closet because she ran out of space in the kitchen! HAHA
Our family of 3 lives in a 500 ft2 apartment, so we have gotten creative, especially with the cereal storage. I looked in my pots and pans cabinets and saw a lot of empty space, so I rearranged things and now have a lot of cereal in there. We have put dressers or couches at an angle against the corner, and that allows for a lot of storage space in the triangular area behind the furniture (good if you can then cover the stockpile space with a throw or sheet to make a little shelf). The weirdest thing I have probably done is kept cereal boxes in my oven and it’s storage drawer. We had our gas turned off a little while ago because our oven has the kind of ignition where it is constantly burning under the range -very hot in the summer and dangerous with a 1 year old around. I cook A LOT, using all kinds of electrical appliances. So the oven storage trick is a great way to use up about 8-10 ft3 of unused and instantly hidden space!
I store paper products in my teens walk-in closet – sadly his friends look at all the TP and wonder what kind of “problem” he must have. I also store my stash of cereal when it gets out of hand in a couple of chest coolers in the corner of the dining room. It isn’t pretty but we use the coolers several times a month (for all day ball tournaments) and I hated getting them out of a closet so now they stay close to the kitchen and so does the cereal.
I taught a friend to use coupons with a General Mills cereal sale last year. Each box was about $.25 and, as her first big coupon experience, went wild and bought something like over 20 boxes in one day. She put them all in her towel closet. The funny part was that her husband got home super late from work, so she didn’t get to tell him about any of it. That morning, he went for a towel and grabbed Cinnamon Toast Crunch instead. For all he knew, at that moment, his wife went crazy and just bought $80 of cereal and hid it in the closet. Hehe!
My stockpile started in the kitchen and bathrooms. Once those spaces were filled up, I bought some shelves to put in the corner my husbands exercise room. Well, the stockpile kept growing so I would have to get more shelves. One day, my husband walked in the room and saw items handing from his bowflex machine. So he moved the bowflex in the living room. I didn’t argue because my thought was, “Great! More room for shelves!” Then, his mom came over and fussed at him for putting that big thing in the living room. I kept my mouth shut.
lol
It all started when I bought a case of Lasagna noodles from Amazon. I filled one of the desk drawers in the office. Now I have made so many stock up trips that I have spilled over into the master bedroom closet and my spare room has so much food and paper goods that no one could ever spend the night in it anymore. It sure was nice to buy all of these items before recent price increased however. I do not think we will run out of coffee for two years!
When Scott TP was on special and Charmin TP at the same time I purchased as much as I could and quickly ran out of stockpile space! So I kept my overflow in the trunk of my car until I was able to bring it in my home. It made for some trying times when I went to the store for future purchases but it worked for a short period of time.
The back of my SUV now doubles as storage for 60 32oz bottles of Gatorade, (They were $0.59 each at Kroger vs. $2.39 each at the gas station) as well as any paper goods that I buy on sale, currently Viva paper towels and Charmin tp
Over Easter weekend, the neighborhood mod squad (neighborhood kids including mine) was out and about playing so I invited the kids to our house for an Easter snack. After eating all the kids’ hands were chocolaty so I sent them into the kitchen to wash their hands. One boy rounded the corner and happened to turn into the room that I have just rearranged and organized with my stockpile. He made the comment that we have the coolest house because of all the food and goods we have. Another child walked into the room to see what this was all about and then asked my son if we were dooms day preppers. My son replied “NO! My mom is just a couponing freak!”
I’m not embarrassed about my stockpile, but the one thing I don’t want people to think is that we are prepping for the end of the world, lol!
Haha! Ever since that doomsday preppers show came out our family and friends have assured us that OUR house will be the location to which they “bug out”.
When I started my stockpile, we had just bought a house with a huge kitchen and nice size pantry closet. I told him, Oh we will never use all this space. Now, he just shakes his head when opens one of the cabinets and there is 8 boxes of cereal or goes to the upstairs bathroom closet which is stuffed with Toliet paper. He draws the line though on me using the extra storage room for the stockpile, so secretly I have been hiding stuff in the garage in rubber maid containers.
I’ve been stocking up on diapers the last few months and I got a bunch of the pampers clearance boxes. I had absolutely no room for them anywhere since my stockpile takes up every available shelving and closet I have so I have a gym room and my treadmill is broken and it was taking up a lot of space. So I put the part up that you walk on and locked it into placed and moved it against the wall. Well there was a decent amount of space between the wall and treadmill and the diapers fit perfectly! I just stacked all the boxes and some jumbo bags on top of each other and it reached almost to the top of the treadmill but it’s still short enough where you don’t see it unless you walk on the side of it. When you come in the front door you see the treadmill but not the diapers…lol!
I have a very small house with no pantry in the kitchen. So, all of my overflow food items go into the living room. I have a large entertainment center that has cabinents along the bottom. Everything gets tucked away out of sight. Everything is neatly organized, canned goods go in one, cereal in another (I had over 20 boxes in here at one point), and other items like coffee and pasta in the other. This also keeps me from buying too much, if they are full it means I don’t need any more of those items.
I have a stash of toilet cleaner in a file cabinet at work because I couldn’t squeeze it in at home…I take a bottle home when I see I’m getting low on it.
that is too funny and a great idea
My paper goods overflow location is not so strange, but my strategy turned out to have an unintended side effect. We started to notice how great our dinner napkins smelled and then I checked my stash only to realize I was storing them on top of my dryer sheets. We have the best smelling paper products in town.
I have been stashing my goodies everywhere and anywhere I can. Other than the usual places, I purchased a couple of nice looking storage boxes that go with the decor in my spare room. One is for canned and jarred food. The other is my spill over for bathroom products. I am also using my son’s closet since he went into the Air Force. I store water, drinks, cereal, bath tissue, etc in his closet. He will be surprised when he comes home on a visit. He has no complaints as his care packages contain his favorite razors, shave cream, body wash and all sorts of products he can use. I also donate to a local mission here in my area. And when I really hit a good sale with my coupons, I use my single neighbors freezer to stash the overflow. She doesn’t mind since she rearly has much in her fridge. I give her some food for storage fees which she considers a good trade off.
I just bought a house with my fiance. It’s not very big and we don’t have our deep freezer that we are planning on purchasing yet. So I have about two of the shelves in the freezer at my office filled with bags of frozen food and meat!
hehe. My boss loves that I coupon and said I can use the space anytime I need!
I hide my stock pile of candy in the file cabinet since my daughter found my hiding place in my closet dresser. It has a lock and key! lol
I keep a lot of toilet paper and paper towels under my five year old daughter’s bed.
One day, she told me she was scared of monsters under her bed. I told her there was no room for monsters because there was so much TP.
She agreed.
Cute story. I used to be afraid of those monsters too.
The odds and ends that do not have a “place” in the stockpile closets end up behind the couch until such time as I can find them a better place!
I honestly think there is a stockpile in every room of the house, except the master bedroom! Living room (built in bookshelf cabinets) = pasta, chips, snacks, cake mix. Upstairs linen closet is all HB goods (lotion, soap, body wash, feminine products, Kleenex, deodorant, etc). Spare bedroom #1 – toothpaste, toothbrushes, razors, paper towels, makeup, vitamins. Spare bedroom #2 (aka hubby’s room!!) – cereal and more Kleenex. Shampoo and conditioner and styling products are in the bathroom upstairs under the sink. In the basement… Full size upright freeze (fully stocked) and a cabinet with canned/jarred goods, cans of almonds, pasta/rice/Mac n cheese. Not to mention the 26 bars of Kraft cheese in the fridge from my Publix run yesterday.
Yes, I am one of those “people”.
I love some of these stories, especially about the monsters under the bed and the doomsday preppers!
I see that I am not alone in using a small bathroom as a storage space. We have a pretty good sized apt that has 2 1/2 baths. Originally I needed more storage space for my sewing supplies, so I decided to convert the space to a storage area. This space now also houses my extra paper and cleaning supplies. We didn’t really use that half bath and we had weeded out our book collection and donated a LOT of books to the library, so we had several unused bookcases. I put one “tower” bookcase (12″ deep, 18″ wide, 72″ tall) on one side of the bathroom across from the sink. The shelves are full of plastic bins or baskets, depending on the size of the contents. They are all labeled so we can tell at a glance what is there. I keep all of the grooming items there: toothpaste/toothbrushes, soap, shampoo, body wash (LOTS from the recent Olay sale and rebate!)and so forth. Bath tissue goes in the cabinet under the sink. Since we were not going to use this bathroom as a bathroom but a closet I put two more of the 72″ towers in the shower stall and made a really pretty curtain that went floor to ceiling to conceal the shower space and everything that is stored there. One tower has my sewing supplies, one has other paper products, cleaning supplies and various other things like bottles of juice and such. The extra food stockpile is all in a cupboard near the kitchen in an area most likely originally used for linen or laundry storage. We also have a linen closet in one hallway, so we didn’t need it for that. I had extra discarded bookcases in there too to use for storage, but after a leak from an adjoining apartment I bought nice wire shelves from Target. They are similar to the restaurant type storage shelving that you can buy at the Container Store – for about triple the price. Not only are these shelves a better use of the space, if we have another leak it will just go below the bottom wire shelves with no damage to the contents on the shelves.
I have everything in both spaces organized by type of item and I keep a list of what I have in a notebook so that I do not lose track of what I have in case I cannot see it. I try to mark things off as they are used so that I can tell what we have on hand and see what we need to buy when it goes on sale. You can download such a template at
http://organizedhome.com/kitchen-tips/make-price-book-save-money
Also, I agree with other posters: If a particular shelf gets too full with a particular item, then I know I don’t need to buy it for awhile. (Unless we get coupons to make it free or a money-maker and then I will worry about storage space when/if that happens!)
The top of my kitchen cabinets! I think it’s supposed to be used to display nicknacks, but it’s the perfect spot for the tons of cereal and juice I usually have on hand. And if chips are on sale, they go up there too. It’s really a great way to keep them from getting crushed! And since a chair or step stool is required to get it down, my little ones aren’t eating it all up without my realizing it!
I’ve actually had guests over who happen to look up and suddenly realize what all is up there, stop in mid sentence and exclaim, “My goodness that’s alot of cereal!” HAHA!
I hide all my Gas-X moneymakers behind my dish towels in my kitchen and in my Crockpot so no one will see them and think I have “issues.”
I also try to pawn off all my KY Jelly moneymakers to my friends in my neighborhood. Which wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t live in a retirement community…..
I put boxes of pasta inside the boxspring to my queen size matress to allow for extra space on my shelves.
I have been “seriously couponing” and stockpiling now for about a year. I live in a small wood frame house circuit 1947… no built in closets. After using up the cabinet space in the kitchen and the pantry it was time to get creative or stop shopping. As long as there are coupons and good sales, not shopping is NOT an option!
I have a small room off of my kitchen that previously was used as a “guest” bedroom. I converted it into an “office”/closet/pantry. I have a large plastic shelving unit that holds dried goods and bottles/cans of food items; I also have an extra microwave stand that now holds juices/spaghetti sauces/condiments in the bottom part; the drawer holds extra cans of soup and the top is for extra bottles of soda/juice.
I put a 6 drawer dresser in my bathroom. It has the extra toilet paper, paper towels, kleenex, pads and all the extra shampoos and deodorants. I put the extra laundry bottles of detergent and bleach and softeners under the vanity. I have reigned in my spending on items like laundry detergent and shampoos and the like as I think I have enough to last me at least 6 months to a year.
As far as having any “strange” storage space, it would have to be when I used my suitcases for all the extra paper products I had on hand. I then put the suitcases under the chairs in the living room or under the couch. The rest I stacked up and used as a coffee table until I came up with using the extra dresser in the bathroom.
This is not my personal story, but I had to share. I was watching the Anderson Cooper showing this week and he had an extreme couponer on his show. She was showing her stockpile. When they got into the guest bedroom she went over to the bed and I thought they were going to show her stockpile underneath the bed. Well, it was not a bed at all. She had taken rubbermaid containers and stacked them into the shape of a bed. Each container was full of her stockpile items. Then she put a comforter and pillows over the top. Now that is a very interesting way to store a stockpile.
My personal story is not as exciting. I have stockpiles throughout the house. Anything that is not perishable goes into the garage. I converted one closet into a stockpile closet and then I have toiletries in my bathroom.
I bought some decorative paper boxes and have them out in the living room, in plain sight. They’re filled with non-food items such as dishwasher detergent (the little gel blobs), batteries, toothbrushes and toothpaste, etc. Everyone in my household knows what’s in those boxes and people are free to take what they need.
I use a similar trick for stockpiled treats. Candy is stored inside an old (like, 12 years old) cardboard canister of prunes! I haven’t eaten prunes since I was pregnant with my youngest child, but I saved that container. It’s sitting at the back of a shelf in the pantry. No one goes near it, so I’m able to dole out the goodies over time.
Also at the back of the pantry are a big box of store brand fiber cereal (real contents: chocolate chips), dry milk (cake mix) and a jar of wheat germ (spare change).
That is funny! Stuffing candy in prune box: GENIUS!!!
For the most part my stockpile is in plain view and everyone in the house just takes from it when they want/need something. However, last week for the coffee bogo sale I decided that I needed to hide it cuz my husband was taking it to work…I didn’t like that cuz is not often that we get high value coffee coupons that we can combine with store coupons…so I left a few out and hid the rest in a publix bag in the pantry so he would not take it anymore and because seriously…his boss can afford to buy coffee and is not my job to buy coffee for the office but I did offer my husband the opportunity to ask his boss for money and I was more than happy to get it for him…but dh didn’t like the offer stating that we had too much of it!! I am fine with sharing but there are certain things that are not easy to get or come around but I mostly do share whatever else. I also hide candy when is a lot of in my crock pot…but that’s not a good hiding spot anymore…my dd found it…not happy so I have to hide it way way way back in the kitchen cabinet!! thanks
I only hide two items in my stockpile….cat treats and marshmallows! My orange tabby cat has a thing for both and will eat through the packaging to get to them. Now i have them hanging in bags from picture hooks high up my walls. So far he hasn’t figured out a way to get to them, but I’m already thinking of a new place to hide them just in case.
I have the same problem with cat treats as well as unopened bags of dry food. I keep one bag of treats on a high shelf in the pantry. The rest of the treats and the bags of dry food are kept in what looks like an end table in my living room. It’s actually a short Rubbermaid-style trash can with a round tabletop on top, all covered with a round tablecloth. With a lamp and a framed photo on top, it looks like a table.
I don’t have any strange places that I stash stuff, but I keep my health & beauty stockpile in our hall closet, which has come to be known as “HallMart”. So, when we run out of something, we go to HallMart!
I hide gum candy & cookies in plastic bins under my bed- where my nosy kids would never look! Lol- my little secret!
I put my freezer overflow next door in my neighbors freezer. She is so gracious to let us use her space.
I tell her, if she needs anything, just grab it. 
I have a huge bedroom with a ton of wasted space, so we lined the walls with wheeled shelves and filled it up with our stockpile. The teens in our church call our bedroom ‘the bomb shelter’ and several boys have told me that when they grow up, they want a wife just like me
)
@ Maria… The 2 items I will never share, coffee and toilet paper!
My trunk.
I’ve been hiding bags behind an over sized chair in the living room. My nosey dachshund went back there and sniffed out his stock pile of milk bones and helped himself to a box!
My husband built two cabinets in my half bath for my stockpile stuff. Many a time I have gone into the bathroom and found peanut skins or wrapers on the floor where someone had a snack while on the toilet.