The Preparedness Pantry: How Stocking the Shelves Became a Form of Emotional Regulation
Monday, May 5, 2025.
Let’s begin with a confession. I have about 5 years supply of freeze-dried and canned foods.
It’s stacked neatly in labeled buckets, stored beneath my remote, 9 acre doomstead on a foggy hill somewhere proximic to the Berkshires.
Or as we say around here, the Nerkshires, which is how people pronounce it once they’ve been up there too long, wearing Carhartt bibs and whispering to their generators.
I didn’t mean to become a prepper.
I was just anxious. And paying attention. Lot’s of attention.
And trying to do something—anything—that made me feel like I could keep my loved ones fed if everything fell apart.
Which brings us to a strange modern truth:
The pantry is no longer just a pantry. It’s a coping mechanism.
From Shelf to Self: Why Stocking Up Feels So Good
There’s a moment when you zip open a vacuum-sealed mylar pouch of freeze-dried lasagna and think: I am doing something very rational.
And you are. You’re performing a quiet act of future-care.
You’re also participating in what psychologists call resource conservation behavior, which becomes especially active when we perceive scarcity, unpredictability, or threat (Hobfoll, 1989).
Put simply:
When the world feels out of control, we tend to clean the garage, check our batteries, and hoard canned beans like squirrels with credit cards.
The Pantry as Emotional Infrastructure
A well-stocked pantry—especially one you’ve built intentionally over time—does more than just feed people. It feeds a part of you that’s tired of improvising. It whispers:
“You’re not helpless.”
“You’re thinking ahead.”
“You remembered the gluten-free pasta for Aunt Janine, who gets itchy.”
For many, especially post-2020, the pantry became something sacred.
It became emotional infrastructure—not because you thought the end was near, but because you had lived through a moment when eggs disappeared and toilet paper became currency.
It’s Not Hoarding. It’s Ritual.
Let’s gently clear something up.
There’s a big difference between panic hoarding (see: my purchase of 60 tubs of sanitizing wipes on March 14, 2020) and strategic preparedness, which is slow, thoughtful, and dare I say… beautiful.
Psychologists Mullainathan & Shafir (2013) describe the scarcity mindset as a cognitive tax: it makes it harder to think long-term, plan clearly, or delay gratification. Preparedness, then, isn’t a fear-based spiral—it’s an antidote to that spiral.
Every time you organize your pantry, you’re reminding your nervous system that you have a plan.
That you are not waiting passively for a truck to arrive.
That you have chili.
The Rise of the Restock Ritual (and the Gendered Labor Behind It)
If you’ve seen one of those hyper-satisfying TikToks where someone fills a snack drawer with military precision, you’ve seen a new kind of emotional labor performance art.
Restocking has become ritual.
It’s part prayer, part choreography.
We don’t just watch people organize.
We watch people cope with reality, beautifully.
But here’s where it gets tender:
Behind a lot of this prep is a person—often a woman—quietly absorbing the family’s collective fear.
Managing the invisible job of anticipating need.
Of remembering who likes what.
Of quietly preparing for every scenario, from dental floss shortages to climate collapse.
It’s a loving act.
It’s a tiring one.
And it’s still mostly unpaid.
My Doomstead and Your Snack Drawer Are on the Same Spectrum
I used to think my “Hummingbird Hill Fortress of Solitude” and your Costco runs were different worlds.
But they’re not.
They’re both part of the same spectrum of nervous systems trying to stabilize.
Some people fill their cart with canned beans.
Some people learn to can their own.
Some go solar.
Some restock their fridge with backup oat milk and call it a day.
None of it is crazy. All of it is care and mindfulness during an inflection point in history..
Food Storage Is Future-Tense Love
You don't need five years of freeze-dried mushroom risotto to be a prepper.
You just need to love someone enough to ask:
“What would they need if I couldn’t go to the store for a while?”
“How do I help them feel secure, even when the world isn’t?”
Maybe it’s a pantry.
Maybe it’s a bag by the door.
Maybe it’s just you, staying calm and competent when the lights flicker.
We prepare not because we expect the worst, but because we’ve met it once before, and we decided we’d like to meet it better next time.
Closing Blessing for the Over-Prepared
If you’ve ever opened your linen closet and found 26 rolls of toilet paper and four backup toothbrushes and thought, “What am I doing?”, this is for you.
You’re not necessarily crazy.
You’re might just be a human being who lived through a time when things disappeared.
So you’re rebuilding your sense of control.
And you’re doing a damn fine job.
Whether your prep looks like a fully stocked cabin or a shelf of carefully rotated soup cans…
You are not hoarding.
You are healing.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Hobfoll, S. E. (1989). Conservation of resources: A new attempt at conceptualizing stress. American Psychologist, 44(3), 513–524. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.44.3.513
Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2013). Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much. Times Books.
Stanczyk, A., Higgins, E. T., & Vosgerau, J. (2022). Scarcity and consumer decision-making: A motivational perspective. Journal of Consumer Research, 49(1), 101–122. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucac004
Ton, Z. (2014). The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.