We buy an extra couple weeks worth of dry goods of things we are already using/eating, then cycle through it. Doesn't work for everything, but in the event of a disaster I'd be happy to have it :)

That’s the right way to do it, stock up on high quality canned and dry foods that you enjoy and then just cycle through the supply. One day you don’t feel like a fancy dinner so you crack open a few cans of chili and some nice mixed veggies, or boil up some noodles or whatever and just replace them every other month or so. Power goes out and you’re still living large instead of eating five year old MREs.

I’ve never prepped so asking out of sheer curiosity.

I wonder if there’s value in simulating disaster-living. It’s one thing to be ready with supplies and another to actually live through it, albeit for lesser time. Would it help discover a few more unknowns? Maybe some supply that you would only realize you need when you experience it?

Think of it a life-version of chaos monkey or similar to a fire drill?

A simple way to do this is to just shut off the main breaker in your fuse box, instant power outage. Leave it off for whatever amount of time you want to practice for. Same thing goes for the main water shut off. You could leave those two off all weekend and quickly find out what you need. Another good and simple practice run is if you normally drive to get to a local store to plan and execute a route for walking there and back. Vice versa for if you normally walk everywhere, figure out what it would take to drive to a more remote location. Planning and knowing the ground truth of alternate routes is very important in a disaster scenario. For food preparedness you can do something I call the Bean Day exercise, simply don't go to the grocery store for an extended period of time and eat only what you have in your fridge, freezer and pantry. You'll have to get creative to reach the end, you'll realize how quickly you work your way through your stock, and you might discover a whole new set of go-to foods and dishes.

Back in the day, we called this "going camping for the weekend"

Camping for a couple of weeks would be more relevant.

A weekend is a pretty decent test though. If you flip the main breaker on your panel and use the water service shut off valve, you'll know in 24 hours how well you can cope. After 48, you'll know exactly what needs to be addressed. Provided you're in a house with access to those kinds of shut-offs

No it’s not. I know I can survive 48 hours without water (let alone food or power). I can just sit around and do nothing. Not so with two weeks.

Have you thought how your toilet will look like after 48 hours without water?

Huge value. We rented a small farm cottage for a year and the power there was unreliable, the water supply ran out regularly, and the road flooded a couple of times a year. It really helped us develop core preparedness habits out of learned experience.

Even recently we had a power cut at our place and discovered storing our power-out gear in the garage wasn't very useful with an electric main door and a blocked off side door. If it had been an extended outage I would have needed to break windows to get essential gear.

In my experience you'll find more isolated communities take preparedness more seriously because they experience grid frailty regularly and so build backup options into their daily lives. The least prepared live in denser urban areas where issues are far less likely. Problem is that when they do occur, and on a long enough timescale it's inevitable, general preparedness is low and so the shock and risk is greatly increased.

The trick is to actually prep with stuff you normally eat and use.

The easiest thing is to buy staples to use them FIFO. That way, you're not stuck with 100 lbs of honey, flour, or such.

Don't you mean LIFO?

No - it’s fifo

yes it is, I commented before coffee :)

We have a small pack too, mainly focused on some calories for a few days and ways to clean water (lifestraw and a stove for boiling).

You should probably put calendar reminders to start eating from the supply in time and re-stock before things expire.

If shit hits the fan you probably don't want to be stuck with a supply that's already expired.

A simpler solution is to stock your shelves from back to front so the oldest items are always the first you grab. Don't buy things that you don't eat on a regular basis because:

a) they'll sit in the back of the pantry and expire b) if you do have to eat them you'll be miserable if you don't like them c) you won't know how to properly prepare them and you'll probably be missing some other key ingredients

And a non-simple solution is to write an iPhone app that scans QR codes that you print onto stickers that put on all your food so you can keep track of the expiration/purchase dates...

I know because that's the route I took haha. I won't pretend it was the BEST use of my time but it was fun and I can easily see how much I have of everything and where in my house it's located.

Presumably you have solar chargers and lots of batteries too

After watching Steve1989MREInfo[1] eat decades old canned food dozens of times, I have stopped following expiry dates to the T.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA

The types of things you should be packing, in a real emergency, will still be perfectly edible.