I suspect many of the people reading this will think “this is not relevant to me because I don’t live in an apartment building” or “because I don’t know my neighbors” or “because greedy people will just steal from it” or “because food pantries are the government’s job” or “because I’m not poor enough to need this so reading this won’t benefit me”.
If you see the title and think you don’t need to read it, that’s a sign you need to read it. Because it’s not just about the practicalities of setting up a shared pantry - it’s about how to think about poverty and community and charity and mutual aid.
It’s a wonderful article. Read.
Could also be a good way to reduce food waste. If you buy a bunch of ingredients for one dish and have some left over you probably won’t use right away why not share them? I definitely have some spices I’ve bought and haven’t touched in years but it could also work for stuff that has short shelf lives like produce.
I think a good mixer opportunity to get your foot with your neighbours and plant the seed for this idea would be when people move in or during emergencies like power outages.
We talked about doing something like that, after covid hit things. But we’re too damn rural, even here on the edge of town. Critters would get attracted to it, and there’s enough problems with them as is. So we do it as more of an active communication, where everybody has a little stashed away, and all you have to do is knock/call and we hook each other up, no questions asked.
I really like this. Currently I just give excess to neighbors that I know will like it. We tend to swap food and other stuff too.
I would have liked to see more information about where to put one. Looking at my own complex, I don’t see a whole lot of places where I could put one. The breezeways don’t have a lot of space (and given that my partner and I are both physically disabled, I am very sensitive to making sure there is plenty of space for every one to move) and I don’t know where else we can put one out of the elements. I’m certain I can’t think of one because of my lack of imagination, not because there isn’t a good place.
It’s not like that at every apartment complex, though. At previous apartment complexes I’ve lived in, I can think of several good places to put them.
Thanks for sharing.
are there any open areas in your apartment? Think especially about entryways, common areas, etc. For example if I were to get one started in my apartment, I think the best spaces would be either near the front door by a little coffee nook or on the second floor right next to our shared library
I don’t live in an apartment anymore, and I moved out largely because I’m asocial, and want as little incidental contact with others as possible. I’d like to do something like this in my town but that’s not really likely to work because, again, asocial. I could set it up and nobody would know unless they saw it. And looked.
But it gets me thinking… if a person were to just go into a random unsecured apartment building, such as the one I used to live in, and put up a small shelf with the community pantry building instructions laminated and pinned above it, and seeded it with some goods, if it would just spontaneously take off.
When I used to work at an airport, we had tip jars that looked like decorative glass bricks. I took to putting a few dollars of my own money into the jar every day, in a very obvious way, and the tips came in much more steadily than not seeding the jar.
I bet the same could work in apartments, even if you don’t live there. I’m going to try it; I have an old shelf and some dry goods I don’t really want, and I know the old apartment complex; it’s full of people who move out in the middle of the night because they can’t pay rent, car break-ins happened not infrequently, but never anything within the building, neighbors let you know.
It’s one of the cheapest places I ever lived, and it’s still in the same condition I left it a decade back, despite renting for almost 200% what I paid then with wages not keeping up. The windows were rotting out trash from the 70s and haven’t been replaced, something I can tell from the parking lot and I let them know about before I moved out. If they haven’t fixed that, they haven’t fixed any of it, and are letting it degrade willfully. Desperate people always exist.
I think the trick is figuring out how to get permission to place it in a public space. Landlords are allowed to tear it down if they don’t want it. I feel like it would be more likely they’d deny or remove it if they want to prevent the possibility of a tenant union from forming
Love this thank you for sharing. Mutual aid!
