Food can wait a day. Water cannot. Store it, know how to treat it, and rotate it like any other supply.
How much, and for whom
Plan on at least three litres per person per day for drinking and cooking, and more if anyone is ill, nursing, or working hard. A household of four needs about eighty litres for a week of drinking water alone, before washing. Pets drink too. Write the number down next to the people count in Holdfast so the cellar matches the household you actually have.
Bottled water, washed jerry cans, and food-grade barrels all work. Keep a few litres where you sleep, not only in the garage, so a burst pipe or a dark staircase does not stand between you and a drink. Label every container with the fill date.
Rotation and treatment
Commercial bottles are not immortal. Heat, sunlight, and plastic taste creep in. Rotate sealed shop water about once a year and refill your own containers every six months. Store them off concrete if you can, cool and dark, with the caps tight.
If the mains fail or a flood dirties the supply, do not guess. Boiling for one minute (longer at altitude) kills pathogens. A proper filter straw or gravity filter handles silt and many organisms; chemical treatment is a backup, not a flavour. Keep a way to treat water in the same place as the empty containers, and practise once so you are not reading the leaflet by torchlight.
The quiet leaks
Know where the stopcock is and that it turns. A washing-machine hose can empty a tank faster than you can shop for bottled water. In winter, lag exposed pipes. In a warning, fill the bath only if you have a clean way to take water back out, and do not drink bath water unless you treat it.
Log every jerry can and crate in Holdfast under Water, with an inspect-by date. When that date arrives, drink or water the garden and refill. Water you have not looked at is a rumour.
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