When you're first starting out, take a good look at what you and your family eat in any given week. If you have really old cans of veggies or meat and if it's economical for you to do it, give those to charity and start fresh. Especially if you can't remember when the last time it was that you bought <insert canned item here>.
If you normally buy 3 cans of corn at the grocery store, the next time you go buy 6. If you normally buy 2 boxes of spaghetti, the next time buy 4. Eventually as you start doing this, you will build up extra food in your pantry over time and before you know it, your 3 day supply will turn into 3 weeks. Your 3 week supply will then turn into 3 months, so on and so forth. Look for sales at your local grocery stores. Clip coupons and don't be afraid to use them. And when you're stock piling your pantry with canned goods, remember the following rule: First in, First out. All older cans should be rotated to the front of your pantry so they get used first, the newer cans should go in the back. Every time you go to the grocery store, remember to do this when you come home and put your groceries away. When you're just starting out, it will help you know where you are with your preps. If you're OCD like me, feel free to grab a black Sharpie and write on the cans the date that they were purchased. Do your homework and research the shelf life of the items you prep. I could do it for you, but everyone eats different things, and I'd be here all night listing the various items and how long they're good for.
Long-Term Food Storage
Storing food for the long haul is quite a different beast than just beefing up your pantry. This is where a majority of your bulk preps are going to go. Things like rice, dry beans, oatmeal, wheat berries, flour, powdered or dehydrated foods. All of these things fall into a long-term food storage category. There are different ways to make your foods shelf stable from anywhere to 1-30 years. Re-packaged by you, properly, there are some items out there that will sit on your shelf and be good 15 years or more down the road. These items are also relatively cheap for the amount that you're buying.
When I re-package oatmeal for my long term storage, I buy a bag that looks like this:
Then I measure out enough oatmeal to fill a 1 gallon mylar bag (usually around 4-4 1/2 cups of oatmeal. I toss in two 100 CC oxygen absorbers and I use an old hair straightener turned up high to seal the bag. Packaged this way, this oatmeal will last for 15 years. I break the 50 pound bag down into smaller sizes because I am never going to use 50 pounds of oatmeal at once, unless I'm trying to feed an army, which I'm not. I don't want to have to go back through the process of re-heat sealing the mylar, and if it's a disaster scenario, I might not have electricity to seal it and then I'll have to eat oatmeal for every single meal so it doesn't go to waste. No thanks.
If you buy dehydrated items from any reputable seller and they come in #10 cans, you do not have to re-package them. Just store the #10 cans in a cool, dry place and they should be good for as long as the manufacturer says they will be. Also good to mention is that if you're going to store food for the long term in 5 gallon buckets, make sure they are food grade (HDPE 2). Always wash the buckets before you use them, whether or not you're using a mylar bag inside of them. I have heard some people say that you do not need to use Food Grade buckets to store food in IF you are lining said bucket with a mylar bag. In theory, it's true, the mylar will protect your food from anything that's seeped into a non-food grade bucket, heat, sun, light, bugs, etc. HOWEVER, I believe, better safe than sorry! I also believe that it's a good idea to make sure that the bucket is colored, or if it's white, that it's a very thick white, not a translucent white. You do not want light getting into your preps...ever, as long as you can help it.
Water Storage - What's Safe
If you're going to buy a lot of dehydrated food, you're going to need a lot of water to cook it, so keep this in mind when you start planning how much water you need to save up. The general rule of thumb is 1 gallon of water/person/day (per person, per day). This is just for drinking though. Really sit down and think about how much we use water on an every day basis. We take it for granted because right now we can get it from bottles, or the faucet and not even consider where we'd be without it. And I can not stress this enough - THERE IS NO LIMIT TO THE AMOUNT OF WATER YOU SHOULD STORE. You can live for weeks without food, but you'll be dead in 3 days without water. Dehydration is a bad way to go, and it's slow and painful so make sure that you have plenty stocked.
Keep in mind that you are not only going to need water for drinking, but also for the following:
- Washing clothes
- Taking baths
- Washing dishes (unless you're using paper plates)
- Washing pots and pans you use to cook
- Flushing toilets
- Watering your garden
- Brushing your teeth
- Cleaning wounds/scrapes
- Possibly putting out a fire
- Cleaning your home or area you're living in
Grey Water is the used water from washing your dishes, or taking a bath. It's basically water that can be recycled for other things. You can use old water from washing your clothes to flush toilets. You can use old water from cooking to water your garden, as long as the water doesn't contain anything that could kill your plants.
Fresh or Purified Water is the water that you have boiled or purified for drinking, cooking, or taking a bath, washing clothes and dishes etc. There are a few different ways you can purify water.
Bleach is a great way to purify water. Make sure you're using regular 5-6% chlorine bleach. Not any of that fru-fru smelly perfumed stuff. The only other suitable option for purifying water is boiling it. You don't need to boil water for 5 minutes, like some people say. Just heat it to a rolling boil and then it's ready to consume. Obviously you'll want to let boiled water cool first, and if it has a flat taste to it, just aerate it by shaking it up or pouring it in between 2 clean cups a few times. It'll put oxygen back into the water and will make it taste better. Below is a table you can use for water purification:
If you're getting your water from a well follow the column for treating cloudy water. Better safe than sorry. Once you've added the bleach to your water, let it sit for 30 minutes without touching it. Smell the water and see if you can slightly smell the bleach/chlorine, if not repeat the steps listed above in the reference table and let it sit for 30 more minutes. Boiling water is really the best way. Personally, I'd boil it, then filter it through a Katadyn or Berkey filter if I needed drinking water and was out. This information is mainly for water obtained after a disaster happened and you have no way to tell if even the water from your faucet is safe for consumption. If you're a good little prepper, you should already have water stored. If you store the water now, all you have to do is rotate it every 6 months. Fill it up from your tap and store it in a sterilized (bleach washed and really well rinsed) container and dump it out every 6 months and repeat the process.
When you are looking for ways to store your water, do not use milk jugs, or jugs that have had juice in them. Old 2 liter bottles are okay, but if you're looking for a really long storage time you need to get something that looks like this:
Always make sure that you do not sit these containers directly on concrete. If you're going to be storing water in containers you always want to place them off the ground on a wood palette or some wooden boards thrown together. If you choose to save water in huge 55 gallon drums, then you need a way to pump the water out of the drums.
In prepping always remember the rule of redundancy - 3 is 2, 2 is 1 and 1 is none. Always have a back up for your back up. Stocking up this much food and water may seem like a lot of work, and it can be. But you need to remember that you are preparing for a possible uncertain time and by doing the work now, you'll have to work a lot less later. Besides, if disaster strikes there's going to be enough on your mind, why should what your family is going to eat and drink to survive be on that list? It shouldn't.
PC
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