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I've had a breakthrough that will help me

5K views 19 replies 19 participants last post by  lanahi 
#1 ·
Looking at what is needed for a family of 5 for 1 year, it looks impossible. Well, I have decided to go one month at a time and store those wares in my 55 gallon drums. I was looking at 10 drums anyway so, if I make it 12, put 1 month worth of wheat, rice, oats, salt, sugar, etc. in each, it makes it more manageable. Instead of trying to focus on getting a year supply of each item, now I can focus on getting one month supply of each. It'll be easier to rotate this way too I think.

Thoughts?
 
#3 ·
It's always daunting at first! Just make a list and go by the sales, a little at a time. It all adds up. I've been stocking up for five years now and am very happy with my storage, but it pales in comparison to some of the others here. Just remember water! Number one important thing!!
 
#4 ·
Not a bad approach, especially to avoid feeling overwhelmed by it all, but I have one thought about it: It's going to be much more expensive to buy things in small quantities than in bulk if you do it that way.

I'm working toward a year for 4 people so I'm not that far away from you in terms of magnitude of the problem. I went through the same idea (do I pack complete meals in 5-gallon buckets? Or what? Or not?).

It's clear to me that I can't do that w/o breaking the bank, and without taking far longer to complete than if I buy on sale, in bulk, and with storage in mind. Example: The last time I bought O2 absorbers I bought 100 1500cc absorbers for about $36. I bought 25 bucket-sized mylar bags, and 100 gallon-sized mylar bags. It's far cheaper on a per-unit basis to do this, yet if I were only buying to fill one 55-gallon drum at a time, my per-unit cost would skyrocket.

If it were me at your point, I might do a 2-pronged approach: Most of the money I put toward preps I'd put into whatever got me the biggest bang for the buck: Stored wheat, beans, rice, and a lot of it. The media in which to store it. Vitamins. And a mill. Enough, perhaps, that you'd get 4 months or so of not great eating, but survival eating.

Then fill in the holes for those 4 months. More protein. Vegetables. Oils and fats. Dried milk. Yeast. And so on.

Then do it again.

The quandary we all face is related to time: The longer we think it'll go before TSHTF, the more efficient and cost-effective we can be in storing preps.

That is, the longer we can take, the faster we can get to our goal because we can find deals, buy in bulk, get our per-unit costs as low as we can, and thus, we fill our stores more quickly and economically. In other words we get more for our money, which fills our stores faster. It's just not balanced to do it that way, and if TSHTF before we're done, there we are.
 
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#5 ·
Personally I'd be dividing up those supplies into smaller drums/buckets in case mold starts growing inside one of them, or bugs get into the drum, or other contaminates. You'd be safer loosing a 10 gallon drum worth of food than taking the risk eating from a contaminated 55 gallon drum.

Just consider it for the safety of you and your family.
 
#6 ·
We have a total of six people to prep for in our family. I would just like to say God Bless you to everyone who has a large family to prep for. So much to do, so little space. I just wish my husband was a little more supportive/concerned about prepping as I am.

I think that the fact that we know that we need to prep is already a blessing that God is giving us.
 
#7 ·
My breakthrough was basing pantry purchases on menus. I wrote menus for each of 12 weeks using foods we normally eat with no particular situation in mind...as in "things are fine - nothing to see here - move along".

I then made up a master grocery list down to the smallest ingredients like salt & pepper. Using these menus, I can find "trouble" spots. Like with meats, I learned how to pressure can them because we have a small freezer and have no way to store bulk purchases. I also can some vegetables - if I can't find a decent commercially canned variety. ((I rely heavily on canned foods....at least until I can get my gardening skills past the pitiful stage.)) And I learned how to bake bread.

There are some staple items I buy more than is needed for the menus - pasta, rice, beans, etc. And I prefer to package larger purchases into smaller ones - for reasons already mentioned.
 
#9 ·
I never have been one that subscribed to the "massive stockpiling of food" mindset. Stockpile food - yes. But not to the point where rotating your food and keeping track of inventory consumes a lot of your time.

My plans are more like stockpile what you eat, and have normal food rotation. Instead of having 1 or 2 jars of pickles, have 3 jars. Instead of having 2 or 3 cans of ravioli, have 4 or 5. Instead of having 10 pounds of rice, have 30 pounds.

On top of that, I keep a nice stockpile of seeds for gardening.

I would rather have 4 - 6 months of food stockpiled, and enough seeds for 2 or 3 years worth of gardens, and that stockpile requires little rotation. Then to stockpile 12 months of food, and have to dedicate a lot of time and effort into keeping that food rotated.
 
#13 ·
I did a lot of research on the core essentials for one person to survive.
beprepared.com has extremely good prices which include shipping costs.
I got 415lbs of grains/beans+sugar+powdered milk which equaled almost 2600 calories a day for about $800 including a hand mill.

This stuff will store for over 30 YEARS. No rotation required.
Buy it and forget it. Simple. Done.
They do all the packing with mylar, O2 absorbers and food grade 6 gallon buckets.

$800 over 30 years is only $27 a year. Thats CHEAP insurance for a full one year supply of food.

If you dont have $800 per adult on hand, just buy some every month until you got your 1 year supply.
 
#14 ·
Buy it and forget it. Simple. Done.
They do all the packing with mylar, O2 absorbers and food grade 6 gallon buckets.
Faceman has the right idea. It's cheap & easy. I bought various wheat & beans and other items in their 6 gallon superpails to last well over 6 months at full rations for my family of 4. Should last 15+ years or more easily and I don't even have to worry about rotating it for at least a decade.

Now I just focus on rotating 6 months of short-term(<3 year expiration) food like cans and such that we eat on a regular basis. Makes prepping for one year + much easier to deal with when you only have to worry about 6 months. ;)

Duke
 
#15 ·
Thoughts on stockpiling food

Hi All. My thoughts on stockpiling are more in line with the way the Mormon's think. They put the stuff in pantries or closets, even under their beds. They also have websites available to help calculate how much a particular sized family needs to put away for a year. Good lists are also available if you search the net for them. This is not a plug for the Mormons religiously speaking, there are many roads that lead to the cross. Nuff said. Their women normally have the chore of rotating their stockpile of food. Not the gent. There are videos on you tube that cover food storage as well as dehydration and canning all within the Mormon genre. I will agree with KEV that the backbone of any group or colony or race will be the ability to garden. Both with the kitchen garden (mostly done by the wife & kids) and the mainstay garden (beans, corn, tators,etc) done by the husband. I know that the existance of people in many third world countries are always based are their ability to garden in hard times.
Stockpiling store bought stuff is easy for most. Even Walmarts is selling canned vegetables for .50 a can now. (Better get it now at that price) Hyper inflation is inevitable for all. Hard part form me anyways are finding good basic living recipes that can be throne together during this period that we are talking about.
Last thoughts: Only things gone up in the last two years are guns, ammo, food, gold, silver, copper, nickel, and gas just recently. Someone is trying to tell everyone something here. It's not whats on TV that we should be concerned about but what they are not saying...comments:)
 
#16 ·
I remember watching a video on YouTube that helped to put things in perspective for me in regard to food storage.

He put small portions of things like, rice, beans, sugar, and salt & spices, etc., into 5 gallon pails that could be used in weekly, monthly portions. His logic was, if they had to grab as many buckets as they could to evac, he wouldn't end up with a mass amout of just one or two food items.

By proportioning out food items for short-term use, you're not resealing bags over & over.

I like the idea and have set a goal for 1 month, then 3 months, then 6, and so on to reach a final goal of one year.

I'm just trying to determine what foods to incorporate into one month pails (if possible).

Things like, sugar, salt, coffee...seem rather simple to proportion.

Canned foods and the like will be easy to figure out or manage, imo.

Estimating how much beans, rice, flour or oats we'd run through in a month is another. How much rice & beans, oats, etc., would a family of 4 use daily, weekly, or monthly; that's the question for me.

I can get 5 &7 gal. food pails from work.
 
#17 ·
i like the variety in each bucket idea. until now i was planning on buckets of one thing only. but the idea of having to leave the house in a hurry would leave me screwed. i will have to sit down and figure out what to put in each and go from there.

i would start with a 1/3 rice, a 1/3 wheat, and the rest little bits of spices, maybe put short term cans on top so you can rotate them out easily. this way you can grab one bucket and have the main food, and some canned veggies/fruits to supplement it. if i had to i could live on rice, bread and veggies. would suck but would also survive.
 
#19 ·
When it comes to food stockpiling (assuming a long-term scenerio before services are restored, if ever), I try to keep a couple of things in mind:
1. You've got to have something to eat while you're gardening and during the off season.

2. You've got to have ways to preserve your food for the next year. For meats, drying, smoking, and pressure canning. For fruits, drying and canning with both sugars and acids. For vegetables, drying, pickling, and pressure canning. These are some of the most common practices.

The stockpile then needs to reflect deficiencies in the above. With respect to point 1, what is not being represented in your garden? Are you only growing fruits and vegetables? Those are awesome for vitamins and general nutrition, but what about grains (wheat, dent/pop corn, rice, etc.) or beans (pinto, red, blackeye, etc.)? How will you get plenty of carbs to keep working? With respect to point 2, do you have supplies to store your harvest? Containers (plastic and glass), salt, vinegar, sugar, etc. will be needed for storage.

So, a stockpile of things that are relatively cheap and readily attainable at the moment is something everyone should consider. If packed properly with mylar and O2 absorbers, almost all of this stuff will last 20+ years (much longer than canned goods and MRE's), allowing for rotation schedules based on the longer time scale. How many of us are practicing growing enough rice or wheat for a family or making our own vinegar or sugar (honey included)? It's harder than it looks. I'd rather spend a little now on the things I eat, that will store for a long time, than be without (even for a short-term scenerio). We often take much of these things for granted. Start small and build.
 
#20 ·
http://beprepared.com/article.asp?ai=608&sid=sboardsn&bhcd2=1289988704
Here is a good Emergency Essentials calculator, although they concentrate mainly on #10 cans and super pails. But it gives you 2000 calories a day times number of people for a year and includes nutrition information such as protein, fats, calcium, vitamin C, etc. There is a place to add your own canned goods to the list. By entering what you have, it calculates the number of days it can feed the specified number of people at 2000 calories a day.
The LDS has the best prices and free shipping. Also you can get grain inexpensively locally at feed stores, such as corn, oats, wheat, etc.

DoubleJ, your system should work good. As one poster commented, if you had time to grab only a few buckets on your way to quickly bugging out, you would get a variety too instead of one item.
 
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