Storing supplies

[Molly MaloneParticipant]

I once had the opportunity to talk with someone who was a senior FEMA official during the Clinton administration. At one point I asked her, “Why is it that if someone stores disaster supplies for 3 days, they’re considered a good citizen, but if they store supplies for 6 months or a year, they’re considered crazy?” She said she didn’t consider people who stored 6 months of supplies to be crazy, however, she suspected that if FEMA officials were to recommend that, they would be derided as “tone-deaf,” “out of touch,” or worse (racist, classist). In other words, critics would cite a variety of statistics about poverty in America, “and here’s tone-deaf, out-of-touch FEMA telling folks to store 6 months of food! FEMA must think everyone’s rich!”

So perhaps this is one explanation for why the “official” recommendations for disaster supplies are so inadequate.

She then asked me, “How much do you have stored?” I said “3 months.” And she said, “Well, if there’s a disaster, I’ll just come to your house.” Yes, she laughed, it was a “joke,” she didn’t know where I lived, but I couldn’t believe she really said that.

[Anonymous]

I started storing before I knew what it was. We were semi-homeless for over a year after loosing an apartment and looking to move into our own place finally. I started buying food even though I didn’t have a home to put it in, stuffed it in boxes under the day bed I was sleeping on. When we moved we were set for everything but meat. I learned to put back and buy extras along the way, eventually it turned into what is now called prepping. Back then it was making sure we had food for everyone when there was no work for 3 out of 5 days because of rain, or inbetween jobs, or fired, or whatever. We have always lived off of one income so I learned to be resourceful fast.

[DaisyKeymaster]

I am so uncomfortable if I don’t have enough food to keep us covered for at least 3 months. And 3 months is slim pickings, too. Anyone who has ever gone without food knows exactly why we do this.

It’s very interesting about FEMA’s philosophy.

[Lee’s homesteadParticipant]

I’ve always had a large supply of food even before my husband helped me plan and organize what we have.
I’m working on keeping track of it so we don’t over buy items. Like today I went to find sugar and I couldn’t find any only flour. So much for planning only goes as far as organized you are.

[Jade JasmineParticipant]

That is interesting that FEMA wouldn’t publicly recommend doing something that is beneficial. We throw away so much food in this country that it is obscene. It’s so sad.

I used to get the ‘I’m coming to your house’ comment from folks, too. We had our foundation inspected some years ago when we bought the house and the guy started the conversation about the results with ‘when the zombie apocalypse comes, I’m coming to your house’. Talk about your awkward moments.

[Anonymous]

I doubt that that’s really FEMA reason for recommending such a low level of supplies. I am leaning toward: “if we recommend too much they might begin to think we are not able to help them and that we are useless.”

The usual government reaction to being accused of not taking care of part of the population is creating a comity, create a new four letter agency in charge of the problem, spend a few billions, make the problem worse.

[HomesteadingMamaParticipant]

I doubt that that’s really FEMA reason for recommending such a low level of supplies. I am leaning toward: “if we recommend too much they might begin to think we are not able to help them and that we are useless.”

I would agree with this. If they gave more realistic recommendations people would realize how very little help the government can actually give. People love the illusion of safety.

[annaravenParticipant]

I was doing an emergency preparedness booth yesterday at a big company and one of the guys responded that he was prepared – he had a gun and ammo so he didn’t need to store water or anything else. I smiled and said “I shoot back.” He left.

[Natty BumppoParticipant]

3 Months? And six months is considered crazy? LMAO…..they don’t have a category to put us in.

[Carl SaganParticipant]

Recently consolidated almost everything I own and took inventory of what I have.
By myself on minimum rations I have around 75 days worth of food. 30 of those days are in a box for my hikes/ski trips and are as good as I can get in terms of weight/calories/nutrients. Freeze dried meals gotten for free or bargin bin prices, long shelf life chocolate, dried fruit, jerky, nuts, peanut butter etc. The other 45 days are less glamorous; boxes of pasta, a 5kg sack of rice, canned crushed tomatoes, beans, bottles of olive and rapeseed oil, flour, oats. Was the last person at my school this past summer and there was a LOT of food left behind once everyone moved out, grabbed as much as I could but didn’t have the space for more than 1/4 of what was there. Keep everything in big plastic bins on a shelf in my storage.

In the station I work at there is a free hiker box for food/stove gas/consumables where people leave left over supplies from hikes or if they send a box with stuff and they can’t carry it all. When it starts getting full we have to empty it out partly or it becomes a real mess when people go through it to take a look. Collected quite a few iso-butane gas containers, 8 full and 10 1/2 to 3/4 full. Got a nice mixed variety of foods too; freeze dried meals from different countries, drink mix powders, rice, oats, chocolate, instant porridge etc.

The supply room of the station has a huge amount of consumables, if just the staff (4 employees in the winter 6 in the summer) was to live on what was in there after the big delivery at the start of the season, we could last somewhere around 5 months assuming there were no guests when SHTF and no one showed up afterwards (doubtful). Supplement with good fishing in the nearby lake, a huge wealth of berries in the summer, hares, reindeer and moose in the area; I’d prefer my job site to any other places where I’m welcome if SHTF.

[MartaParticipant]

I have enough for normal meals for about 3-4 months but enough wheat, yeast, oil, sugar, rice, and beans for a year. We have a big pool so we have water (and a berkey) but considering evaporation I’m not sure how long it would last.

[WhirlibirdParticipant]

Personally I am uncomfortable with the quantity of storage that we have right now.

But thanks to a change of finances, I will finally be able to get back to work on this once I catch up on a couple of things.

Part of the problem is that a month of food for a normal person isn’t much when you divide it out, four or more times becomes a challenge.

[xtron jonesParticipant]

seven years ago I started prepping because of a possible layoff. I wanted to be able to pay the bills, and still eat, so I built a buffer. after the layoff didn’t happen, I kept adding to the supply. the wife asked several times why and resisted the expense. after a year or so, we lost power for over a week. I broke out the camp lantern and stove and fixed hot meals from the prepps. I also asked her to think about what would happen if the situation went on for months, or even years. she got on board, and now we have enough stored, both short term and long term, to feed, without food boredom, 6 people for just over one year.
it takes time and dedication but if you keep at it, a little each week, you can get there.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by  xtron jones.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by  xtron jones.

[LNsGirlParticipant]

My mother grew up during the depression and always bought up extras for hard times. I did the same as soon as I was able to. We have quite a bit of stored foods. I have vacuumed packed jars of flour. A 5 gallon bucket of sugar, and much more. Rice, beans of different kinds. Some of the beans are older, and tougher, but those, I cook in the pressure cooker, Afrer soaking, of course. You can’t tell the difference. I love prepping. Now I need to work on hubby and water storage. We do have a small still for distilling water.

[Preppy SquirrelParticipant]

Keeping things rotated is the hardest part.  Overtime I have learned a few tricks that keep my stuff rotated.

I label most cans and boxes with a sharpie.  Do this once every couple weeks while listening to music or a boom on tape.

I take one section of pantry, rotate label and make a note of what is needed to top it off.  I also take any odd items or things that might be a little aging and put them in a box.

I no longer keep a row for everything we have too many items.  I have boxes for categories.  I have a box for spices, I can take it down, rotate, label, make my list etc then put it back on shelf.  This keeps me from knocking over a million items to get to one or breaking and  losing them if they fall etc.

I have a box with Hispanic items another for Asian, another for Mediterranean etc.

 

There is a box for oral hygiene, one for OTC pills another for bandages etc. This makes it easy to overview and rotate and list make.  I have a focus area each time I market.

 

In the mean time I buy up buy one get one free items and the like then put them on the shelves.  These get labeled later unless I get a huge amount at once.

We have category tags on shelf fronts.  Tomatoes products, condiments, oral hygiene, oil, this makes it easier for the night forages to find things when half awake and prevents things from being randomly placed.

[LittlesisterParticipant]

I to have been prepping for a long time. We had a couple of times a few years ago when son in law was laid off. They had to get food from us to feed them and the kids. That happened twice for them. They are doing great now but I still keep the preps up. I have about 80 to 100 #10 cans of freeze dried foods and seed banks. I also can my own food from garden and buy meat when I can get really good sales and can it. The #10 cans we got lucky as a place was going out of business and we got some really good deals. I still watch for some deals on that. It will come in handy one day is it is 25 to 30 year foods. Hubby is 81 years old now and I can’t keep the garden going by myself. So will soon be getting daughter and son in law over to help when they can. The long term foods will come in handy one day as I may have to hit the farms to buy fresh veggies for a while if he can’t do the garden any longer. I dehydrate a lot of foods as well. We have maybe 8 months to a year of food for us and our family.

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