Ok, so finally we are going to start prepping in truth. We are going to start collecting food stores. Yay! I am so excited that finally, husband is on board with this, I have a plan, and we are going to join the few people in the World that might survive the End of it. I am super stoked and so empowered! To be finally doing something to take control of my fears, and feel that there is hope. And, prepping is cool. Kinda Bad-ass.
I know it’s super easy to get overwhelmed. People that begin to even consider prepping often get so overwhelmed at all the stuff they need to get/learn/do that they quit before they start. They read a little bit, maybe watch some TV shows, read a bit more, research, plan, start, get overwhelmed, freak out! And quit. The urgency fades, and they convince themselves over time that nothing is going to happen anyway. All those prepper dudes are nuts in tin foil hats. True fact, this I know. I’ve started prepping at least 20 times.
But that won’t happen to me!! Because I have done my research. I am aware.
(Super proud, slightly smug, self-satisfied smirk)
I know to take stock of what I have in my home already…and yes ’tis true! I, Average Person in Urban Setting, indeed have less than a week’s worth of food on hand. (Unless you count crusty old rice noodles that have been kicking around since we went LCHF, canned water chestnuts that I still fully intend to wrap in bacon someday, freezer burned chicken wings, almond flour, and peppermint extract. (Why do I have peppermint extract? ) You get the point. I have some shit in my pantry that I am not yet hungry enough to count as food, but I cannot toss it. So I need more food. Government websites, Red Cross, all those guys all say keep 72 hours of food on hand in the event of an emergency. Three days?? Picture your family trapped inside your home, inside a city literally encased in ice… and
WHAT IF YOUR BUG OUT VEHICLE LOOKS LIKE THIS??!!
NOPE, not going to Safeway anytime soon.
OK, so yes I know what I have, and that it is woefully inadequate. Check.
What is LCHF you say? More on that here, but let me first say this about it… Sven lost 70 pounds eating this way, and IT WAS EASY for him. In fact, he’s still eating this way and intends to for the rest of his life. LCHF INFO
Back to my Story.
I know to not try and do it all at once. I am going to just buy a little bit extra when I’m at the grocery store, and stash it away. Rather than try to find room in my budget to buy three months groceries in one shot, and then not use it?! Nay nay. Can’t afford that. I will skim a little bit off the top here and there, and set it aside. I won’t even notice the extra spending if I just pace it out. Before I know it, my stash will feed my family for an extra week, then a month, 6 months. I’m gonna have the best damn pantry the North has ever seen!! Check.
I know to look for stuff on sale. Actually look at the weekly flyers instead of lining my garbage bin with them. When it’s a good sale, buy two. One for now, one for shelf. When it’s a great sale, buy three… two for shelf. Check.
I know to buy bulk whenever I can. (Think 10 pound bags of sugar, not 5s) One of these days, when I am ready to make a full-on-loaded-for-bear commitment to my End of World Food Store, I will sign up for Amazon’s Subscribe & Save thing. It sounds like an awesome idea! You pick a product (think toilet paper, baby wipes, laundry detergent) and track your usage. Once you know how much you go through in a months’ time, you sign up and buy it at Amazon. (Price compare, truly you can save some money) And if you buy five or more products, they pay the shipping! This is my goal, to get into this before the end of my first year prepping. First I need to know my usage, so I don’t overestimate and end up buried in football field of ass-wipe. Fine line between prepping and hoarding, yes? Buy bulk. Check.
There is a ton more to it of course, but this is a story about being organized, not about how to get started. I trust I have sufficiently illustrated my mind set at the time that I began to store food; I was pretty stoked.
The very first thing that I bought with full intention of not using until the End of Days was honey. Raw, unpasteurized, farm fresh honey. I love honey. I could digress right here for another thousand words about the benefit of honey, but that’s another post. This honey I bought in a sealed plastic 5 pound tub for $20. Perfect!!! In fact I bought two. One to use, one to store.
That same weekend I found peanut butter on sale. Doesn’t have as long of a shelf life as honey, of course, but I LOVE peanut butter. It was on sale at Sobeys (rare thing) for $3.97. Customer limit of three, I bought three. One to use, two to store. Whoot!!! I am TOTALLY on my way to building my End of World Food Store!!!
Wait a minute. Where am I going to put it??? I’ve been learning recently about how to build a food store, and I’ve got a lot of very useful information rattling around in my head. Things to consider…. Where in your house are you actually going to store 3 months of food? (How many months’ worth are you actually planning on storing? A vaguely gray cloud settles over the planning section in my brain, the part where I wonder how long term is the Apocalypse going to be?) Dear Husband and I discussed this issue some, and he suggested the storage section under the stairs. If you’ve ever lived in a bi-level home, you’ll know that only Hobbits cheerfully go into that storage space. So then I think maybe I can grab that extra shelf out of the garage and put in my home gym somewhere? (Yup, the gym I’m hardly ever in). But I think no, it’d just be out there in Plain Sight! If Bad Guys broke into my home to loot my stuff, they’d find all my food pretty damn easy. How about if I stash it in my garage?
Quick ‘n’ Dirty Tip: Put your food stashes in Rubbermaid tote bins, or plain cardboard boxes, and mark them like stuff you keep in storage; Christmas Decorations, Grandpa’s Stuff, Kids Toys, whatever. They’ll think Grandpa is dearly departed, and the kids are grown. It’s the old Hide in Plain Sight trick, and quite brilliant, actually. One caveat though, for us Canadians. A good chunk of my storage space is in my unheated garage. So the only preps that I can store out there are freeze dried or some other type of food that can be frozen solid for 3 months of the year, and suffer no harm from being thawed again.
Ok so the garage is out. I cannot imagine honey or peanut butter would wear under the elements all that well.
So Where? Where?! Am I going to put this stuff???
Fellow Preppers and Patriots, let me tell you… that question trashed my whole weekend. I started out so excited to be actually building my food store….but by the end of the weekend I was a wreck. I didn’t have an active plan as to where to store the stuff in my house. Here I was, this awesome smart lucky person who was getting her shit together, getting ready to face the End of the World! I was joining the ranks of the few that are going to inherit the Earth. I was leaving behind my blinders, shedding my naiveté, getting rid of my Sheeple persona, and Taking Action!
All kidding aside, the thought of the grid-down, social collapse scares the shit out of me; always has. I am terrified of what will happen, of my family being in danger, and me not being strong enough to protect my family, my kids. So to finally be taking control, doing something, (anything) was a great thing for me. It made me feel less scared. Sure, doubt creeps in sometimes, a lot of times. But the act of doing – prepping – helps me keep that at bay.
I literally lost sleep that weekend because I felt unprepared to start prepping. I bickered with Poor Sven over stupid trivial stuff because I didn’t want to tell him what was really bothering me. I felt like a total loser because I could not figure out where in my stupid house I was going to keep my End of the World Store. By Monday morning, back to the daily grind of work again, I was about ready to quit prepping altogether (again). There wasn’t anything I could do anyway, if the world ended. I’d just be prolonging the inevitable. Why should I wreck the normal life that I have now? Worrying about an End that’ll probably never come anyway.
It hit me on the way home. If Shit Hit the Fan right now, here and today…I. have. Honey. And I. have. Peanut butter.
So I don’t have it hidden under floorboards, behind a false wall, or some clever prepping construct. Point is, I have it. I spent all that time worrying about where I was going to stash my little Food Store, when I should have been planning how I was going to increase it! What happened is that I was trying to do the whole plan,
and say, yes! I am done. I am Prepared. I have all my stuff organized and in place and if the world ends, I’ll be ready.
Truth is, I will probably never be ready. So I might as well just chill, and do what I can, when I can. Yes, it’s good – very good – to be organized and know what you have, and where it is. You really don’t want to be scrambling around through your stuff (hoard) looking for that jumbo can of beans you just KNOW you have SOMEWHERE, when you have ten hungry family members under your roof.
First things first, GET THE FOOD. It’ll probably end up finding its’ own place.
Prepare up to a point, but don’t MISS the point.
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