My food storage tips.

So, our ward is doing a push on Food Storage this year.


I know, food storage - kind of an overwhelming huge project that most of us probably don't ever expect to have complete in our lifetime.

Why do we find it so overwhelming? I have NO idea! Gathering is cheap, easy, and convenient. Lets break this down and analyze it together.

1. Grains needed for our family (for a year) - a mere 2400 pounds. Legumes (which we just LOVE to eat - "beans beans the magical fruit" who doesn't love magic?) an additional 480 pounds.
Now people, is that too much for me to gather? Of course not! Not only can I gather, but I can STORE that much rice, wheat, and oats easily! Here's how...

• Create all your furniture out of food storage. After all, my guests won't mind sitting on a bucket instead of a chair. I mean, come on! Isn't it being a little too picky to complain that our table is actually a board balanced on top of 4 50 gallon buckets? If you want a counter height table, just stack the buckets double height - so that would be 8 per table instead.

• Who cares if our pillows and couch cushions are stuffed with rice and beans. I purposefully don't want to create a not so comfy environment because after all, we don't want people to think they can actually sit and stay for awhile. With wheat to grind, who has time for a social life anyway? Plus if a disaster happened and there were people over, we would be EXPECTED to share and we only have a 12 month supply for us. There is none to spare!
  

• To make things easier, lets just calculate for a moment how much 2400 pounds of grains are for us. Lets say we get everything in 50 pound buckets. (because the buckets will be doubling as chairs and tables and bed frames so it is convenient that way). That is only 48 buckets. Add another 10 for the legumes and that means each person must have 6 buckets in their room (there's 30), 9 in the living room, 9 in the family room, one in each bathroom (lets see that gets us up to 50), And the last 10 buckets can be used in the kitchen. See, look how easy!
  

2. Water requirements. We have been told we need at the bare minimum a 2 week water supply. FEMA advises a gallon per person per day MINIMUM. 8 times 14 - that's 112 gallons of water. We've decided that diversifying our water containers make it easier to store so much. We have one big blue 50 gallon container in the front yard, and then will either store 130, 418 water bottles or buy 35 boxes of water to store in each person's closet. Important things to note:

• You must recycle or empty out your big water storage once a year. Easy! Just store your barrel in the basement (not on concrete or they say your water will taste like concrete) and then when that yearly mark comes along, get a hand pump, and a couple pans. Pump water into the pans and have your kids take their pans upstairs, through the kitchen and carefully pour all the water in the garden and go back down for more. I figure if we get 1/2 gallon in each pan, that would only be 224 trips up stairs. If it takes 20 pumps to pump a half gallon of water, then that means you would only have to pump 4480 pumps.
  

• Make sure you dump lots of chlorine in your water container. Most people do this with bleach. And using lemon scented bleach will NOT create a fresh lemon tasting water. Mountain Spring scented bleach will NOT make your water taste like it came from a mountain spring. You want the basic plain bleach. If you want your water to taste like anything, you want it to taste like a swimming pool. Doesn't the smell of pool water just make you want to jump in and take a drink when you go swimming?

3. Now lets talk fruit and veggies. 12 months is no big deal. Here's what I suggest.

• During your next case lot sale, borrow your neighbor's suburban and trailer and just sit out by the trucking dock of your grocery store. As the truck backs in, just instruct the workers to load all the cans of food into your vehicle and trailer. If you do this every evening when the store receives its next shipment, you should get your requirement in no time.

• Don't forget to garden and can everything in your backyard. Dandelions make excellent stew. Don't bother washing your fruit and veggies before bottling them. You will be glad there is a bug here and there because it will give you extra protein.

4. Sugars - the best advice I can give:

• Get LOTS! And when you think you have enough, get more. Can you ever have enough sugar? I think not! How else are you going to get those beans to taste good?

• Become a bee keeper. That way you will have bees on hand and they will have fresh honey for you whenever you get a hankering...
  

5. Cleaning supplies, clothing, toiletries.

• Well, I hear toilet paper makes good blankets if you get the 'quilted' kind. That way you can make your kids blankets with it, stuffed with it instead of batting. And when the need comes, all the kid needs to do is rip a piece of blanket off or use a corner - whatever is convenient. You never have to wash the blanket either. Very handy indeed.

• You can also glue TP or paper towels together to make clothing. Again, the convenience is priceless. Plus it kills 2 birds with one stone. You don't have to do laundry so you can cut back on your laundry soap. Two great benefits! Your kids won't grow out of the clothing before it is used anyway. My experience is my kids wipe their noses and mouths on their sleeves regardless of what they are wearing. Might as well make it okay to do.
  

As you can see, gathering a years supply is not as overwhelming a task as it may seem. We can do it! If you set aside a meager $1200 dollars a month and follow my sound advice, you will have a house full of food storage items in no time at all! It may not have room for people or anything else, but you will have your food storage!


p.s. Some people think you have to actually use the food you are storing. This is impossible since if you are USING the food you'll never get your supply up. They call this rotating your food storage. Don't get caught up in their scam. Rotating it REALLY means, turning the can a quarter of a turn every couple decades. Stamp the date you last rotated it and you'll be just fine!

p.p.s. Make sure you have a gun so that if you forgot to store something, you can still get it from someone else.