Wednesday - Food Storage

For many years, members of my church have been encouraged to "prepare for adversity in life by having a basic supply of food and water and some money in savings." (All is Safely Gathered In) Back when I was a child, it was recommended that you have a year supply of food. And that recommendation stayed in place until very recently.

In 2007, I decided to finally start my food storage. I was starting from scratch. As in, we could MAYBE live for a week on what we had around. But I figured that I could start small, and anything would be better than what I was doing. I had just managed to acquire a three month supply of canned supplies when the church's new guidelines came out. The main points are 1) Build a three month supply of food that is part of your normal diet. 2) Store drinking water. 3) Establish a financial reserve by saving a little every week and gradually increasing it to a reasonable amount. 4) For longer term needs, store items such as wheat, rice, and beans.

So I had done step one. Now I needed to work on the rest.

And I've done some - I've got some water saved. We have a little bit in savings. I haven't started on longer term needs.

But since I'm a big fan of not reinventing the wheel, when I saw a couple of my friends post about Food Storage Made Simple, I went and checked it out. And I like it. So I'm going through the the babysteps right now. Well, right now, I'm working on Step 1, to be more precise. They do have a planning step before that, which I have already done. If you haven't noticed yet, I'm a great planner. Follow-through, not so good.

I really like that step 1 is shelving because that is the whole reason that I haven't got started on my longer term storage. I've been paralyzed by what to get/make, where to put the stuff after I've cleared the area, how much to buy, etc. But no more. I am going to move the stuff to the garage, and I'm going to buy one plastic shelf. When I get more $$ and more long-term food, I'll get more.