Let’s start with water. Everyone needs water to survive.
What will happen if for some reason your area’s water supply gets contaminated
or the water line breaks?
You need to store 2
weeks of water for each person. If you have animals, please consider them in
your planning. Again, you will want 2
liters of water per person per day. Also, you will want cleaning water. You have
to clean the dishes or do your laundry.
I clean my house with vinegar and so when the bottle is all empty I fill
the vinegar bottle up with water from the tap. Also, all of your laundry
detergent bottles can be refilled with water. Just make sure you label
everything. You will need to dump your water at least once a year.
Along with water you will want to start learning how to
garden, if you don’t already know how. I knew nothing about gardening until I
started reading and going to events where they talked about how to garden.
Again, I was overwhelmed because I lived in a desert with poor soil. All of the gardening books that I found were
focusing on areas to the east of me. I did find one and started reading.
So…educate yourself and start. It doesn’t have to be a big garden. If you have
no space you can do container gardening.
I found this idea from here.
With gardening you will also need seeds. Buy Non Hybrid
seeds. Why? It has better nutritional
value and you can use the seeds from the produce.
If there happens to
be some sort of crisis at your place. It
could be food shortage or maybe a job loss. You will want the basics to be
covered for your family.
3 Month Supply
You will want a 3 month supply on foods that you normally
eat and that are easy to make because it will take you about 3 months to
convert over to using wheat, beans, rice, and other basics (that our great
grandparents did). Plus, sometimes it’s
just nice to have a quick meal to eat.
Start by making a one week menu for your family. List out
all of the ingredients that you will need. I made sure that mine were shelf
stable, meaning that they can stay in the pantry for months at a time.
Here is an idea of what my week's worth of food looks like. Breakfast: Cereal, Pancakes, Waffles, Biscuits and Gravy, Oatmeal, and Muffins.
Lunch: Tuna, Peanut Butter & Jelly, Mac & Cheese, Grilled Cheese, Sloppy Joes, Burritos and Hawaiian Chicken.
Dinner: Tacos, Alfredo, Spaghetti, Gumbo, Meat loaf, Taco Soup, and Potato and Cheese Soup.
Buy that week worth of food. Once you have a week, work on
getting up to a month of food.
Then list out another
week worth of meals, with different dinners and/or lunches. List all of the
ingredients and buy all of those to have another month worth.
Then start over with another weekly menu and purchase it all
for a 3rd month worth of food.
I read somewhere that you should list all the ingredients
out and then when there is a sale at the grocery store you should buy all that
you need. I tried that and my ingredients didn’t go on sale very often and I
felt it was more important to have the food than to save 50 cents.
I also read that your family can live on soups and breads. Think about it. What do you use to make soups? You use broths, beans, rice, vegetables, and a little bit of meat. You need vegetables, protein, and grains. Soups can help you achieve that. All of the ingredients are shelf stable too. Plus there are endless varieties of soups.Another great thing is that beans can help you raise the protein value of your meal. You can grind them up and then put them in your soups.
There are different ways of doing this. I read about one
lady putting all of the ingredients in a zip lock with the recipe. I also saw
mason jar meals. I even bought some just
add water entrees. Whatever makes it easier for you to do food storage, do it.
There isn’t one right way to go.
Here are some websites that have helped me:www.providentliving.org
Here is a great book that I read that also helped me:
Emergency Food Storage & Survival Handbook by Peggy Layton
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