Emergency Preparedness

I, like many of you have been on a kick lately. With the economy, things have been tight for us. I am really excited though when I can buy things for our emergency preparedness. Food storage, misc. items, water, 72 hr. kit stuff ect. I call it all emergency preparedness and for the purpose of saving on time in this post I will refer to it as EP. I have been studying EP and what we need and the best way to go about it ect. lately. It's a long way to go but as I work on it little by little, week by week, I feel good about it. That's all I can do and if I do all I can do the Lord gives me the good feeling like I am safe and I am prepared even if I am not done yet. My EP money has to come out of our food budget. I have decided to buy at least one case of water every time we go to the store (which is once a week) So we will collect 4 cases of water per month at the very least. So, in one years time, the very least amount of water cases we would have is 48. We will also buy gallons for 72 hr. kits and for cleaning, washing hands, brushing teeth...reasons like those for other than drinking. You can get about 5 gallons of water for 3 bucks. Not bad. Also I have decided to start buying what is available in bigger or bulk sizes from places like Costco, Sam's club, Smart & Final, and Walmart. That way you don't just have what you need for a week or so per say, but you have enough to last you a good while. I'm hoping to kind of use that idea for building our 3 month supply of food "that your family eats on a regular basis" - from what they've said the order of importance is as follows. 1st - 3 month supply of foods 2nd - water supply 3rd - money/savings 4th - 1 year supply of food

So this week I bought my case of water

And my bulk item. This week - pancake mix. The bulk syrup I bought a few weeks ago.

So, for the water and 2 bulk items, I spent about 15 dollars of my food budget, totally doable.

Our house is pretty small, 1300 sq. feet and no storage space. The kids stuff and baby gear take up their closets. We have one family closet that is stuffed because it is our storage, linen, craft ect closet. We even use our attic to store stuff and we put what we can in the garage. Oh yeah and we have no kitchen pantry. I have thought about EP and my house not mixing well, but it isn't going to stop me. I'll put what I can under beds. I've even thought about when Phoenix is a little older, putting the boys together in Marce's room so that I can have the other room be the baby and EP room. Get some more of those shelves we put in the garage and put them in that room so I can shelf all our water and Food and EP stuff. I would just have to put a door locker on the door so the kids couldn't get in there and when I had the next baby, they'd only sleep and nap in the crib in there. The only things in there now are a crib, a rocker, and a small wooden high chair. There's plenty of room to have a wall full of shelves. Phoenix would share with the EP stuff til I had my third and needed the crib for a baby.

I have a good paper on 72 hr. kits, and I'll be working on these now too. I will be putting the survival stuff in these backpacks...

and other stuff that would be good but is not needed to survive will go into a plastic bin.

On the side of my blog I have decided to post the items I collect each week. I won't do it for this week since the pictures are up above. I still am going to bottle butter like many of you but I think I will wait til after the New Year.

I was telling Sharrid that of course I don't know but as I imagine the last days. I see us all camping, permanately. I see us all with backpacks and whatever we can haul, heading somewhere, somewhere for food, water, maybe shelter, or safer weather. We always talk about the pioneers and how "we couldn't do that" "we have our own trials",...well, we might just end up doing exactly that, walking, hauling across the desert, pitching tents, cooking outdoors. As expensive as gas is now, I don't think it will really matter in the last days...

Brigham Young said that someday, any amount of money will not be more valuable than a bushel of wheat. Obviously it isn't true today...but someday it will be. Let's get going and be prepared!