Progress so far

This week was kitchen work and trying to fill in some of the more obvious gaps in our 72 hours bags.  I found a bunch of really nice washcloths at Target for 1$ each on clearance so I bought all of those and washed them to add to our linen closet and 72 hour bags.  Next was an inventory of our pantry for non-perishables.  We have plenty of frozen food for 72 hours but are woefully short on non-perishables.  Next step is organizing and finding some room to rotate and stock some more stuff like jerky, dried fruits, food powders and nuts.  In addition we need to decide how we will pack and rotate our "go" food. First of all we actually have to have enough for 3 days and right now we do not, so food first, packing decisions after that.

It's a bit hard to not go out and just buy everything we need right now but we agreed that we would work this into our regular budget and use the preparedness food as part of our normal diet to keep it as fresh as possible.  Our goal for this coming week is to make a trip to Sams club to stock up on some things (preparedness and our regular household items) and hopefully make some jerky this weekend to start off our once weekly planned food drying schedule.

Doing this really does make you look at things differently, sales become opportunities to stock up on essentials instead of just a way to save money on this weeks groceries.  Buying in bulk becomes more appealing so that there is some to eat and some to store.  Higher fat and protein foods are priority as well as some luxury stuff that we all love. 

We are looking at transforming our "basement" aka junk room since we live in a mobile home LOL. into a preparedness room and making it a much more useful part of the house. Its daunting to go in there but when we all four get working on something it actually goes rather quickly.  This is going to be a process, it seems almost more like a mind-set change than anything else, you keep doing the things you always do but you learn to do them differently with preparedness in mind. 

Still on the agenda: water, power, fuel, home gardening, home defense and vehicle preparedness.  Still a long way to go!