After 4 years of prepping, I am pleased to have come across this useful site. I have already benefited by just quickly scanning down the page even though I have sizable stocks. There seems to be always something new to learn and I know I have made mistakes with some of my purchases. One tip from a US prepper was to freeze any bread flour for 48 hours in a plastic bag to kill any weevils that are naturally in there. One such was recently opened some 18 months past sell-by date and was fine. Another, not frozen, had little crawlies in it – not welcome if a vegetarian like me. Lol.
I have built my food store behind a 2 ft false wall (with anonymous lift-out door panel each end) at the back end of my 20 ft external garage making it very difficult to spot. All internal garage/store walls have 1″/25mm builders’ foil-coated insulation boards fitted. All sealed off with tape, 12″ steel shelving and some lighting finishes it off. Like having our own little supermarket at hand – it’s great if you run out. My worst mistake is to have initially bought too much of some items, like pasta sticks, which we can’t get through fast enough although it should last a long time. I have just had it stand as stored instead of continually using and replacing. Still, I expect to waste little and intend to do some catching up.
Although I started off with a full spreadsheet (never used before) where I recorded all items purchased, ref number (marked on food). where/when bought, price, weight/size, cost, sell/use by date, etc, it does get a little too complicated (my wife says I always make things hard work!) and I do find it a hard discipline to record/replace items that I `pinch’ – but I am getting better at it.
I also stock useful, tradable items like whiskey, rum, brandy, etc, (I can always use them 🙂 and toilet rolls! A generator, 2 jerry cans of petrol, an 80w solar panel/leisure battery (for my caravan) completes my precautions. I would like to sort out some water filtration system next although we have an abundance of rain water (and local stone ground water horse trough) here in NW UK.
I do feel I have been spiritually guided to take these steps (also converting devaluing, soon-to-be-made-obsolete cash into precious metals, as a Stacker) and I have rekindled my lapsed Christian faith as a result. My BIG number one problem is that other friends and family (who, at 70, I would give my life for) are not on board, will not bother, yet I know who they would come running to come SHTF time!
A difficult one as you cannot support everyone close to you – just do the best you can. There is the theft threat and I like the duplicated store idea.
Glad to have joined the UK community of like-minded people. Cheers.
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