Loving It!

I wrote this on my other blog, but it fit too perfectly here, so if you read me elsewhere, you may have already seen this. I love it THAT much!

image: http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net

I ran across "Food Storage Made Easy" a long time ago. They would send me emails frequently telling me which step I should do next, and I, being the rebellious soul that I was (and am--but I'm working on it), would just delete them--nothing done.

 For about a week now, though, I've been working with their 3 month supply worksheet. You can find it here--go to the link they have set up to find the spreadsheet. It's AMAZING!

 You figure out and type in the names of the recipes you'd make each day for a month (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks) across the top. Down the left-hand column, you type in the ingredients you would use to make the recipes you've put in and how much of each thing you'd need under each recipe.

 I have also set up hyperlinks to the recipes I will use, so all I have to do is click on the name of the recipe, and it takes me right to it. Lovely!

image: preparednotscared.blogspot.com

When all is said and done, they figure out how much of each item I need for one month and for three. I can put in the price and size of an item, and it will tell me how much I will be paying for a three-month supply of that item. No guess work left to the process.

 Oh, I can also type in how much of something I have on hand, and it will tell me how many I still need to buy. Voila! Inventory not a stressor anymore. Love it!

If you're working on getting your food storage set up, this is definitely the best way I've seen to get it going. Check it out.

Should I, or Should I Not?

I went to see my sister-in-law yesterday to check out the Shelf Reliance program. It was fascinating! My sister-in-law used the products to make us chicken noodle soup and chicken salad sandwiches. They were both SO good.

Looking at the products, I was so impressed--cheese, eggs, two kinds of milk--one for cooking, one for drinking, and even dehydrated yogurt. Really?! I have to admit I'm not very well-versed in dehydrated food, but this was amazing to me. It opens a whole new reality to food storage!

I went ahead and signed up. These are many of the things I know our family will lack in food storage. She told me that anything you can buy at the dry pack is better to get there because it's so much cheaper, so I'll keep buying my milk through them as well as rice, onions, flour, sugar, etc. I like the fact that when I buy these items from the dry pack, they'll last for 30 years. That's one of the big sales points for me with Shelf Reliance too. Their items don't last as long, but after they've been open, most will last a year to 18 months. I mean, if I'm going to buy food for storage, I want it to be able to last for awhile.

I went ahead and signed up for the program. By late afternoon, I received an email telling me that I was in their computer system, so I went and checked it out. Wow! I was so impressed with the site. The one thing I wasn't impressed with, though, was the prices. YIKES!

I have to keep reminding myself that in a time of being without, without these items, we really would be without, so is it worth is to me? Yes. When I think of how much easier it will be to cook with sour cream and cheese and be able to keep my family happy in the long run, yes.

I used to watch "The Biggest Loser" on Netflix. I only really watched when I was folding laundry or doing dishes, but one day I went to turn it on and found that it was no longer stream-able--you now have to order the discs. BUMMER! But, last night, while folding laundry, I found that "Extreme Couponing" is now an option. Watch out!

I used to extreme coupon--to a degree. I did the stock up items but bought normal food for my family too. I was always amazed at how much I saved. Well, I think I'm going to start heading that way again. I was astounded at how much these people save weekly and how small their grocery budgets are. They take a lot of time on coupling, but maybe, at this point, it's worth it. I know it will get me to the point of feeling secure about what I have stored for my family if I do.

Spiritual Storage

"We each have moments of spiritual power, moments of inspiration and revelation. We must sink them deep into the chambers of our souls. As we do, we prepare our spiritual home storage for moments of personal difficulty." 

--Neil L. Andersen, "You Know Enough", Ensign, Nov 2008, 13–14

Money

So, one thing I think I neglected to mention on my last post was the fact that there were two companies I'd try to reach Monday morning. One was the pharmacy that I mentioned in the post. The other was our credit union. Both were having computer issues. I guess that's why the slight feeling of panic took over.

Those are both fairly critical places of business, and to not be able to get what you need from either one?....Yikes!

So, this takes me to the cash reserve.

My daughter is planning on serving a mission. A rather large sum of money is needed for this endeavor. It currently all sits in our credit union. It was the first thing I thought of when the computer system was down. This wasn't one of those we're updating our system kind of things. This was no ability to log in kind of a thing.

I'm really not a financial genius--at all. It's all kind of a deer-in-the-headlights kind of scenario, to be honest, but my husband's great at it. The one thing that's helped us more than anything has been the envelope system. It's helped us get our finances in order, and it's ensured that we have a cash reserve on hand.


Last night, my husband finally took the old tent to the dry cleaner to fix it. Ugh! I think I can now get back to organizing the garage for storage, so I'm off to get dressed and then out to the garage for 15.

Oh, This is Why I'm Doing This

TOTAL eye-opener today.

Because I have two boys struggling with asthma lately, I came to the realization that I would have to get a new inhaler for the school to have on hand for #5. I contacted our pharmacy first thing, and they told me to come on in, and they'd take care of me. I went in, pulled a number, and sat and waited. I was the only one there, yet I continued to wait.

 After about ten minutes (I may be exaggerating just a bit--time flies when you have two little ones in tow :oP), a pharmacist emerged and asked me if I was there for something urgent. I told him the nature of my visit and said it wasn't "urgent urgent, just urgent." I could run the inhaler we currently own up to the school and administer it myself if necessary.

He shared with me that their computer system was down, and they didn't know when it would be back up. He said it could be up to half an hour or 45 minutes, but he really had no clue. Whatever the problem was, it was system-wide.

 I thanked him, got up and walked out. Oh, btw, my car was making some interesting noises too, so that totally shot my entire morning--the morning when I was going to get my life in such great order.....Oh, wait, that's every morning, but as you can see, it never happens.

 Needless to say, I didn't get the inhaler, but what I did get was a big ol' dose of reality. Wow! We are SO reliant on computers. What would we do without them.

My next stop was the gas station. As I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, "Man, oh man. I hope their computers are working. Don't those pumps work on some kind of computer system?

I tend to have a bit of an active imagination, so my thoughts just flew from there....No wonder we, as members of the Church, have been asked to have a year supply of food, clothing, and fuel. All it takes is the wrong power to step in and revoke ours, and we're sitting ducks.

 I called the pharmacy again later and asked if things were back up and running. The woman on the phone, rather embarrassedly, told me "No." I asked if there was a back up system that they used for times like this. Again, and more embarrassedly, the answer was "No."

 How prepared are we? I'm guessing not very, so my next and most obvious question: "How prepared am I?"

Shopping Tonight

On the weekend of General Conference, we rotate the food in our 72-hour kits. I've got my shopping list ready and am venturing out here in a few minutes to go get the goods. Here's what I'm buying and how much for each kit:

3 packages of oatmeal
3 fruit snacks - can I find some without red dye 40?
2 cocoa
1 apple cider
3 jerky packages (1 oz)
3 packages of crackers
3 granola bars
3 Cup O'Noodles
3 packages of cookies
1 pack of gum
6-8 pcs. of hard candy
3 packages of nuts


These go in a Ziploc bag along with a little printed menu. Here's what the menu lists:


Breakfast
Oatmeal
Fruit snacks
Cocoa or cider

Lunch
Jerky - 1 oz.
Crackers
Granola bar

Dinner
Cup O'Noodles
Cookies

Snack
Gum
Candy
Nuts


I'm not a huge fan of Cup O'Noodles because of all of the preservatives, but I figure it's only for three days, right?

The kids'll eat the goodies out of the past kits during Conference tomorrow and Sunday.

Already Done

I'm working on a three-month menu. It's funny, as I'm working on this preparedness thing, I can now see how random I was being about it and have been from the beginning of my marriage--kind of half-hearted (going through the motions) and random.

The plan now is to create a menu. I've heard that you should just create a 9-day menu and rotate that, but that was suggested by a man. Did I just say that? Well, it's true. My husband wasn't the one who suggested this, but I'm pretty sure he would do things completely differently than I do, and that's really okay. If he wants to eat spaghetti every nine days, he can go for it. As for me, my plan is to have spaghetti every month and a half or every three months.

At this point, I've created a 45-day menu, but I may expand it. Oh, and I only have dinners on it at this point. I will continue to fill this in. I've laid it out on a regular Word document and turned the page to a landscape layout. I've set tabs for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.

After I'm done with the menu, I'll create a master shopping list. Each month, I'll use my preparedness budget to buy extra items on that list. If things go on sale, I'll buy in bulk and store it away to be rotated later on.

I've been out to the garage today. I found more buckets and lids. I also found a bad surprise....the tent that was used for some camping this summer. It was stuffed in a large plastic bin. I pulled it out piece by piece and found water in the bottom of the bin. Ugh! Well, we shall see if it's salvageable. I need to lay it out in the sunshine. It was sunny yesterday, but it's not warm any more. It was actually pretty windy yesterday. I'll lay it out on the back deck anyway, and see what we can do.

I have all of the clothing I found in the garage all gathered together to be gone through. I'll get through it and see if anything is worth saving away for the future.