Emergency Preparedness

I am a firm believer in emergency preparedness - whether it be storms, power outages, or civil unrest and inflation. I never used to be until I happened on a you tube video one day. I watched every video by this lady and went to her web site as well. I was hooked. My dad bought me a dehydrator and I love it. It's not one of those you just buy in the store. A GOOD dehydrator will have a fan on the back side of the unit. Most dehydrators in the store may or may not have a fan and if they do, they are in the bottom of the unit where only the bottom couple of trays get the benefit. Mine also has a temperature control and timer. My problem is having enough money to dehydrate as much food as I would like. In these very uncertain and precarious times that we are living in, I know how important it is to have as much stored up in a pantry as you can get for your family, and then even more to help out other members of your family who are not living with you. Not only do we need to dehydrate food, but also build a pantry which pretty much stores everything you use on a daily basis or during the year. This includes soaps, deodorant, garbage bags, toilet paper, etc. etc. And the list goes on and on and on. There are many good videos on you tube about emergency preparedness. There are also some very good blogs out there. The LDS-ers are famous for food storage and preparedness and have an excellent web site that can be accessed for information on how much to store in your pantry. I don't know about anyone else, but I really don't have much room for a lot of storage. So that does create a problem. I know most places recommend that you have enough for at least 3 - 6 months. Perhaps because if there is hyper-inflation, hopefully it won't last beyond the 6 months. Personally, I think it would be better to have a year's supply of everything. Most of us live from pay check to pay check so this is difficult to accomplish, but even if, whenever you go to the grocery store, you pick up a couple extras of this or that and put it in storage, eventually, that pantry will build up (as long as you don't use anything from it right away). The goal is to build a big enough pantry that you eat and use items from the pantry and whatever you use, you replace so that you don't run short of an item. I wish our grocery stores here where I live, would offer double coupons. That is a great way to save money. Unfortunately, my state doesn't have any stores that do. This week, I purchased 4 cases of bottled water to put into storage. Now, if my family would just stay out of it. I cleaned and rearranged my pantry this morning and it was quite pitiful in comparison to what it used to be. I am constantly trying to work on it, but there are 4 of us in the house (3 of which are adults) and things go pretty quickly. And, when one of you loses their job, it makes it even harder. Still, if I hadn't been working on my pantry, it would have been much more difficult. At least I have plenty of corn still canned!