Don’t you just hate sensational phrases in bold type meant to freak you out? It’s hard enough trying to get started into preparedness without that sort of thing. Then there’s pressure when you find out that you should have a year or two worth of food and it doesn’t stop there. After all you need water, toiletries, meds, fuel, alternative energy to cook the food and the list goes on until you’re pretty much paralyzed by the feeling of doom thinking “there’s no way I’ll be able to get it done”. That and the uncomfortable feeling that you may be slightly nuts for even doing it in the first place. After all it’s not the norm.

Once again, take a deep breath and relax. Don’t worry so much about how fast you can do it. That’ll only slow you down. As far as whether or not you can afford it, yes you can afford it. You just might not be able to run out tomorrow and spend $5000 and be done with it.

First things first. How much food do you have in the house now? How long would it last if the stores ran out or were closed indefinitely tomorrow? Scary ha?

Start with a Pantry. You do have a pantry don’t you? I got lucky when I rented this house as it had a breakfast nook with a closet in it. Only took a few months to pretty much fill that closet with enough food to last a few months. Under any situation, besides a complete teotwawki situation, that should be plenty. How did this poorboy do it? I did a little extra work every week that made that little extra money and that money was set aside just for stocking up. I also became a thrifty shopper. That gets easier when you have a decent amount of food. Once you have a few weeks extra then you can wait to buy stuff until it’s on sale. B1G1 sales are a great way to stock up. Simply wait for those and and when you would normally buy 5 of something buy 10 and set back the free ones. Couponing. Start using coupons. Don’t be embarrassed. I’m a guy and I do it. Along with the B1G1, use coupons and now you’re getting your groceries for 40% of the normal cost if not less. For coupons you can search the web for some thrifty gal or guy in your region that has a couponing blog. There’s a pretty good one for me called southernsavers.com. She has all the weekly ad contents right on her site along with links to get coupons for the items in the ad that are on sale. Once you get started and have some extra food, you’re no longer buying what you need for that week. You’re buying the things you use when they’re on sale. Check the FAQs on these couponing blogs for tips and tricks. smartsource.com and coupons.com are the two most popular sites for printable coupons. Normally they’ll allow you to print two of each but they both tend to have a lot of duplicates which gives you four. If you have use of another computer then you’ll be up to eight. When looking through your local grocery ad and find something you use on sale, go to one of the coupon sites/blogs and search for that name of the product. Also you can go to the manufacturers website and possibly find coupons. You’ll probably have to sign up but that’s OK. They’ll email you coupons and recipes and some will send them in the mail. A lot of people buy the Sunday paper just to get the coupons out of it. Once you get started it gets real easy and doesn’t cost a thing. I started by just going shopping one time when we didn’t need to. Yes that was a couple of hundred bucks I really couldn’t afford but we managed. Just like you manage when your car breaks and it suddenly costs you 200 or any other unexpected expense. You manage.

LTS or Long Term Storage. This ones pretty easy to get going with the basics because the basics are cheap. Rice, Beans, Sugar, Salt, Flour (and then wheat). They are all dirt cheap and people all over the world survive on these basics. Especially rice. Can’t live without meat? Wanna bet. Rice, Beans and a grain makes a complete protein replacement for meat. A little soy actually makes a more complete protein but I haven’t found anything soy based that I could stomach so I have canned meat. I know, canned meat is nothing like a good ole ribeye but it will do. The canned ham like DAK is not all that bad when fried up or chunked and added to beans and it lasts years. 5-6 if I remember correctly. (btw I find the dollar general Bristol Brand to be the exact same as DAK only cheaper, get a can of each and compare them, personally I think they come from the same factory) There’s also canned Tuna, Chicken, Beef, salmon etc. Then there’s good ole Spam and Vienna Sausage. I like the Spam Lite because it’s not so salty and the only Vienna Sausage I can stand it the smoked but if starving, you will eat most anything as history has proven. Canned fruit and veggies last up to two years or more. Flour will not last very long. 5-6 months at best. That’s where wheat kernels come in. Oh, and a good grinding mill which ain’t cheap. You can get a cheap unit made in china but you get what you pay for and then later you’ll pay for what you got.  As for wheat, there’s a few different types and here’s the easy explanation so you won’t have to be belittled when asking on some forum and someone acts like you’re stupid for not knowing. Some of the old pros can be that way.

Hard Red Wheat = Whole Wheat Bread/Flour
Hard White Wheat = WhiteWheat Bread/UnBleached Flour
Soft White Wheat =  Pastries

Soft white wheat doesn’t store as well as hard varieties which store indefinitely when stored properly.  Storage techniques will be another post and I will link to it from here when it’s written.

Here’s something that will help with your food storage. I created an excel spreadsheet for myself but am more than happy to share it. After all your one less person looking for food. There’s instructions that go with it so I’m making a separate post for it.