September is National Preparedness Month. It's the time designated for everyone to take a look at just how prepared they are for any emergency that may arise. Let's be honest, this whole year has pretty much tested our readiness and resilience. I sincerely hope it has given all of you an opportunity to seriously evaluate your family's readiness and helped you find the areas you can improve on. With that said let's talk about long term solutions. Up to this point we have mostly talked about 3 day to 3-6 month supply and a few longer term solutions, i.e. dehydrated and freeze dried foods.
What is the difference? Well, most things we buy at case lot sales or grow in our gardens are short term solutions unless they are dehydrated or freeze dried and then packaged for longer term storage. In order to make the things we buy for our storage last as long as possible they all need to be packaged in a way that will ensure the longest shelf life. Just having a bag of flour in our pantry doesn't ensure that it will last the long haul. Most things will only last about a year before they go bad and start causing pest problems in your pantry. In order to make that same bag of flour last for 20-25 years it would be best to put it in a 5 gallon bucket or mylar bags with the proper amount of oxygen absorbers in it. Another great way to add long term storage to your food is buying it in #10 cans. They have a long shelf life and the church offers great deals on these items. These are a great solution for those that don't tend to use a lot of one particular thing at once and for those who may not have the space to store 5 gallon buckets. Right now is a great time (usually) to find deals for stocking up and increasing your longer term food storage. Many preparedness stores and grocery stores are running sales and will include the longer term storage food options. The trick is knowing whether or not your family will like what you buy. To make sure buy one now and open it and actually use it. If your family likes it go back and buy more while the sales are still going on.
As for water, it is the same as your food, it won't last forever and needs to be rotated regularly. There are many different ways to store water to get your family going in the right direction. The easiest way is to buy a few cases of water bottles to have on hand for drinking. The next is to fill old juice or soda bottles, that have been cleaned out, with water and have those to use for cleaning needs. The best long term solutions is to have the big blue barrels. They range in size anywhere from 5 gallons to 500 gallons. The cheapest ones are the 55 gallon ones. You can generally find those for around $25 dollars. However there is a guy that is local that sells the bigger (like 250 gallon) size that runs an ongoing deal of the more you buy the cheaper the price. This would be a good option for your wards to look into if there are enough people who want to buy the big ones. Feel free to contact us if you want his number. It is best to empty and refill your barrels once every six months (do it around Conference to make it easy to remember). As water sits it tends to get bacteria in it over time which is why it is recommended to refill every few months and at least once a year. If you are worried about space and being able to fit the big barrels in your house and storage areas, there are different solutions. On the blog I have included one that my husband did with the plans to build it. It worked for us because we were able to fit more barrels into a smaller area and make it so they were easy to get the water out of when you need it.
For more information and ideas visit our Food Storage page.
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