"They Gave Up Their Christmas"

I hope that you all have a very Merry Christmas and that we all remember, as the people in this story do, what Christmas is really all about.

 

 

Emergency Prep lessons from Hurricane Sandy

A couple of weeks ago, my mom forwarded me an email with a list of things that one man learned from Hurricane Sandy. It was clear that he was one affected by the hurricane and was without power for over a week. The forward was entitled: "Things that I learned from Hurricane Sandy, by Frantz Ostmann, 11-17-12."

As I read through the email, I made note of a few items that I thought were most helpful. So here's my little list:

1. "If you do not have water stored up you are in trouble. A couple of cases of bottled water is NOT water storage." Remember, you should have stored AT LEAST 1 gallon of water per person, per day for at least two weeks. If you want to store bottled water, a 24 pack of .5 liter bottle is a little over 3 gallons so you need 4 cases of water per person. Click HERE to read my post on water.

2. "Should have as much fuel as water. Propane, gas, kerosene, firewood, fire starter (kindling, pater, etc)." This is definitely got me thinking. One of my goals for the new year is to get an extra tank of propane for our grill so that we always have a full one. I need to learn more about storing gas because that just sounds scary to me. And I don't have a wood burning stove so I am not going to hoard firewood, but I do need to look into some information on fire safety and fire starters in case we lost power in the winter.

3. "Cash is king (all the money in your savings means nothing." In September, I wrote a post called Financial Emergency Fund which gives more information, but it's pretty basic. If everyone is power is out you can't get money out of the ATM or the bank. Cash will be crucial if you need something like gas, food or medicine.

4. "All the food storage in the world means nothing if your kids won't eat it." This is a really great point that I should talk about more. It is super important to have healthy foods with long shelf-lives (like rice and wheat) in your food storage, but you really need to store what you eat. If your kids REALLY like raviolis, buy 12 and stash them somewhere. Then if you end up home for a week without power, you can have happy kids for at least one meal out of the day.

5. "You can never have enough matches." This is a good point that we may not think about. I probably only have a pack or two.

6. "Small solar charging gadgets will keep you in touch. Most work pretty well it seems." This is another thing I have wanted for a while. They are priced from $20 to over $100. This is another thing that I need to do some research on, because if the power is out but the cell towers are still working, I want to be able to use my cell phone.

Hope these ideas give you something to think about. Maybe you can add one to your New Year's Resolutions. Just remember, don't give up because you feel overwhelmed. Just try to do one thing at a time.

3-month supply: Snacks

OK, so this one might sound a little bit silly at first but bear with me.

 

Several years ago, food storage was thought of as buckets of wheat and home-canned foods. While these are still necessary parts of food storage, in the last few years the ideas about food storage have changed.

 

One of the changes is that it is recommended that we store 3-months worth of food that our family eats on a daily basis. This often means items with a shorter shelf-life, but that's OK because we are going to rotate our food.

 

Having food storage is about being prepared for hard times. This might be a tight month financially or even just unexpected company. Having an extra bag of tortilla chips and a bottle of salsa in your storage could make those hard or unexpected times more enjoyable, right?

 

Another big part of storing food is shopping for deals. This is a big deal in the snack department...especially for a tight budget. I don't generally love buying snacks. They cost A LOT of food per ounce and they go SO fast. But, I have also realized that with kids in school needed snacks or even just being able to grab something quick, snacks can be handy.

 

So, first of all, you will want to make a little list of what snack items you use a lot. For our family it would look something like this:

 

Chips (mostly tortilla)

Butter crackers (like Ritz)

Saltines (good to have on hand for tummy aches)

Popcorn

Jerky or meat sticks

Peanuts

Raisins

Graham crackers

 

Once you have a list, you can decide how many of each thing you want to store. I would start with having one EXTRA of each. Once I open my extra, that item goes on my grocery list so that within a few days (theoretically) I again have an extra one.

 

Back to shopping... Around the holidays there are a lot of deals on snack items, so it might be a good time to stock up. Also, big warehouse stores have a serious amount of snacks that are usually priced better than regular grocery stores (although not always) so you may want to stock up that way.

 

Even though I think that it is good to "be prepared" and to have things on hand that you use, I do NOT recommend spending a lot of money stocking up on snacks if you basics like water, grains and meats are low. But, storing things like snack items which you know you kids (or spouse) will eat in the case of a minor set-back or emergency can be just as important as your long-term storage.