Weekend Assignment: Pantry Spot Check

It's cold, flu and virus season here in the United States.  If you or someone in your family were to suddenly come down with one of these that included running a high fever over a long period of time, what would you do to stay ahead of the dehydration that would naturally come as a result?  

Would you have anything on hand in your pantry to help fight it or would you have to make a run to the store … what if you couldn’t make a run to the store? 

Dehydration is a serious condition that does not need to be taken lightly, so let’s make sure our pantries are prepared.

Do you have anything in your pantry that can be used to fight dehydration?

Patsi

A Working Pantry

She looketh well to the ways of her household … Proverbs 31:27

My other blog:  She Hath Done What She Could

Have you read this series, This is Why! and this free e-book, Yes, You Can Have a Well-Stocked Pantry?  And don’t forget to check out the ‘Free Downloads’ page.  You’ll find some helpful pantry building stuff available for free!

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Building A One Month Preparedness Pantry ... part 6

You can read previous posts HERE along with an explanation of why I'm doing this series HERE. 

In this post we're going to wrap up this series talking about food. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this as building and maintaining a well-stocked pantry is what A Working Pantry is all about.  

Let me just say this, we saw many people and distributed food boxes to many people who did not have food due to the aftereffects of Hurricane Matthew.  Some of it was not preventable, most of it was.

Keeping a well-stocked pantry will prevent you from having to live on junk food or whatever else you can find that doesn't have to be cooked until help arrives.  

How long could your family survive on your current food pantry?  Would your family be among those who were helping provide food to others or would your family be among those waiting for someone to help them?

The difference could very well lie in whether or not you have a well-stocked pantry? A well-stocked pantry along with the other things we've talked about in this series would enable you to weather most natural disasters, which is what this
series has been all about.

I hope this series has been beneficial to you and that you can take the things I've shared and learn from them.

Patsi 

Sharing 42 years' experience of frugal, prudent living and pantry building 

A Working Pantry

My second blog:  From This Heart of Mine 

She looketh well to the ways of her household … Proverbs 31:27 

You can view my privacy policy HERE. 

Building a One Month Basic Preparedness Pantry ... part 5

You can read previous posts HERE along with an explanation of why I'm doing this series HERE. 

In this post we're going to talk about water … water to drink, water to flush your toilet, water for your animals and water to run your household.

In a disaster situation drinkable, useable water is often the first thing that becomes unavailable and is the one thing we cannot live without.

Several days after some of the stores in our area had electricity restored, they still did not have safe water to drink or bathrooms for customers use.  One store set up port-a-potties outside the store.  Another store limited the number of customers that could be in the store at one time to 25 because there was no water for the store sprinkler system. Both of these are very large nationally well-known stores.

Drinkable, useable water was trucked into our area by the tractor trailer loads for several weeks. Watering stations were set up in different locations so people could get the water they needed.   For those who were trapped by the flood waters or damaged roads getting drinkable water was a real issue.

So, let’s talk about water and look at some ways to be prepared in this area …

Bottled water (watch for sales and stock up if it’s not an immediate emergency), you would need to use and rotate to keep fresh

5 gallon size jugs of water you can purchase, you would need to use and rotate to keep fresh  

Fill up the bathtub or use a waterbob

Use Watering cans to transport water

Fill up clean empty milk cartons

Fill up empty juice bottles

Boil, treat and sterilize water from outside sources (you would want to be careful where you got the water).  

Catch rain water  

Patsi 

Sharing 42 years' experience of frugal, prudent living and pantry building 

A Working Pantry

My second blog:  From This Heart of Mine 

She looketh well to the ways of her household … Proverbs 31:27 

You can view my privacy policy HERE. 

Building A One Month Preparedness Pantry ... part 4

You will remember that the reason I started this series was because we are in the area that was hit the hardest by Hurricane Matthew when he made landfall on October 7th, 8th and 9th of last year.  While we had very little damage personally others around us were not so fortunate.

My husband and I along with others spent the better part of the rest of 2016 helping those who had been affected by the hurricane. The devastation was unbelievable!  As a result, I decided to write this series with the hopes that it would help others be more prepared for natural disasters, thus Building A One Month Preparedness Pantry was born.

You can read previous posts HERE along with a more in-depth explanation of why I'm doing this series HERE.

In this post we're going to talk about non-electric ways to cook food when the power goes out.

We saw lots and lots of people who were existing on snack crackers, chips, potted meat, etc because they had no means to cook. We also were told by many that they had lost the foods in their refrigerators and freezers because they had no way to cook it before it spoiled.  Many were without power for several days and some for several weeks.

So, let's talk about some non-electric ways to cook food.   There's the ...

gas grill ... There are all shapes and sizes to choose from, from tabletop size to the huge stand-alone kind ... and of course you would need propane gas to fuel it.

charcoal grill ... charcoal would be needed and here again they come in all shapes and sizes.

gas camp stove burner ... don't forget the propane gas

solar oven ... the right time of the year this would work

rocket stove ...this would do in a pinch

wood stove (you can get portable wood stoves) ... you would need wood and of course it would heat up the area around it, that's something that would need to be taken into consideration especially if you lost power in the summer.

fire pit (gas or wood) ... depending on the weather this would be an option for outside.  This would work for roasting hot dogs and such.

gas stove ... you would need to make sure that you had gas on hand to run it. These come in all sizes and shapes from appliance size to portable sizes suitable for camping.

propane cooker ... this would need to be used outside.

When considering options for cooking without electricity it would be wise to have as many back-ups as possible.

So many people we came into contact with were simply victims of not being prepared.

Patsi 

Sharing 42 years' experience of frugal, prudent living and pantry building 

A Working Pantry

My second blog:  From This Heart of Mine 

She looketh well to the ways of her household … Proverbs 31:27 

You can view my privacy policy HERE. 

Building A One Month Preparedness Pantry ... part 3

Part 1 of this series can be found HERE and part 2 can be found HERE.  

The reason I started this series can be found HERE.

Part 3 is about disposables ... paper plates, plastic cups, plastic utensils, paper towels, etc. As a general rule the only one of these items we use on a regular basis are paper towels unless we have a power outage!

A power outage for us means we do not have running water and if we do not have running water I'm all about those paper products.  I'm all about using and throwing it all away. Why?  Because it's just easier not to have to heat water to wash dishes in and in a temporary off-grid situation where everything takes longer and is harder to do this little convenience is one I'm going to use if at all possible.

Are they expensive, they can be, but they don't have to be!  I have a collection of holiday paper plates we use that I've gotten by purchasing them for a fraction of their cost after the holidays are over.  Just recently I added the plates in the picture above to my collection about a week after Halloween for $.37 a package.  It doesn't matter to me that they are holiday plates, to me they are our emergency preparedness plates.  So, in a plastic tub they will go along with our plastic cups and plastic utensils.  

Once a year, at Christmas, we purchase red plastic cups in bulk to package the fudge in that my husband makes for food gifts (We get the cups at Sam's Club and I think there's either 180  or 200 cups to the package.  The package usually runs around $10.).  Whatever is left of those goes into our emergency paper products preparedness tub. When we travel and have to stay in a hotel, we bring home the unused styrofoam or plastic cups that come with the price of our room. Between the two, we can usually keep enough in our preparedness tub to get us through a power outage. Remember, we're preparing for a 1 month power outage so save accordingly.

We do purchase a box of plastic utensils at Sam's Club, the one's that are individually packaged with a napkin, fork, spoon and possibly a knife, to have in our preparedness tub. One box will last us a long time and it sure does make cleaning up from a meal in a non-electric situation a lot easier.

Being prepared by having disposables on hand will make a difficult situation a little easier to handle!  Trust me on this! 

Patsi 

Sharing 42 years' experience of frugal, prudent living and pantry building 

A Working Pantry

My second blog:  From This Heart of Mine 

She looketh well to the ways of her household … Proverbs 31:27 

You can view my privacy policy HERE.