I am Mormon and my job at church is to motivate/enable/threaten people to prepare for the hard times ahead. If you are not thinking there will be any hard times ahead may I suggest you read a little book called The Bible. Even if you are not religious, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that economic times are not looking that great and, politically, things are looking shakier every day. Add to that some deadly influenza viruses and/or earthquakes and things might look a little dicey for the future. Wouldn't it be nice to know that you can feed yourself/partner/children/pets if the truckers went on strike? Or you lost your job? Or a drought happened? Or you were afraid to go out of your house for fear of catching something horrendous? Or Chinese troops invaded America (OK, now I'm getting carried away).
The plan used to be to have a year's supply of food. Mormons are known for having stockpiles of food like wheat and powdered milk. For whatever reason (maybe people don't know what to do with that stuff), we are now being asked to have a three-month supply of food we normally eat. Whether it's cereal or spaghetti sauce, you should have extra on hand.
Here's how it works: each month will have a theme (such as Toiletry Month where we focus on, get this, toiletries. One week may be bandaids, then next might be toilet paper. You get the idea.) It's a little easier to keep items in mind if there is a theme that runs through an entire month. Each week I will assign a product to buy. You buy as much as you can afford or have room to store. It's your decision. But at least get something.
Some of you might be the kind who get really jazzed about comparison shopping or couponing. While I applaud you, the idea behind this food storage thing is to get it done. We aren't going to save up several weeks worth of items until we do a Costco run. No, no,no.
This is about making things easy.
It's about getting stuff bought. So when you run to the grocery store because you're out of tortillas and milk, throw a few extra items in your cart. I don't want you to burn out because you're making things too complicated.
Every Monday I will post a new item to concentrate on during the week. Hopefully after a while increasing your food storage will become a habit. Before you know it your pantry will be bursting.
Can't wait for Monday's at Beehive and Bird's Nest!
ReplyDeleteThanks for bringing it back Jennie. :)
I like this. :) Simple is my game.
ReplyDeleteSo, am I supposed to have 3 months of chicken, beef, lunchmeat, eggs, etc? I have always wondered this. I easy have 3 months of CONDIMENTS, but nothing to put them on.
ReplyDeleteI live in an apartment so I don't have a lot of space, but I'll work on it with your help!
ReplyDeleteI'm SO glad you're doing this...I'm 100% committed this time for sure.
ReplyDeleteGood idea. I need to work on this. ;_;
ReplyDeleteWow, Jennie, I read your Segullah article and all 36 comments, and both learned a ton, and was inspired to press forward.
ReplyDeleteTwo things I'd like to add to your great suggestions are: 1) LEARN to grind wheat and make bread (using a cup of dry milk with each batch for extra protein), cause it's delicious, and becomes as easy as making a noodle dinner. and 2) There is always storage space under beds, couches, stairways, in pretty bins on top of kitchen cabinets, and a whole wall full of space if you buy an IKEA 11 inch deep bookcase and find boxes that fit it like drawers.
I'm so glad you're doing this again. My food storage has become horribly depleted since I moved. I really need some sort of food nazi/mentor to get me back on track. Yay for Jennie!
ReplyDeleteI need to do this. So, thank you, in advance.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you are doing this. I like it.
ReplyDeleteThank you for kicking this off again. I was actually going to go back to your old posts to do this myself, now I have you to think for me....perfect!
ReplyDeleteMy parents were both adult converts so I didn't have any LDS relatives in my life. But I've recently become friends with a 2nd cousin who became a member.
ReplyDeleteWhen we got together I asked her to tell me her story and part of it that struck me was when she was growing up, her family was in difficult circumstances. Her father was in the airforce and stationed abroad a lot. Meanwhile, her mother was a bi-polar schizophrenic before anyone knew what that really was, so the kids basic needs often went unmet.
So they didn't have food around a lot of the time.
My cousin knew that the people whose backyard backed up to theirs were Mormons. And the only thing she knew about Mormons was that they had a year's supply of food. She told me "I used to stare out my back window at their house and fantasize about all that food that they must have over there."
It was a funny and sad story, but it made me think about how little food we have on hand. I'm going to let you be my 2011 preparedness cheerleader and take my cues from your posts. Thanks! ♥
I just wanted to say that even as someone who is not Mormon or even very specifically religious, I love these posts! You have inspired me to start attempting to stock up on things for my family for "just in case." I'm in the process of going through all of your past posts since I've just found these and I'm definitely going to be starting with one item a week. Thanks for putting this out there for people!
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