How to be prepared

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Make a Plan

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” “Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.” 

What do I need to be prepared? What do you have, what do you need, and where will you start? 

1. Start small and work up in each category. Set deadlines for yourself. Write it down. 

2. Emergency: Portable 72 hour kit. 

3. Three Month Supply: part of your normal daily diet. 

4. Basic: sustains life 

5. Expanded: adds to variety. Will include: Greater variety of food and supplies. 

6. Garden: adds to expanded; store seeds for next year 

7. Fuel: replace at winter end, fuel for a generator, lights for power outage 

8. Clothing: material, extra clothes, hand-me-downs. 

9. Water: 2 week supply of 14 gallons per person. More for animals / extra 

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Water

2 week supply of 14 gallons per person. More for animals / extra storage if room. 

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Emergency Preparedness

1. Water! Minimum 1 gallon per day. 

2. 72 hour kit: portable container with emergency supply of water, food requiring no refrigeration or cooking, medication, clothes, sanitary supplies, first aid kit, candles/matches, flashlight/batteries, ax/shovel, blanket. 

3. Updated immunizations. 

4. Readily available important documents (birth/ marriage certificates, SS#’s, insurance info, etc) 

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Three Month Supply

1. Build a small supply of food that is part of your normal diet. 

2. Purchase a few extra items each week and build a one week supply of food. 

3. Gradually add to it until it is sufficient for three months. 

4. Rotate these regularly to avoid spoilage. 

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Basic Food Storage

1. Gradually build a long term supply of food. These are life sustaining foods and non-foods items that will store for long periods. Recommended basic foods and amounts are: Grains (wheat, rice, corn, other cereal grains) - 300 #/ person 

2. Dried beans and other legumes – 35 #/person (old lists said 60# /person) 

3. Nonfat Dry Milk - 16 # / person (This is 1 cup per day. Old lists said 75#/person.) 

4. Sugar - 60 # / person (sugar, honey, corn syrup, jam, jello) 

5. Salt - 5# / person (more if you want to cure meat.) 

6. Fat or oil – 20 # / person 

7. Water – 2 week supply of 14 gallons / person. More for animals/extra storage if room. 

8. Other items to include: garden seeds, bedding, clothing, medical, fuel, light, wheat grinder, baby supplies. 

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Expanded Storage

1. This type of storage would include foods and other daily essentials to supply total nutritional needs and allow for variety and personal preferences. Items to include would be: Basic Food storage items (grains, beans, dry milk, sugar, salt, oil) 

2. Meat (tuna, cheese, peanut butter, smoked or dried meat, frozen meat) - 60#/person 

3. Canned fruits and vegetables (home canned, store bought, juices, dried and frozen produce) - 365#/person 

4. Baking items (baking powder, baking soda, cocoa, yeast, powdered eggs, vanilla) 

5. Other misc. (soups, spices, ketchup, mustard, pickles, vinegar, other) 

6. Vitamins and medication (cold and flu remedies, pain reliever, first aid supplies) 

7. Non-food items (toilet paper, foil, soap, shampoo, toothpaste, garbage bags, cleaning and sewing supplies, matches, manual can opener, tools) 

8. Canning supplies – bottles, lids, rings, canner, etc. (Needed if frozen foods needed to be preserved.) 

9. Fuel (candles, flashlights and batteries, wind up or solar flashlights, gas cans for a generator kept full, propane tanks full for use in a BBQ, wood for a stove, or outside cooking if necessary, etc.) 

10. Clothing: material/notions to sew, extras to grow into, a hand-me-down box, etc. 

11. Garden seeds: as you plant this year’s seeds, buy for next year so if seeds are unavailable you can still plant. 

12. For help in amounts to store, try using an online food storage calculator: https://ezprepping.com/food-storage-calculator/#food-storage-calculator Fill in the number of people and it generates a list! 

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Tailor fit for your family

1. Track what you eat/ingredients for one to two weeks, then plan a “year’s” menu. 

2. Multiply your week’s usage by 52 (weeks in a year) and you have a good idea of what your family will use. 

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Divide and Conquer

1. How long do you want to take to acquire the basic list? Divide your amounts needed by that period of time (say 6 months). 

2. Build slowly: start with a week supply, then a month, 6 months, and so on. 

3. Work across the board: buy some of each category so you have a variety as you go. 

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Rotate!

1. Store what you eat and eat what you store! 

2. Eating what you store saves money. 

3. A good rotation method is essential to avoid spoilage, and maintain flavor and nutritional value. 

4. Rotate everything: basics, expanded, cleaning, garden seeds, first aid kit, fuel, etc. 

5. Rotate water and emergency kits at conference. 

6. Mark items with the canning or purchase date. Eat older food first and track how fast you go through your storage. (Ideally you will eat one year old food. With the exception of perishables!) 

7. Use a monthly shopping list to resupply. 

8. Arrange your food on the shelf from oldest to newest, left to right, and front to back. 

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Inventory

1. Rotation and supply depends on good inventory. 

2. Use an inventory sheet with columns of the basic and expanded items in your storage. (Perpetual Inventory sheet in church booklet “Essentials of Home Production and Storage” available online. Google the title PDF.) 

3. Keep the inventory current. Keep track of items removed and added to the storage. Eventually you will know how much needs to be on a shelf to be current. 

4. Re-supply shelves monthly or each summer as you preserve fruits and vegetables. 

5. Store more than a year of home canned items in case of a freeze or poor harvest. (No produce available.) 

6. Check usage each month against totals on the shelves. Make a running list as you use items or think of something you need for your shopping day. This becomes your shopping list. 

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How can I afford it?

A few tried and true guidelines apply here: 

1. Do not go into debt. Be frugal. 

2. Make and grow your own wherever possible. 

3. Limit trips to the grocery store: shop monthly for all main items and only weekly for perishables. 

4. Shop the sales. Save money for case good sales. Use your tax refund to make a BIG start on your basics. 

5. Buy double goods: 2 ketchups, 2 bags rice, when you only need one. 

6. Buy in BULK and DIVIDE into smaller containers, or put in a large bucket, and refill a gallon can. 

7. Cook from scratch: it doesn’t take much longer and saves money. (If you use mixes, make your own.) 

8. Involve your family in the planning, canning, buying, storing and cooking stages of food storage. They will be more likely to understand, care for, and eat the stored food. 

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Where to Store?

1. Do you have a basement room? Can you clean out a spare room, under a stairway, or closet and devote it to storage? Can you build on a small room? Build shelves between wall studs in any hall or room. 

2. Build a closet and put doors on. Build shelves and cover with a curtain. Add shelves in a closet. 

3. Be creative: where there’s a will there’s a way. Put items in rolling box under beds or tables (put bed on risers), cover a barrel or boxes with a cloth for end/sofa table, put a narrow shelf in the hall. 

4. Build a frame of 1x4’s that will slide cans in and out. 

5. Put a tablecloth on large barrel and use as a lamp table. 

6. Use 5 gallon cans instead of bricks for bookshelves.

7. General Guidelines: 

8. Storage areas should be well ventilated, clean, and cool, dark and dry whenever possible. 

9. Store foods away from products that will affect the flavor and odor of food. Do not store food and cleaning items together. 

10. Do not place cans or bottles on or against cement or dirt floors and walls. 

11. Storage Places 

12. Place sofa away from wall and stack boxes behind, covering with a pretty cloth, as a sofa table. 

13. Behind doors: narrow traditional shelves, or top feed at with slats or plexiglass to hold cans in place.

14. Containers 

15. Plastic buckets;- (1-6 gallon sizes), #10 cans, and Mylar bags from the cannery. 

16. Recycled containers- sealed with duct tape (peanut butter or ice cream buckets IF washed and rinsed thoroughly. Trace quantities of soap allow bacterial growth, weevil thrive on it, and soap gives off a rancid odor.) 

17. Barrels (wheat in bags can be stacked in barrels.) 

18. Water containers: barrels, pop bottles, water heaters; NO milk jugs: they leak. Store water near a drain. 

19. Shelves: should be 2-4 inches off floor to keep safe in case of flood. 

20. Rolling shelves: roll sideways – 1-3 cans deep. Fill from right, take from left. 

21. Wider shelf can fill from back and take from front. 

22. Commercial rolling shelves. 

23. Earthquake proof: metal straps in front of bottles, strip of board at edge of shelf; wire across front; attached to wall and ceiling. 

24. Cleaning supplies: stored away from food: Cleaning and laundry in utility room; Shampoo and personal in linen closet near bathroom 

25. Clothing: label size and age, store clean, sort before storing. 

26. Be Creative! Does not have to be expensive: rough cut lumber, crates, salvaged shelves, shoe bags. 

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Methods of preserving

1. Make a root cellar for potatoes, carrots, apples, etc. 

2. Hang onions, peppers, garlic, corn. 

3. Store apples in a covered, below ground, window well. Garden plots can keep carrots and onions to pull all winter long. (May cover with straw to insulate.) 

4. Raise animals for food when appropriate. (Chickens, rabbits, eggs, goats, beef.) 

5. Destroy insects in dry goods: dry ice, freeze, oven. Some items like corn meal or yeast keep better in the freezer. Others may be frozen, then put in buckets (flour, rice, etc). 

6. Bottle, freeze or dry garden and orchard produce. 

7. Live storage: (fresh needs moisture except onions, pumpkins and squash) 

8. Not all items need to be canned or vacuum sealed: baking powder and soda, sugar, salt and cocoa can be kept in original containers, or in buckets with lids. 

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3 Month Supply

1. A strong testimony provides us with strength in times of hardships. Read and study the scriptures; say prayers; hold FHE, CFM, and Family council; attend all church meetings; attend temple; learn to recognize and listen to the Holy Ghost; keep the commandments! 

2. Get out of debt and stay out of debt. Save some money. Have a marketable skill. Maintain meaningful employment. Live within your means. Remember what Grandma lived by: “Fix it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” 

3. “Just as challenging times reveal inadequacies in temporal preparedness, so too the maladies of spiritual casualness and complacency inflict their most detrimental effects during difficult trials. We learn, for example, in the parable of the