Just $20 more

Food/Medicine/Gardening 

 Wow, with me working now and having to work weekends its hard to find time to go shopping; especially together.  But we finally managed to schedule a time Sunday morning.  We will probably add $20 to our food budget for extra canned goods to put up.  Like maybe some canned meat, stews, something like that.  We will take turns changing up with canned fruit and vegetables too. Living in an apartment now...its a little more tricky to store items for lack of kitchen space.  But we actually stack the canned goods in the closet.  I sure you can even use under a bed or dresser if there was lack of closet space.  With the price of food going up we think this is a good plan. 

How much "stuff" do we need?

How much junk do we really need? Reading Cheryl's post about cleaning the garage got me to thinking about this. We have a lot of "stuff" (that's using a nice word) in our garage. "Stuff" other than my tools which we haven't used for a year now.

What does this have to do with prepping?
1. I am spending a lot of money to store "stuff" I am not using. Money that could pay off a bill, buy some extra food, etc,etc,etc.

2. It would have taking me a lot of time to find emergency items in amongst all the other "stuff".

3. That "stuff" could be sold and the money used to pay off a bill, buy some extra food, etc, etc, etc.

Get the point?

Now granted there is "stuff" that we store that we have every intention of using again, like my wife's sewing machine or my reloading bench. Tools not frequently used now would be more expensive to replace later.

But the other "stuff"............................YARD SALE!!!

My Uncle Arden used to teach us about living a fasted life, which is the idea of not keeping so much more than we need, and not being to attached to it! Remember, ..."for where a man's treasure is, there will his heart be also."

Take the time now to decide what things you can live without and convert those items in to some financial liquidity or into things that you may really need in the long run.

Dennis

Cleaning the garage

They said we were going to have a nice day.  So the first thing Dennis and I planned was to organize the garage. We have in the past had  some items that would help us to be a little bit more independent during the time of a crises.  Now it was a matter of finding them.  We also was storing a lot of other things.  We had toys, camping supplies and equipment, canning supplies, backpacking equipment, tools and some items that we had in there from last year's garage sale.  So on one side went our tools, camping, backpacking and a few cases of canning jars and pans for putting up some fresh fruit jam.  And the rest of odds and ends went on the other side with a note to give or sale these items by June (when we plan on moving).  We were pretty happy with the results and knowing just what is in there and where it is located exactly gave us some peace.  I mean if you have flashlights and candles but no batteries or matches than they are pretty useless.  Get things in the same area and make sure your batteries are still good.  Go down the list.  You should have items for the following areas:  Food, shelter, clothing, protection.  We will hit on the details for some of the above list in several upcoming issues but if you want us to discuss something specific or you have thoughts of any of these, we certainly would love to hear from you.