What Preps are you doing this week? Part 6.

How are you preparing
jansman
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Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 7:16 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 6.

Post by jansman »

Carried on with revamping my vegetable garden layout.Got a fence and gate across the garden to section it off from the dog.Laid out 3 paths ( concrete edging ,weed membrane,and bark chips) and got the compost bins in a realistic position.Its all being done to make the job easier,as I get older,and my back less supple!
In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: It goes on.

Robert Frost.

Covid 19: After that level of weirdness ,any situation is certainly possible.

Me.
jennyjj01
Posts: 3429
Joined: Sun Jun 04, 2017 11:09 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 6.

Post by jennyjj01 »

Today I extracted 7 fruit boxes full of tinned food and pasta sauces from the void under the stairs. This is a void that's really very awkward to access and had been a sort of one way 'stash and forget' stockpile. Since half of it is well paste BBE, I've decided to bring out the most expired stuff and put it where I can use it. I can't get my head around how best to use it AND rotate what's there. :(
This is a most frustrating hidey hole with ideal 'cool dry place' conditions which would be brilliant if I could only solve the rotation issue. My half baked plan is to bury my non-expiring stash (stove, fire-making kit, water, alcohol etc) and my most long life stuff back there, with longest dates being buried deepest and then to repeat the exercise maybe twice a year. Then whatever other, more accessible space gets liberated can be used for the tins. I begrudge not using the space, but accessing it is such a faff and having 2 year expired tins that I can't get to rotate is frustrating. I did think of just stuffing the space with loo rolls, but they are quite happy insulating the loft.
Any suggestions?
I did underestimate the time to dig it out and check it and I hoped to rearrange it into date order for re-stashing, but I ran out of time. After a brief spell where my lounge looked like a foodbank, I had to hastily hide it in the loft till I can get it sorted. Phew. Shifting 100s of tins up and down like that on a tight schedule was a chore. Now I still have the sorting and re-hiding for another day. It was satisfying to see how much tinned food I had accumulated with variety in there too. Now I just have to eat it.
Graceful Degradation! Prepping's objective summed up in two words. Turning Disaster into Mild Inconvenience by the power of fore-thought

Not Feeling Optimistic. Let me be wrong
grenfell
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Joined: Thu Jul 04, 2013 7:55 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 6.

Post by grenfell »

I made some shallow wooden boxes with wheels for storage in awkward areas . It started with one for a train set under the bed. Not very preppey i know but the idea works for other stuff. The wheels where just simple timber circles with a screw in the middle to act as an axel . Didn't need to be anymore fancy as it only had to move a couple of feet a year. A handle , either metal or rope assisted pulling it out.
Can't help with the rotation , we tend to have stuff in different places and once one place is emptied we move to the next and refill the first putting it on the bottom of the list. Well that's how it's suppose to happen but we still have "hiccups". I'm not sure about burying stuff. It's not a method i'd use first , you need some decent waterproof containers and it can be hard work putting them in and digging them out. Might also depend on water tables or likihood of flooding in the area.
Hats off to you for building up a decent sized stash. I've eaten tinned foods supposedly years past their bbd's with no problems.
jennyjj01
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Joined: Sun Jun 04, 2017 11:09 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 6.

Post by jennyjj01 »

grenfell wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2019 7:31 am I made some shallow wooden boxes with wheels for storage in awkward areas . It started with one for a train set under the bed. Not very preppey i know but the idea works for other stuff. The wheels where just simple timber circles with a screw in the middle to act as an axel . Didn't need to be anymore fancy as it only had to move a couple of feet a year. A handle , either metal or rope assisted pulling it out.
Can't help with the rotation , we tend to have stuff in different places and once one place is emptied we move to the next and refill the first putting it on the bottom of the list. Well that's how it's suppose to happen but we still have "hiccups". I'm not sure about burying stuff. It's not a method i'd use first , you need some decent waterproof containers and it can be hard work putting them in and digging them out. Might also depend on water tables or likihood of flooding in the area.
Hats off to you for building up a decent sized stash. I've eaten tinned foods supposedly years past their bbd's with no problems.
:) Thanks for the idea Grenfell, Made me think of "The Great Escape"

To get to this place (under my twisting staircase) I have to pull out the tumble dryer and assorted cleaning stuff and then, one at a time, shove in an empty fruit tray that only just goes in on its side and then literally load it through the opening tin by tin, then I manoeuvre in another box in and repeat. Each box renders the one before it inaccessible. For the first few boxes I can pot-hole my way in there through a Jenny sized hole. So the trolleys won't work for this one.

When I said 'bury' the stuff, I didn't mean bury it in the ground, I meant push it deep into this void and push more and more in after it. Sorry about being unclear.

To get all the tins in or out is a right faff and I don't want to do it more than a couple of times a year. Using it as any sort of go-to larder is out of the question.

I'm thinking I might give up on using it for tins and might dedicate that space as a 'stash and forget' for equipment and bottled water.
The space where my bottled water is now is better accessible but gets hot in summer. I guess I just have to give more thought to what non-food items can be shunted around to the best practical space for each item.
Graceful Degradation! Prepping's objective summed up in two words. Turning Disaster into Mild Inconvenience by the power of fore-thought

Not Feeling Optimistic. Let me be wrong
grenfell
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Joined: Thu Jul 04, 2013 7:55 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 6.

Post by grenfell »

The great escape isn't a million miles away from what i've made. Not on rails but basically the same idea. One slight disadvantage with the boxes i've made is that they only roll in one direction . If they don't go in a straight line it's a case of dragging them round.
Sorry for taking the burying thing too literally , makes far more sense now.
jansman
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Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 7:16 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 6.

Post by jansman »

Shelves are your friend! I don’t ( obviously) know the layout of your house. Do you have a spare room or outbuildings? We are fortunate to have a walk- in pantry, which for two of us , easily holds a couple of months worth of preserved grub. I dry lined a brick outbuilding many years ago with three freezers and shelves floor to ceiling full of cans and jars ,and stacks of heavy duty 5 gallon barrels and buckets with dry goods. Everything grouped generically and easy to see and rotate. Now that it’s just the two of us, that building is now becoming a store for emergency equipment, hotel bags and home brew, with just a little food storage, and the freezers of course.

Organisation is liberating, and it saves a lot of money by minimising waste. Could you do something like that, perhaps?
In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: It goes on.

Robert Frost.

Covid 19: After that level of weirdness ,any situation is certainly possible.

Me.
jennyjj01
Posts: 3429
Joined: Sun Jun 04, 2017 11:09 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 6.

Post by jennyjj01 »

jansman wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2019 7:03 pm Shelves are your friend! I don’t ( obviously) know the layout of your house. Do you have a spare room or outbuildings? ...
Organisation is liberating, and it saves a lot of money by minimising waste. Could you do something like that, perhaps?
The other half isn't on board with filling the bedrooms with food. So I make sure the bedroom drawers and cupboards are well stocked with toiletries and stuff that might sanely live there. The kitchen is well stocked, but the only places that I can comfortably use for food overstock are the garage and loft. Garage is generally garage fridges and freezers and a few hidey holes. Loft gets too hot and is seldom visited. He'd think I was nuts stashing food under the bed, though I'm trying to bring him on board with 'Brexit prepping'. Rather embarrassing TBH. I have considered biting the bullet and renting a lock-up but I struggle to justify that to myself.
Somebody should make a prepper parody of the R Whites ' I'm a secret lemonade drinker' advert.... 'I'm a secret uk-prepper' :D :tinfoil
Graceful Degradation! Prepping's objective summed up in two words. Turning Disaster into Mild Inconvenience by the power of fore-thought

Not Feeling Optimistic. Let me be wrong
jennyjj01
Posts: 3429
Joined: Sun Jun 04, 2017 11:09 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 6.

Post by jennyjj01 »

duplicate deleted
Graceful Degradation! Prepping's objective summed up in two words. Turning Disaster into Mild Inconvenience by the power of fore-thought

Not Feeling Optimistic. Let me be wrong
jansman
Posts: 13622
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 7:16 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 6.

Post by jansman »

Fair enough. It’s a shame he is not ‘ on board’ as it were. Sadly, it doesn’t take Brexit or War or... pick your scenario. In my case it takes my dear wife’s cancer, ( she gets paid, I do not) to realise that a pantry full of grub is valuable when there is an income loss.
In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: It goes on.

Robert Frost.

Covid 19: After that level of weirdness ,any situation is certainly possible.

Me.
jennyjj01
Posts: 3429
Joined: Sun Jun 04, 2017 11:09 pm

Re: What Preps are you doing this week? Part 6.

Post by jennyjj01 »

jennyjj01 wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2019 8:40 amTo get to this place (under my twisting staircase) I have to pull out the tumble dryer and assorted cleaning stuff
Lol. So the OH pointed to the tumble dryer and said nothing for a while.... "What have you done? What's different?"
"Huh? I looked at the dryer. It was centralised, not a spec of dust and soap powder etc was neatly stacked beside it.
"Ah yes. I was worried about all the towel fluff from the back of the dryer catching fire. The cupboard was thick in dust so I cleaned it out and sorted out all the junk"

If only he'd caught me waist deep in a hole in the plasterboard 'tin mining' with the kitchen a war-zone and a lounge that looked like Tesco's stockroom, with the loft ladder down upstairs. :D :tinfoil
Actually... Maybe I am nuts. But I'm in good company here :)
Graceful Degradation! Prepping's objective summed up in two words. Turning Disaster into Mild Inconvenience by the power of fore-thought

Not Feeling Optimistic. Let me be wrong