Chocolate, while it can be inexpensive, is one of the most difficult items to store one way I saw it done is that you get a small lockbox or cupboard with a lock and give the key to the less, errm, nibble-prone member of the family. Or in an extreme case they had the choc behind 3 locks so all family members had to agree and get their keys for the chocs to come out
Last house we lived in was in a village with one shop, which shut half day wed & sat and all day sun. So I got in th ehabit of stashing chocolate and sweeties and it worked ok. But when we moved here, no shops for miles. I tried buying a load once a week in the supermarket then stashing it in the freezer so I wouldn't nibble..... until I found that if you dip a frozen Mars bar in tea it melts beautifully
Me hangs head in despair and shame.
Empty wrappers, guilty.
Cooking chocolate, guilty.
Have some good dark chocolate at a place where I can't get at it. It being physically out of reach is its only salvation.
If only cocoa-beans would grow here...
It's really difficult to do long-term food storage in my house. My wife is unconvinced and looks at me as if I'm a bit mad when I talk about stocking up. But at the same time, she will fill the freezer so you can barely close the lid! So as long as the electricity doesn't go, we'll be ok for a while...
At the moment, my wife is staying at her parents' house for family reasons, so recently I have been stocking up on tinned food and rice/pasta etc. So in my own covert way, I'm building up the food stocks while she's away...
Attack Warning Red wrote:
At the moment, my wife is staying at her parents' house for family reasons, so recently I have been stocking up on tinned food and rice/pasta etc. So in my own covert way, I'm building up the food stocks while she's away...
I pity you when she gets back and finds 200 tins of beans and spam hidden in the understairs cupboard!!!
I'm currently going through a bit of a financial crisis, and that stockpile of food which now fills half my bedroom is looking ever so tempting... Especially the tinned rice pudding I've been stocking up on.
Trying to convinve my parents to stock up was a pain in the tail end man, at one point they even said they wouldn't want to live in a post SHTF world. We'd have huge raging arguements just because I'd bought a new gizmo or doodad (or 100 cans of baked beans on the cheap). They kept telling me to "Grow up"
Meyou wrote:I'm currently going through a bit of a financial crisis, and that stockpile of food which now fills half my bedroom is looking ever so tempting... Especially the tinned rice pudding I've been stocking up on.
But isn't that the point of stocking up for an emergency? It's not just all about when TSHTF - it can help you get through life day to day. So what if you have to use a little of your stash? You'll get through this financial crisis and then be able to replace what you've used.
My prepping is there for all kind of crisis, not just the blackout/earthquake/<insert natural disaster here>/zombie infestation kind of issue. It's there so I can feed my family if we ever have financial problems and I'd rather pay the mortgage and use my stash than lose the house or get the electric cut off.
I second what Poledragon says - stockpiling/prepping/whatever isn't just for worst-case scenario, SHTF type stuff. It's also for personal life emergencies, on your own small level.
In my own case I always keep a buffer of money 'for a rainy day' stored away in a couple of different banks. Realistically I could probably go without work for a whole year or so if I needed to (I'd rather not of course!), and still pay bills and mortgage. I realise that's probably quite rare, but I really don't spend my money on anything really, preferring to squirrel it away for the future... I was made redundant 5 years ago, and had a money buffer about a quarter of the size it is now, and managed ok without work for 9 months. I understand it'd be a lot harder if I was only just making ends meet each month, so I know I'm lucky.
I also have a rental income from a flat I own (there's no mortage on it, so no outgoings except maintenance once a year). That keeps the buffer ever-growing.
So store some money away if you can, while prepping for the unexpected too...
Attack Warning Red wrote:I second what Poledragon says - stockpiling/prepping/whatever isn't just for worst-case scenario, SHTF type stuff. It's also for personal life emergencies, on your own small level.
In my own case I always keep a buffer of money 'for a rainy day' stored away in a couple of different banks. Realistically I could probably go without work for a whole year or so if I needed to (I'd rather not of course!), and still pay bills and mortgage. I realise that's probably quite rare, but I really don't spend my money on anything really, preferring to squirrel it away for the future... I was made redundant 5 years ago, and had a money buffer about a quarter of the size it is now, and managed ok without work for 9 months. I understand it'd be a lot harder if I was only just making ends meet each month, so I know I'm lucky.
I also have a rental income from a flat I own (there's no mortage on it, so no outgoings except maintenance once a year). That keeps the buffer ever-growing.
So store some money away if you can, while prepping for the unexpected too...
Good advice AWR, lets hope the monetary system/banks don't collapse though - thats what worries me.
one way I saw it done is that you get a small lockbox or cupboard with a lock and give the key to the less, errm, nibble-prone member of the family. Or in an extreme case they had the choc behind 3 locks so all family members had to agree and get their keys for the chocs to come out 
