My Arms Ache~

For the first time in a decade, all of our Earthly possessions are under one roof.

My husband and I have spent the past 4 weekends plus Monday and Tuesday moving everything out of our storage facility into our garage. And our library. And our kitchen.

It's a good thing we don't have furniture in all of those rooms right now. Or there'd be no place for the boxes, and boxes and boxes that plague me right now.

Seriously, I'm thrilled that we were able to move all of this stuff to the house. It's just there is so much to do now. We have to go through the boxes, sort, purge, repackage and then catalog and put into the garage with all the other stuff.

Going through storage was a little like Christmas. We found things that we had forgotten about or didn't know what our notes on our inventory meant.

I was able to see all of our food storage and make mental (and real) notes about what we have, what we need more of. For instance, we only have about 5 buckets of beans. What was I thinking when we bought this food years ago? I need at least twice that. And powdered milk? Let's just say that I can be the food storage dairy if I need to be. I'm thinking I need to learn to make cheeses.

Why oh why ALL the milk? Oh well...

And, we were able to get some exercise moving everything. Let me just say, buckets filled with rice, beans, wheat and such are NOT light. Who knew a bucket of sugar could cause such pain?

So the next 6 months or so will be spent filling in the holes of our food storage we realized we have. It will be fun. Not cheap. But definitely interesting. Won't you join me?

IN THE BEGINNING ... There isn't much money

Believe me, I understand all to well that there isn't much money to go around these days. Heck ever. But with food storage, I have found that you just really have to make it a priority or else you'll never get it all done.

If you're not willing or able to take HUGE steps at purchasing a complete food storage program, I suggest you take toddler steps. Frankly, I think the time for baby steps has passed. It it time to crank things up a bit.

But have heart, you can get started and not break the bank. I'll be posting some ideas from time to time. Until then, check out these blogs that work specifically with those starting out.

http://everydayfoodstorage.net/start-here
http://funwithfoodstorage.net/

I'll add more when I fire up my Google Reader. I'll also be adding things to my side bar. Until then, here's my getting started tip for today....

Hamburger Helper + TVP + Canned Vegetables

Yes, frugal preppers, you read that right. It was suggested to me years ago that Hamburger Helper is a good place to start with food storage. There are a lot of Pros and just a few Cons:

:::PROS
o Familiar food to most people
o Relatively inexpensive
o Requires no special ingredients other than water and heat
o TVP is also relatively inexpensive and a little goes a LONG way
o Stores for a long, long time
o Lots of different flavors to vary your meals

:::CONS
o High sodium and fat content make it not the healthiest meal on the planet
o Not everyone likes casseroles

Hope this helps you take the first step.

You really need to get started.

Rats!

This afternoon my husband helped me move some things around in our pantry. One thing led to another and we ended up re-organizing the entire space. It turned out great.

We had needed to do this since we moved in 7 months ago. No need to rush things, huh?

In the process we moved all the buckets we had around and put some things in buckets that were not in buckets. "Why?", you ask?

It's because we have a bit of mice problem in ye ole garage/pantry area. We thought we had it under control with some poison. But the problem must be worse than we thought. Our new house is in a subdivision. But we're all on lots around an acre and there is an empty lot next to us and 2 empty lots across the street. Our house faces a big drop off, so there are no houses directly behind us. So there is lots of space for critters to roam free around us.

As we moved things around, we continually found, umm...evidence, of their visits. Yuck!

So now, everything that is not a can or bucket or bottle is in some kind of rubbermaid, gladware, or bucket. Hopefully between the poison and containers, the little critters will move on and leave me alone.

I am not afraid of mice, I just don't like them. Oh! I'm getting the heebie jeebies just thinking about it.

Once we get the pantry completely situated and restocked a little I will share some pictures. If I posted pictures right now, you'd think I was THE most unorganized slob you've ever seen.

...and you wouldn't be far off!