Preparedness for when

GreyQueen

Hi Fuddle, yes, I have a very small flat.

Kitch is 6 x6 feet, living room 9 x 12 feet and bedroom just about big enough to take a standard double against three walls and with a small alcove to hold a checst of drawers with hanging rail above.

Yup, you have to be creative and need to think of having stores in several places rather than just one.

I keep tinned foods only under the bed. With a divan, I would think that a bit of skillful work with scissors would free up access to the frame. I have dismantled divan bases into their componenet parts before with scissors for the cloth and a hammer to knock the wood apart.

As well as the wooden framing, the base of the divan will likely be a sort of plastic cloth which is held on with staples. This just stops dust etc going up under into the divan base but you will need to remove that (lever staples off with a screwdriver is my best suggestion) or whatever you post through the divan sides will just hang up on there.

Plastic boxes have their uses and their limitations. They won't be strong enough to handle much weight which will mean their uses for tinned or jarred goods are limited.

My tinned goods sit on simple wooden trollies which roll in and out of the bed. I have a sense of "squeam" about having goods like flour or pasta under my bed. I don't know whether this is rational or not, but the flour based goods are going to be the ones which are the most attractive to pests, both the kind which Tom chases in the cartoons and crawly things.

I have a valance over my bedstead (pine bedstead not a divan) to hide the goodies from casual view. I need to be a bit cagey because unless my bedroom door is shut, my bed is in direct line-of-sight from the front door.

I also store bottles of oil and bags of porridge oats in the kitchen base unit with my saucepans (they fill up what would otherwise be a bit of wasted space around the edge). I have a storage stool in my living room which holds more tins and a few attractive boxes and baskets here and there which I guess people would be puzzled to open and find canned food in.

Where I do have dry goods like beans, lentils, flour, I have them in glass jars, the kind with the hinged lid with the rubber seals on. If you re-purpose screw-top jars for food storage, please be aware that some pantry beetles are small enough to walk around the thread of glass on the jar's neck and get into the jar that way.

I've never had critters either two legged or six legged but I do keep an eye on things. Pests don't like to be disturbed so keeping up with house-cleaning and decluttering all helps, not that I need to tell you anything on that score.

If you have space, one of the best unconventional larders is a metal filing cabinet. Old tall 4 drawer ones turn up secondhand cheap or free from time to time. According to Rawles' book TEOTWAWKI, they are mouseproof if on a level floor and hold lots. You could even keep a few papers in them as a fake front.

Think laterally and I'm sure you can come up with plenty. It's hard to advise without knowing what kind of home decor you have/ intend to have and your needs and what works around your family (I have only myself to please or annoy with my domestic set-up).

HTH. If you have anything specific, please ask either on the open thread or by PM; I'm around on MSE at some point most days.

jk0

On the subject of unusual storage solutions, I just ordered one of these storage bath panels:

http://www.plumbworld.co.uk/croydex-gloss-white-storage-6340-23604

westcoastscot

AOT sorry to hear you have PsA too - its a bu**er isn't it? never mind, we can cheerlead for each other . I've already made a lot of practical changes to make life easier and shall continue to do so.

You have to think creatively with storage space, but it's amazing what you can do with a little thought, for instance I've gone back to a single bed as it's firmer and easier to get out of now, and it's also tall, so my bedside table is six large plastic lidded boxes full of wool with a quilt over them - makes my bedside lamp easy to reach also! - I have stuff stashed everywhere!!!! Remember slow and steady wins the race

WCS

hauxwell

Fuddle, obviously you may well be moving but there maybe other ways to get some land to grow some vegetables.

We got our first plot (we have two) from responding to an advert in the local supermarket to someone wanting a person to look after their vegetable garden. They don't have the time and we get a very decent sized plot with shed/greenhouse for just 20% of the produce per year.

I have seen plenty of people advertising for such places and folk advertising land to rent for a little amount for veg growing. I live in a semi-ruralish area so I assume it would be more available here but I am sure things are about if you ask. Good luck

ALIBOBSY

Speaking of allotments I have recently noticed more and more facebook pages sprouting up for sites under threat of being sold off. I have recently exchanged a few tweets with a nice journo at the indie who feels the same as I that its a growing trend and is looking to do an article on it.

Feels like the councils are "selling the family silver" to balance the books and it's so wrong. Especially when Cam and Pickles said they would "protect" allotments and green belt.

It's so depressing how everything seems to come down to cash and what those who are the richest see as "best". Watched the Jacque Peretti follow up to "the men who made us fat", the "men who made us thin". Basically diets don't work long term and exercise is the same, the reality is the thing which makes us fat is the food industry, but its more convienent to blame individuals and keeping raking in the cash, then when guilted out enough you will shell out even more cash for them to sell you diets/diet food/exercise etc etc.

Policy is based on BMI-a figure only ever designed to be used for large population averages NOT individuals, and was from insurance figures-yep no science basis at all. The decision for western governments policies to change the bands for BMI to reclassify millions from "normal" to "overweight" was based on a report funded by drugs companies and the main author admitted in the programme the band change and talk of "obesity crisis" put their ideas on the map and got future funding.

The reality is growing evidence suggest it makes little or no difference to health being overweight, its actually how fit you are and that you can be fit and fat, but that would loose a lot of people a lot of cash.

The message I took that has wider implications was that once an idea becomes "policy" and therefore companies and governments are "invested" its extremely difficult to be able to challenge the position, irrelevant of how right or wrong it is. For cash to drive everything in the world we live in to such a large degree is surely immoral and a long road to no-where.

No wonder more and more of us don't trust TPTB, bet they HATE the internet lol.

Ali x

pineapple

herbily wrote: »

Half way through, there was an American "financial war correspondent" called Max Keiser, and he seems to have been everywhere the economy collapsed, and err... now he's in London.

Max Keiser has a regular slot on RT. You can catch up with his shows here.
http://rt.com/shows/keiser-report/
I used to be really into him - not so much of late. But I do believe he knows his stuff and it's good to get a different slant on things.

pineapple

GreyQueen wrote: »

My tinned goods sit on simple wooden trollies which roll in and out of the bed. I have a sense of "squeam" about having goods like flour or pasta under my bed. I don't know whether this is rational or not, but the flour based goods are going to be the ones which are the most attractive to pests, both the kind which Tom chases in the cartoons and crawly things.

I have a divan with drawers. I used to keep things like flour and pasta in them till the moment I saw a mouse in the bedroom :eek:. After a sleepless night imagining Mr and Mrs Mouse and all the little mouses partying like there was no tomorrow just inches below me, I moved all the packet stuff out.
Actually I don't much like that bed. The border collie sleeps on it as well but finds it a bit high to jump up to in her current state so I have constructed a 'dog disability ramp' out of a pasting table - which is covered with a rug for grip.
Plus I don't believe it's as comfortable as a sprung base bed but I would miss the storage.

notjustlaura

GreyQueen wrote: »

...
They'll think we were spoiled and silly and didn't know we were onto a good thing....

The thing is that they will be right!

I'm really enjoying the talk about allotments and growing edibles because I'm going to start gardening. Today! I've resisted it for a long time because I'm scared of beasties but I've decided it's time to conquer the creepy crawlies. I live in a flat with a very damp, slug infested, north facing garden on a hill so I've persuaded my folks to let me use their green house, cold frame and a bit of space for containers. I know this is a really small start and compared to what some of you are doing it's nothing. But starting small seems like a good idea.

Today I'm going up to clear out what's there already (old hanging baskets and the like). I'm going to investigate compost and sow some seasonally appropriate seeds (for salads). Am really terrible excited!

metherer

notjustlaura wrote: »

I know this is a really small start and compared to what some of you are doing it's nothing. But starting small seems like a good idea.

A small start is better than no start x

fuddle

I enjoyed your post alibobsy.

I'm interested in diet norms and expectations we have today and I think we have lost our way a great deal. I'm a size 16. I'm curvy and podgy. I can't run fast but I walk fast for miles. I consider myself fit and healthy without a weight problem (other than the constant need to lose weight because I'm fat and wobbly - influenced?). The medical profession consider myself to be in the obese category, seriously I know I'm not very tall but size 16 obese? It has frightened me and spurred me on to think of the normal woman of yesteryear. I'm not too different surely? Our social norms of a healthy weight have been skewed and I agree - fuelled by money in all camps.

I'm happy at my size (mostly) and I feel for me that if I lost any more than 6lbs I would look a bit gaunt. 6lbs would have me still on the cusp of overweight/obese. Ludicrous?