Preparedness for when

nuatha

danih wrote: »

Tis a scary world at times, Love how you report stuff GQ. If you ever write a book I want it.

Time to start collating those posts and writing other stuff GQ and I'll put a pre-order in as well.

Just thinking about my hoard of prep - looking a lot more organised, and have tomorrow, sat and sunday to finish the organising.

I think I have enough food for a month, water purification tablets for a month, bottled water for a fortnight, and just about enough pet food for a month. Also candles, lighting stuff, camping stove, wind up radios . . ..
. . . . . . . . . . . .

Anyway, enough of most stuff for a month of no shop access.

I think!

Is there a basic list anywhere of what you might need if you were housebound for a month (flu, broken leg, big financial hiccup)?

I think I have a really good stash built up - but what if I've overlooked something really obvious / important?

There are lists just about everywhere on the t'interweb, however they aren't as much use as you might imagine, they don't know your tastes, your families pet hates and allergies.
There's two ways to work out what a month's supplies should be - try to remember what you've used this last month or diary everything you use for the next month (the last is a bit more work but is far more useful).
If you eat out work out an alternative meal that you could cook that night, same applies to takeaways. Now look at where you store the ingredients for those meals. I can keep frozen food for 7 days without electricity, so I don't rely on the freezers for more than 1 week of the month's prep food. (I generally have several weeks worth of meals in the freezers, I just don't count more than a weeks worth as preps*. I keep a store of tinned veg, whereas we'd generally use frozen on a day to day basis.
How do you cook each meal, how would you cook it if the mains services were down? How could you adapt things to make better use of those resources - and why not incorporate that into your regular daily life and save some money while you're at it. (Thinking particularly of thermal cookers or hayboxes for minimal resource cooking).
How many loo rolls did you use in a week, month? Which gives you an idea how long they'll last.
Petfood, if you have pets, what are they fed each week/month, what about other supplies. (We keep several extra sacks of cat litter on hand, the cats will use it, but we have enough on hand to use as dry toilets if the need arises) We generally only keep 6-8 weeks of tinned food on hand (but will buy more for exceptionally good offers) and keep 2-3 months of dry cat food - there's never enough space/money to have everything you'd like to have.
Repeat for toiletries, cleaning products etc - at the end of the exercise you will have a clearer understanding of what you actually use rather than buy.
Add 7 days worth of family comfort meals - comfort food in a crisis is a godsend.
Tally up your families medicines.

Where internet lists can be useful, are emergency supplies, things like first aid kit contents.
We have our own researcher hereabouts, Bedsit Bob has been testing various lamps and battery combinations as well as gas consumption for the flat burner several of us favour. This information is a wonderful in helping you work out your needs.
There's a lot of useful info crops up in posts on this thread - GQ mentioned a 6 D cell Maglite a few days ago - as valuable as a cosh as as a torch - first introduced to me by serving police officers many moons ago. I don't carry one because of the weight and bulk, but do have several smaller maglite products because I've always found them reliable.

When I first put my usage diary together, I forgot to include seasonings and herbs - the very things that would make food far more palatable.
When you've got your first month's diary, you really do have an idea of how your stocks will last and where the holes are. Next have a think about how the changing seasons will affect how you eat.

* There's a lot of ways the S can HTF, having 6 weeks of frozen batched cooked meals has made my life far easier on several occasions, mainly when Herself (my wife) was having major health problems and was regularly being admitted to hospital. Equally when my health falls apart as it does more often than I'd wish.

Sorry it got long, hopefully some it will be helpful.

danih

The most dangerous people are the least obvious - our work collegues, neighbours, friends and family.

danih

Thank you Nuatha, like the idea of a diary

[Deleted User]

calling Bob. Advice needed please

What is the best way of looking after a rechargeable battery? Run it down or keep it charged? Warm place or cold place?

jk0

kittie wrote: »

calling Bob. Advice needed please

What is the best way of looking after a rechargeable battery? Run it down or keep it charged? Warm place or cold place?

Did you see the thing I built last month Kittie?:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/66567888#Comment_66567888

daz378

going on a unison march in london on saturday ...our local branch organizing it.......my neighbours a nice polish couple dropped off a thank you card and choccies..... because i took in a few parcels for them.... nice of them (didn't have the heart to tell them i am diabetic though).. shoulder not fully healed but is improving......the recent global downturn is somewhat worrying.... as its come from no where....sharks seem to be circling Greece again

Butterfly_Brain

Is that the "No more Austerity" demo daz?

GreyQueen

Morning all.

Am slooowly getting caffeinated enough to face the day. I tend to go into dormouse-mode at this time of the year, something which will accelerate once the clocks go back.

Yesterday afternoon, I was briefly at my GP practice, which shares its site with a pharmacy. As I walked up, I could see that the delivery van from the pharmacy suppliers was outside. Then I went into the pharmacy and the driver's mate came out of the patients' unisex toilet which is located in the foyer, at the same second as the (only) loo flushed.

So, clearly hadn't washed his hands. He then went through two sets of doors out onto the street (touching the handles on the manual doors) and started taking crates of medicines from the van into the pharmacy (thru another manual door).

I can't count how many times I have seen in this life that people simply will not wash their hands after using the loo. And this includes food handlers. It isn't a surprise that there are poisonings and stomach upsets, it's a miracle there aren't a lot more.

Given that there are plenty of people amongst us who are consistantly dirty in their habits, I fear for a contagious disease situation.

As an example of laziness which drives me, SuperGran, and a few others crazy; we have communal bins at the Towers. We have several corralls of them dotted around the place. Each have general waste, recycling, food waste and glass bins. There are several general bins in each corrall and they sit shoulder-to-shoulder.

So, what do you do when you come to a bin, lift the lid and find it's full?

A. Lift the lid of the bin alongside and discover it's completely empty or almost empty and put your rubbish in there.

B. Chuck your bag onto the top of the overfull bin, even though the lid won't go back down.

Sadly, the answer is nearly always B. And the beggars keep on putting stuff into the overfilled bin alongisde the empty bins, until the lid lifts anything up to 45-90 degrees from the horizontal. And if the pile is too high, they drop the rubbish bags alongside the communal bin. They don't investigate the bin alongside the full one or consider walking 20 yards to the next bin corrall (and none of them are more than 20 yards from the next one).

And you then see rats, of which we have many as we are close to the river and beside areas where slovens drop fast-food scraps on the pavements, running in and out of the bins.:mad:

With alternate weekly collections, bins can be in this state for up to 14 days at a time. The food waste bins are seldom used but are very strong with powerful magnetic lids and are pretty much vermin-proof, as well as being emptied weekly.

Imagine that you live in a small community, perhaps struggling to survive together after a catastrophic event, and someone, or several someones, simply won't use soap and water. They could jeopardise the wellbeing and safety of everyone in the group. If there was little-to-no access to medical care, people with dirty habits could cause the spread of diarrheral disease which could kill children and the elderly and make even the able-bodied very sick.

Germ theory has been around for over 100 years but elementary hygiene seems to be beyond many people; they know what to do but they're too bliddy idle to do it.

VJsmum

Having been victim to such a bug this week, GQ, I very much know where you are coming from.

When using door handles from loos I try to go high or low on them to at least find an untouched bit - but it is scant comfort, I presume germs crawl?

I am not one for anti- baccing everywhere, but think I may get a small bottle for my work desk as that is the most common public loo I use - and it is used by a lot of people. But then I work with students in a public building so I can only do so much.. :-/

GreyQueen

I'm sorry that you've been ill, VJsMum. I have friends who teach both in schools and at the uni and they have a lot more illnesses than the regular run of office fauna.

I don't consider myself to be a germophobe at all, but I am very careful to wash my hands after coming home and taking my shoes off, and after popping out to the bins. One of my more notoriously-insantiary neighbours is having workmen in today - he invited SuperGran in to view the kitchen now, and the view it again later on after the work is completed.

He's such a filthy beggar that she declined, inventing an urgent errand elsewhere; you can smell the stench from his home outside. But the kicker is that this man is employed as a cleaner.

Because that's what you do with people who are visibly dirty in their persons and clothing; hire them as cleaners. Madness.