Prepping for the challenge ahead...

Floss

Having read various threads about price increases, challenging budgets, supermarket stock levels, I thought maybe we could have a new prepping thread focusing on the reality of what we could be doing in our own homes to mitigate the challenges ahead (and not armageddon, bug-out bags & purifying tablets!)

Floss

Whilst not a self-confessed prepper, my home does have a small Harry Potter style pantry under the stairs (with the wine rack!) containing at least one of those things I use regularly - mayo, oils, rice, pasta, condiments etc.

As I live alone, I don't have to explain why there are 3 bags of cat kibble and my stash of OTC painkillers won't get used & not replaced 😉

JinJinBlue

A good idea Floss. I live alone too and my take on prepping is to make sure that I have enough essentials and things that I will use/like, to see me through what looks like a tough time ahead. I'm lucky that I have space to store stuff. None of us can see into the future but a little bit of prepping now might save a lot of worry later.
My non food preps include making sure that I have emergency lighting and blankets and that my warmer clothes are in good repair. I'm sure that others will have some great ideas to share. X

London_1

I too live alone and having just defrosted my freezer, when i get back from my holiday in mid -July  I will start making preparations for the coming winter.
I had already started by sorting out my tinned cupboards before I went away, in date order with earliest date at the front.

 I have 8 cupboards in my kitchen divided up.

1.  Condiments : herbs :spices: baking stuff flour;sugars;dried fruit etc.stock cubes 

2.  Tinned goods, not just beans, tomatoes, etc but fish,vegetables etc as well,

1  Pickles, jams honeys,sauces. pasta, rice, 

1.  Teas,coffees,hot drinks, chocolate,cocoa, squashes

1.  Washing stuff:  liquid gel,soap powder,white vinegar,soda crystals ,scouring sponges etc

1.  Loo rolls bleach, loo cleaner,disinfectant, hand soap tin foil cling film baking paper etc 

1. Dried milk,UHT milk, Oils, and any odds and ends that I perhaps use only occasionally.
This also holds reduced tins with dents or damaged labels

On the inside of each cupboard door I have listed whats in there so I can see at a glance what I'm running low on.
I am a pretty organised old  soul, and both my DDs say its great, as if they run out they know I usually have it in one of my cupboards

I shall give all of the cupboards a good overhaul when I am home again, as I have a feeling things will get a lot tougher over the next year, at least while the European war is on as it will take a good while to get Ukraine running again when hopefully Russia decidedes to stop fighting (propbably if there is a coup, and Putin vanishes )

Its not a case of hoarding, just keeping a strict eye on supplies that I have, and the prices, as I have done for the past 60 plus years.

I  shall top up some flour,rice, pasta, etc. and the flour I will freeze for several days triple wrapped to kill off any wee beaties that are in it.

I have been  squirrelling away any spare left over cash at the end of every month since January, into a separate account for topping up the freezer with meat fish etc.

A trip to Whitstable will be on the cards as well for some fish to freeze,its only about 30 minutes from where I live, and well worth the trip as the fish market there is lovely. 

I shall also have a day of batch cooking for freezer stand-by meals.. As soon as they become available I shall be foraging for blackberries to freeze, and my kind neighbour always swaps some of her apples from her tree for a couple of home made cakes. The apples I shall cook in honey and freeze in portions for a taste of summer next January.

I shall watch with interest other people tips to prep for the coming winter .

I always have spare light bulbs and batteries etc in the cupboard under my stairs.

I try to think of what I may need anyway in case the weather is bad as if we get snow or ice I never venture out much as I have mobility problems and use a stick to walk with as falling over isn't a great idea at my age, as bones break far too easily  

JackieO xx

newlywed

I have some 5l bottles of water, matches, candles and between 2-4 weeks worth of most food, grocery, and toiletry items. Mainly because i have booked twice a month food deliveries for the last 2 years, so make sure we don’t starve if we miss one for any reason. 

Recently I have added a few tins of food that can be eaten cold, fish, bean salad, tinned veg, so along with the staples of oatcakes, nuts, porridge oats (can be cold soaked), we would be ok for a short while with zero electricity.

living in a flat means storage is limited, as is bbq options in case of power outages.

Not a massive prepper but I feel less anxious having a small plan in place, especially since we did have a 3 day power cut some years back (living in a city it’s unusual), turned out the power cut blew our electric meter!  Trying to make a cuppa with tea lights and a heavy based saucepan is only fun the first time!

newlywed

I have also reassessed my budget and realised how much money I have been squandering on unnecessary food “treats” and eBay clothing purchases.

So am paying more attention to food costs v quality and joined the grocery challenge, in the hopes of ending up with some spare cash at the end of the month…. On paper there should be some left, even with the potential October fuel increases. 

JinJinBlue

London_1 said:

I too live alone and having just defrosted my freezer, when i get back from my holiday in mid -July  I will start making preparations for the coming winter.
I had already started by sorting out my tinned cupboards before I went away, in date order with earliest date at the front.

 I have 8 cupboards in my kitchen divided up.

1.  Condiments : herbs :spices: baking stuff flour;sugars;dried fruit etc.stock cubes 

2.  Tinned goods, not just beans, tomatoes, etc but fish,vegetables etc as well,

1  Pickles, jams honeys,sauces. pasta, rice, 

1.  Teas,coffees,hot drinks, chocolate,cocoa, squashes

1.  Washing stuff:  liquid gel,soap powder,white vinegar,soda crystals ,scouring sponges etc

1.  Loo rolls bleach, loo cleaner,disinfectant, hand soap tin foil cling film baking paper etc 

1. Dried milk,UHT milk, Oils, and any odds and ends that I perhaps use only occasionally.
This also holds reduced tins with dents or damaged labels

On the inside of each cupboard door I have listed whats in there so I can see at a glance what I'm running low on.
I am a pretty organised old  soul, and both my DDs say its great, as if they run out they know I usually have it in one of my cupboards

I shall give all of the cupboards a good overhaul when I am home again, as I have a feeling things will get a lot tougher over the next year, at least while the European war is on as it will take a good while to get Ukraine running again when hopefully Russia decidedes to stop fighting (propbably if there is a coup, and Putin vanishes )

Its not a case of hoarding, just keeping a strict eye on supplies that I have, and the prices, as I have done for the past 60 plus years.

I  shall top up some flour,rice, pasta, etc. and the flour I will freeze for several days triple wrapped to kill off any wee beaties that are in it.

I have been  squirrelling away any spare left over cash at the end of every month since January, into a separate account for topping up the freezer with meat fish etc.

A trip to Whitstable will be on the cards as well for some fish to freeze,its only about 30 minutes from where I live, and well worth the trip as the fish market there is lovely. 

I shall also have a day of batch cooking for freezer stand-by meals.. As soon as they become available I shall be foraging for blackberries to freeze, and my kind neighbour always swaps some of her apples from her tree for a couple of home made cakes. The apples I shall cook in honey and freeze in portions for a taste of summer next January.

I shall watch with interest other people tips to prep for the coming winter .

I always have spare light bulbs and batteries etc in the cupboard under my stairs.

I try to think of what I may need anyway in case the weather is bad as if we get snow or ice I never venture out much as I have mobility problems and use a stick to walk with as falling over isn't a great idea at my age, as bones break far too easily  

JackieO xx

Jackie, so much good advice. Thank you. Time to sort my cupboards out and put a list on the doors. As to broken bones, it's taken me over a year to recover after breaking my shoulder this time last year. Still not quite right but lots better. I have osteoarthritis and osteopenia so going out in bad weather and slipping over isn't an option. I don't think any of us here hoard but are just trying to build a buffer to help see us through what is probably going to be a tough few months at least. If/when others are maybe panic buying or fighting over YS food I will have done my preps. I won't be adding to any kind of mad rush to clear the sm shelves and there will be plenty for others. Do you remember that young nurse who sat in her car crying at the beginning of the pandemic? When she came off duty, there was nothing left to buy. That image will stay with me for a very long time. Anyway, being prepared isn't such a new thing. One of Aesop's Fables springs to mind. The town mouse and the country mouse. Maybe, we are all country mice at heart. 🐭. 😉

JinJinBlue

newlywed said:

I have also reassessed my budget and realised how much money I have been squandering on unnecessary food “treats” and eBay clothing purchases.

So am paying more attention to food costs v quality and joined the grocery challenge, in the hopes of ending up with some spare cash at the end of the month…. On paper there should be some left, even with the potential October fuel increases. 

I do so agree newlywed. One of my "treats" was plants. Sad, I know. This year we did a seed and plant swap at church and I've got my compost free from the recycling centre. So a big save there. Any money saved is being put into a savings account for unforseen things. Last year, my living room ceiling collapsed above the window and it was discovered that, I needed a very drastic roof repair. My insurance wouldn't cover it because they said that it was due to poor maintenance by the previous owner. I learnt the hard way. Good luck with the grocery challenge. 

Wicked_Lady

Nowadays there's only the two of us but I still keep a well stocked cupboard. Since the pandemic I keep my extra packets/tins in the garage and rotate them into the house when needed.

We tend to buy a lot of meat at Costc*, then open freeze and portion out in bags in the freezer. Some of their meat and fish is so big we share a portion. I always keep a couple of loaves in the freezer too; a large sliced wholemeal gets split into three bags so about 6 slices per bag. I also chop and freeze onions and leeks as you don't always want lots in a dish, so I just take a handful from the bag in the freezer.

Come the autumn there will be a lot of apples put out locally for people to help themselves so they will be cooked and frozen for later in the year. Our Victoria plum tree is having a rest this year but I still have one box from last year to defrost and use.

thriftwizard

I've always kept a store-cupboard, with duplicates of the things (vegetable stock powder, herbs, spices, tinned fish, tomatoes & beans, flour, cornflour, sugar, condiments, dried yeast etc.) we use a lot of; when I get a new one out & open it, I know I need to re-stock as soon as I'm somewhere where the prices are reasonable. Bearing in mind the current situation, I may expand that to two of the most "vital' supplies - sometimes that's just one jar or packet, but sometimes it's a whole tray of tins or sack of vegetables. I'm careful to rotate things by date; I'm aware that our usual level of stocks can look like hoarding to the uninitiated, but I'm feeding 5 active adults all the time, & a 6th for 3+ days of the week, plus 3 cats, a cockatiel and 15 assorted chickens, so stuff actually moves through pretty fast & I rarely find anything that's gone out of date. A tray of 12 tins of chickpeas, for example, will last us about a month, and a 25kg sack of potatoes for 6 weeks; it only takes a few days of people being ill & not able to get to the shops for supplies to start to dwindle. I do my best to preserve gluts, whether bought or home-grown, one way or another, too. All this I have learnt to do, with the help of MSE & other "frugal" sites, in response to the challenges of raising 5 kids on one wage; it's going to stand us in good stead as we approach this winter, and beyond. 

I'm very much hoping that those of my offspring who have flown the nest, and their partners, have taken the lessons I struggled to learn on board; they may have been terminally embarrassed by my "Armageddon cupboard" as they were growing up, but the lockdowns were a bit of an eye-opener. We never needed panic-buy or queue up for loo roll or flour or tea-bags, or stay up half the night trying to book delivery slots. And we're warning them, it ain't over yet. Between horrific fuel bills and supply shortages, plus the fact that Covid really hasn't gone away, this winter's looking like a big squeeze on the household income & having extra supplies to fall back on doesn't look so daft now. My heart goes out to those who were already struggling & are not in a position to lay stuff in...

annieb64

We lived on the edge of the Peak District for 30 years so I always kept a good store cupboard in case of snow. 

Now we have moved south I'm still keeping a good cupboard and have bought a second freezer for the garage. Last time we went to Brogdale we got a six kilo piece of pork loin for £ 25. We cut it up into three joints and lots of steaks and froze it. 

We have quite a big garage so am looking at creating space for food storage in there. I will  buy a sack of potatoes unless SiL gives us a bag.