Tuesday! (Week #11)

It's Tuesday again, and you know what that means? That's right - we're going to talk about our 3-month supply, long-term storage, and the 72-hour kits!!

How is your 3-month supply coming along? Besides your planned meals, don't forget to store snack foods that your family enjoys. Pay attention to your family's snacking habits, and plan accordingly. Dried fruit stores well, especially if you "can" it.

Have you gathered any beans yet for your long-term storage? My family's favorite beans are pinto beans and black beans. One bag of pinto beans makes lots of refried beans, and I also add pinto beans to soups and salads. Black beans are also good in soups.

But let's talk about what I know you are all here for.... the 72-hour kits! Let's get these babies started! I am so excited to start this project and it will be such a huge weight off my shoulders when it is complete.

Ideally, you will have 1 backpack per person for storing your kits. This way, in a real emergency, each person can carry their own pack. Obviously, parents and older children should have large packs, but smaller children should be able to carry at least a few of the items in their own packs. Since it's "that time of the year", you should have no problems finding backpacks. I'm sure you could even find some at secondhand stores (D.I., Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc). If you know that backpacks in your area will be going on sale soon (which is highly likely, once school is in session), and you want to wait for the sale, that's fine.

Besides gathering backpacks, you also need to find a place in your home to store these kits. You need to be able to grab them at just a moment's notice. Is there space in your front closet? A bedroom closet? How about a decorative trunk in your entryway (or anywhere in the house)? No matter where you keep them, they should all be together and easily accessible. As for me, I think I will clear out some space in my front closet for them. It probably means that some things will have to be moved to the attic or crawl-space under the house, but that's ok.

I am still working on the final list of items for the 72-hour kits, and once that's completed (hopefully by the end of today), I will post the complete list on the left side of the website (replacing the car-kit list).

Stay tuned this week for our final post in our "How to Rotate Food" series, coming this Thursday. The next series is all about water storage, so get ready for that! And, as always, on Friday we'll give you a food storage recipe using pantry food only.

Meanwhile....where will you be storing your 72-hour kits?