Q&A Week - Tuesday - All About Water

It's Q&A week here at Safely Gathered In! We're interrupting our regularly scheduled posts to answer some of the great questions we got during our giveaway week in June.

First of all, Provident Living has some great information about water storage - check it out!

I am curious about how much bleach per liter or gallon of water.

You should add 8 drops (about 1/8 tsp) of liquid chlorine bleach per gallon of water. Only plain household bleach should be used to purify water (no additives or scents).

How often would you recommend rotating tap water stored in glass containers? And how long would you recommend rotating water stored in plastic bottles? If you had to leave in a hurry, and could only take as much food as your could fit in the trunk of a car, what would be the most important part of your food storage to take (besides water)?

First of all, I personally wouldn't recommend storing water in glass bottles. In fact, I don't like storing ANY of my food storage in glass (this includes canning jars. While canning is awesome, I just get nervous when I see a shelf full of glass bottles. If that tipped over or fell.... whoa). But anyway.

If you store water in plastic and in glass, I would recommend you just rotate the water in both at the same time. According to the Provident Living website, you should empty and refill your water containers "regularly". Hmmm.. that's pretty vague. Personally, I think once every 6 months should do the trick, but check on your water more often than that to make sure it looks and smells okay. You should be storing all your water in food grade containers only.

I was wondering if it's ok to store water in the garage? We live in Idaho Falls where the winters are freezing cold and below and the summers aren't too hot(Probably 80-90 range), but not cold either.

The temperature of where you live doesn't really affect the water you are storing - however, some water storage containers are not conducive to weather extremes. Make sure you do some research about your water storage containers to be sure they can stand the temperature differences. Don't forget to check on your water every so often to make sure it's still good, and don't forget to rotate it either.

Also, water containers should not be placed directly on the ground because chemicals from the cement or concrete can seep up into your water. Something simple like a few 2x4 's can solve that problem.

Hmm, why is water storage such a pain?

This question may have been asked a little jokingly, but I think it's perfectly legitimate. Water storage is tough! I think it's hard for many reasons:

- Water is heavy and once it's in buckets or jugs, it's hard to move around

- It takes up lots of space

- People are confused about how or when to purify water

- It takes up lots of space

- You have to buy special containers to store it in, and there are many to choose from and people don't know which ones to get

- It's overwhelming, just like food storage!

- It takes up lots of space :)

My question is, how do you come up with ideas for meals? I stuggle even using recipes! I'm very much looking forward to your cooking classes coming up.

Hannah - What I do is think of a meal my family loves, and then I find ways to tweak it to make it food storage friendly (using all non-perishables). Sometimes it's pretty easy (just using canned veggies instead of fresh, etc), and other times it takes a bit more thought. For example, when I made the food storage-friendly Fried Rice, I had to tweak a few things that we do when we make the dish normally. I completely left out the egg and onion, and I used canned veggies instead of fresh or frozen.