anyone used their preps?

Yup I felt like a douche tradin in the coat but at the time I was unemployed, and the size of my rebates has been in the triple digits for more than a few years, I need fewer hobbies lol. A friend worked there and people would buy gear and return it at the end of the season, talk about taking advantage. I thought they were still a co-op though.

 

When we set out on prepping I tried to buy as much stuff as possible that we normally use. So flour rice ect comes from a bucket with a gamma lid and when empty the next bucket gets opened and the old one refilled, marked and stored.

 

I've dug into the stash before, but never because of a real emergency and never for anything critical to survival - a roll of aluminum foil once, a bottle of whiskey more than once, and some hygiene items every now and then - soap, toothpaste, etc.

I have a self-imposed rule that I tend to follow - when raiding the stash, always replace what you took with 2 of the same thing. My reasoning is that if I allow myself to run out of something in my normal daily life, it's because I have either overlooked it, or misjudged how much of it I would need or how long the amount I had on hand would last - and if I did it once, there's a good chance that I'd do it again and run out of it in a "situation", so I take it as a sign that I should be keeping more of it.

 

in 2011 i was without power for about 12 days..people laughed at my trangia burner not a week before...wasn't so funny when they wanted hot coffee lol

 

tard dart wha kinda things were u short

 

We rotate foodstuffs and paper products...on a yearly basis we use some of pretty much everything of that sort that we store. We have only in the past few years started storing freeze-dried foods , mostly staples that we like, and I make it a point to include them now and then (I make a great TVP taco...).

As far as other stuff, pretty much everything I own is a prep...for something. I needed some motor mounts done for my car last week and dipped into the store of flat stock I have "just because".

As far as actually needing to use my preps, no...but they sure make it handy to do stuff without running to town for the stuff I need. (or did before we moved to town)

 

i always use my preps by taking from the shelf the oldest andreplacing it with new but 1 or 2 extra and all survival gear is checked often

 

We just used some old Dinty Moore . The beef stew had a February 2012 expiration date and was excellent. Tonight we had Chicken and Dumplings with a may of 2012 expiration date . It was also excellent. The last peanut butter expired August of 2011 and I just used the last of it. I still have one jar left from that batch with the 2011 expiration date. So far Ive not seen any of our older preps gone bad. Im going to have to open some two year old Pan cake mix soon and check it for spoilage. But like the last post we rotate out our preps. This way we keep it as fresh as we can and still ave a two year food supply.

 

We have never been seriously challenged. My wife was, initially, thinking that I was onto a weird path as I acquired a variety of preps. As time passed,we ran short of routine stuff and she could just go to the preps and get whatever she needed whenever she needed it. We did have some storm-related outages of power and her appreciation of crank flashlights and the crank radio raised her eyebrows.

She is completely on board these days with the prepper thing. Sometimes she prods me as to why I am not getting more of this or that. Everyone in our family now thinks that an individual or a family that does not incorporate prepping into their lives is just one disaster away from really hard lessons.

 

We ate some stored food during Sandy. I learned that I should not run out of chocolate again.

 

I have a long way to go. We are down to one income, my daughter just had surgery, and my wife has several long term illnesses. My son just started college. My daughter is two years behind him. I have gear to stay dry, warm, cook, I have a generator, and I put in a natural gas wall furnace as a back up to the main furnace (which will not run without grid power.) (I will get a shunt for the generator) But I have no food stores left. We are living paycheck to paycheck right now. I have been building shelving for more food stuffs when I can get them, but we are struggling right now, just to keep our heads above water. So yes, we have used ours.

 

Haven't had to use any stored food. But with power outages for several hours used weather crank radio. Crank lanterns, etc

 

I always use my preps. Especially during family trainings. It help to rotate the stock as well. Several years ago I brought land and build our homestead on it. It is out in the boonies so we used our preps during that time. Everything was handy you name it water to food. We are in a much better situation in terms of having livestock chickens, ducks, sheep, rabbits, goats and even gardening. We have 10+ huge raise beds which we grow enough food to sell in the local farmers market. There is very little that we actual buy in the local stores. We when from prepping to full fledged homesteading and love it.

 

Yep, almost every time the power goes out and as we live in a "BOL" that happens at least once every winter.

We didn't move here for a BOL; we did because it is a beautiful place to live.

 

Your feedback may be surprisingly good for us to hear because you get "tested" so frequently. It seems I am usually able to improve upon our preps after reading some accounts of those who have gone through situations that require the use of their preps. Sometimes, it is just a tweak but other times, I am stunned at my lack of vision for some things. As time passes, I get closer to where I think we ought to be and a large part of that progress is due to fellow monkeys sharing their experiences--for which I am very grateful!