Where are you at?

Here are some good questions to mull over this weekend.....

Where are you at in terms of food storage and emergency preparedness?
I encourage you to take some time this weekend to write down some goals and evaluate where you are. Do you need to put your 72 hour kits together? Do you need to inventory your current food storage? Do you want to change some things from what you have done in the past?

Make a list of what you want to work on and take it one thing at a time. This month I am working on updating our 72 hour kits. I put some good kits together about 4 years ago, but I have not updated them since! AH! I have had another baby since then and lots of other changes I need to update.

Here are some fabulous links for all types of emergency preparedness. There is a food caluculator on there that is good for figuring out what you need to store and how much.

How do you keep track of your food storage?
This is a never-ending battle I think for most everyone. What I do works for me. I have a sheet where I have written down everything that I have. I really only keep track of the long-term items I have gotten from the cannery, since the stuff I store in my garage (see photo above) I rotate on a constant basis. We live in a fairly small home (1675 sq ft) with not much storage space. So I have gotten very creative in where I store all my boxes of dry packed items. On my tracking sheet (which is not fancy at all) I have written down where things are stored, when I put it there, and the date the item was canned. I have lots of stuff in the crawl space on boards. Those dry packed items I am not touching for years and years. The dry packed items in my closet and under the beds are the ones I need to get to if I need to. So I have that all written down on a sheet that I date so I know where things are. I try to update it every time I purchase new items from the cannery. That way I know how much of everything I have. Right now I have 3 of those lists I need to consolidate!

Now that the church as told us that the food will store longer if stored properly, those are the items I try to be careful with. I know keeping food in the garage is a no-no, but I really have no other place to put it. Since we use that stuff all the time I don't really keep track of it like I do the other stuff. And we don't have a large freezer either. So we just do the best we can, right?

Here are a few good tracking/inventory sheets I found on the web if you are interested. If you have a tracking system that works well for you, please share! I love getting new ideas!
Trackmyfoodstorage.com
Tracking sheet downloads
USU tracking sheets (go Aggies!)

Don't forget to always be on the lookout for clearance and sales to build up your storage cheaper!

Where are you at?