January has been "Prep-uary" at our Place

We've been very busy this month with prepping-related projects.

• Hubby Dear and I cleaned and organized our storage room. It had collected a lot of odds and ends and, frankly, it was becoming a bit of a dump. I inventoried our long-term food storage and came up with a long list of items I need to buy. We've used some things that we need to replace. According to the food storage calculators, our family now consists of four adults and two children (children 7 and up are "adults" for food storage purposes), which means that I also need to increase the amount of food we store in general. 

Once we cleared out the clutter, it became apparent that we had used A LOT
of our food storage and never replaced it.

We also have a lot of canned goods that need to be eaten and restocked. Rotate, rotate, rotate! 

We still have some of the onions we grew last year left. They are stored in cheap pantyhose, which works
pretty well to keep them fresh and mold-free. You'll notice that a few of them have sprouted, though!

• Because of some health concerns that I have, I started following a Paleo diet back in December. I no longer eat grains, legumes, dairy, refined sugars, or refined fats. In other words, I can't eat most of our food storage! I hope that this way of eating will help resolve some of the problems I have as a result of chronic inflammation in my body, but it does provide a challenge to store food that meets the criteria of my diet. I'm brainstorming a list of Paleo-friendly foods to add to our storage and this is what I've come up with so far:  sprouting seeds, canned coconut milk, coconut oil, lard, nuts in the shell, and canned tuna and salmon. Anyone else out there who is both Paleo and a prepper? I'm curious to see how you handle this dilemma. 

• As I was organizing my storage room, I decided that my vintage, 1940s-era water bath canner had finally bit the dust. It is just too rusty and decrepit to use any more. Identical products on Amazon.com had very poor reviews - I guess they don't make granite ware like they used to - so I invested in a Victorio Stainless Steel Multi Use Canner.  This product can be used as either a water bath canner or steam canner and seems really sturdy. I've never steam canned before - have any of you? 

RIP, vintage water bath canner. You gave me (and others) years of good service.

• Hubby Dear and I ordered our seeds for the spring and bought the components of our DIY seed starting set-up. I am excited to share with you our plans for the year in an upcoming post. It won't be long before we'll be sowing broccoli, cauliflower, and kale indoors. 

Seeds, glorious seeds! So much promise is inside these packets. 

• I bought an assortment of homesteading books. Let's see if you can guess what kinds of things I am researching by a few of the titles: Sepp Holzer's Permaculture: A Practical Guide to Small-Scale, Integrative Farming and Gardening, Keeping A Family Cow, and The Backyard Goat: An Introductory Guide to Keeping and Enjoying Pet Goats.

• Some friends of ours are downsizing due to job loss and health challenges. We bought a generator and some other homesteading paraphernalia from them, which served to help both of our families out. 

Our "new" 5500 W generator.

I did the math, and this generator will run one of our refrigerators and the furnace fan and that's it. It is definitely not a total solution to a long-term power outage, but it is a start. Now I need to stockpile some gas tanks, gasoline, and Sta-Bil.

Have you been celebrating "Prep-uary" at your house? Tell me what you've accomplished so far in 2013. :) 

Shelf Reliance Harvest 72”: A Review

Whew! Finally my Internet seems to be working again. Hopefully I'm back up and running again permanently. Keep your fingers crossed!
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My Fed Ex man really must hate seeing our address pop up on his list of daily deliveries. He had the pleasure of delivering yet another heavy, unwieldy load to my house today. He shouldn’t complain too much –at least I did him the courtesy of  shoveling our sidewalk clear of snow!

So what did my long-suffering delivery man bring? These boxes:

They held a Shelf Reliance Harvest 72” Food Rotation System (FRS), which is merely a fancy way of saying a canned goods shelving unit. I’ve wanted to get one of these things for the longest time, but had to wait since these suckers are ridiculously expensive. Shelf Reliance has got to be making a killing on them.

There are two places that I know of to buy a Shelf Reliance FRS. One is the Shelf Reliance website. The other is at Costco, either in selected stores or online. It is far less expensive to buy it through Costco if you are a member. Since I am not a member, I would have to pay a 5% penalty if I ordered it through them. Even so, it would have been cheaper for me to buy it there if I had not happened to have a $10 gift card to Shelf Reliance.

It took nearly two weeks for my FRS to arrive, but thankfully, on the day it came, Hubby Dear didn’t have to work and he could put it together. It is definitely a two person job for at least the first part of the build. It wasn’t too hard to follow the instructions and put together (much more intuitive than The Can Organizer, for example), but it was fussy. You definitely need to know what cans you are planning on storing on the FRS so that you have them on hand to set the track diameter. You also need to have either a rubber mallet or a block of wood and hammer to pound the pieces together.  It took us quite a bit of time to put together – there are many pieces and we spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best configuration.

The metal rails up

Installing the can tracks. You need to have your cans available to help you size the openings.  

Here’s what it looked like when it was completely constructed and loaded with my canned goods:

The Harvest 72” is the largest unit Shelf Reliance sells. It comes with 3 small, 1 medium, and 1 large (#10 can size) sized tracks, although you can customize it to your needs (for an extra fee, of course).

Things I don’t like about the Shelf Reliance Harvest FRS:

They used cheap paint on the rails and it was already flaking off in spots before we even began to construct it. Shelf Reliance definitely needs to use a more heavy-duty paint. There is no excuse for shoddy workmanship when you are charging over $300 for some bits of metal and plastic. (Although I like this item overall, I have to say I do think it is overpriced.) Also, the very prominent Shelf Reliance logo on the front of the shelving unit looked like it had been applied by someone who had drank a little too much cough syrup. Now, if a person is OCD enough to get excited about plunking down the money for a FRS, you know they are going to notice those sorts of things!

I do like the cute magnetic labels that come with the FRS, but they are easily knocked off. I’ve already lost one that way and my kids haven’t even been playing with it yet.

One of the cute little magnetic labels





I also wish that it came with a board or shelf across the top of the unit. I’m going to get Hubby Dear to buy and cut one to size because I can’t afford to not to use that space. My little basement storage room is quickly getting very full.

If you buy one of these, don’t expect that it will hold a whole year’s worth of cans or anything. I still have cans in several other locations in my house.

What I love about the Shelf Reliance FRS:

I love organizational products, so something like this is right up my alley. It's really cool. It might look like there is a lot of wasted space between the rails, but once I have completely filled it up with cans, there really won’t be. Right now I only have it about halfway full, if that. 

Side view

It can hold up to 460 cans while only taking up about seven square feet of floor space. It is not too difficult to set up and is very easy to use. Simply load the cans in and you have automatic rotation.

Depending on how much space all my buckets and home canned items end up taking up, I might get another Shelf Reliance System. It's definitely a great convenience and will encourage me to use and rotate through our food storage.

The Can Organizer: A Review

I have a cabinet in my kitchen where I store several different types of canned goods - diced tomatoes, canned soup, chicken broth, etc. It's very handy to have these frequently used items stored near my prep area, but observing the rule of FIFO (first in, first out) is a pain. The cabinet is fairly deep and wide. Things tend to get out of place very easily and before you know it, the newly acquired items are mixed in with the older ones.

Before

After learning about The Can Organizer on the Food Storage Made Easy blog, I decided that this could be the solution to my problem. I bought the "Pantry" sized organizers, which are 22-1/2" deep. According to the company, each one would hold 13 Pie filling, 16 Vegetable,18 Soup, or 39 Tuna-sized cans.

They come as flat pieces of cardboard like this:

And assemble into this.

You load the cans in the top and they roll to the bottom of the organizer. When you need to use your food storage, you simply take a can from the bottom and the remaining stock rolls down, making FIFO a snap.  

Whoever came up with this design is an evil genius. They're a genius in the fact that it is pretty nifty that you can make a can rotation device out of one sheet of cardboard. Why are they evil? Because that sucker is frustrating and difficult to put together. The instructions that came with it aren't terribly helpful. I couldn't make them out at all. Hubby Dear watched this video a couple of times

and was able to figure it out eventually.

There was one big problem, though. On the website, the can organizers are described as 5" across. They are 5" measured from outside to outside, but the inside dimensions are more like 4  1/2". That means that my extensive store of Campbell's Chunky Soups would not fit. I was pretty unhappy about that. I had a few Progresso canned soups that I had bought on sale which fit, but Hubby Dear balks at the idea of changing his favorite soup brand just so I can use the can organizers.

Too big for The Can Organizer.   Sniff.

All of my other canned goods in this area worked, though. Want to see the finished product?

After

I would recommend The Can Organizer if you have the patience to learn how to assemble them and if you store mostly smaller cans. Cans larger than 4 1/2" tall or extra wide cans (such as 29 oz. cans of fruit) will not fit. I should also mention that shipping was expensive but my order was shipped promptly and arrived quickly. I was not displeased with my purchase, but I also wasn't motivated to buy more of them. I think I'll invest in another solution for my can organization needs. But more about that next month.

The Can Organizer is available for purchase at  http://www.thecanorganizer.com/

Month Six in Review and Month Seven Preps

Did you think this past month seemed to fly by? I can't believe November is already drawing to a close. I also am astonished that I've been actively prepping for only seven months. I've learned so much and accomplished quite a bit.

RIP oil lamp chimney

Month Six of my prepping plan was a doozy. I had a humbling experience with primitive technology, bought a bunch of freeze-dried and dehydrated items for my food storage, stocked up on the necessities to have lighting during a power-down scenario, as well as accomplished the other items in my plan for this month.

In the negative column, I'm still not doing very well with adding in exercise, unless you count using my new grain mill. Hey, it does make me break a sweat! Also, the glass globe/chimney on my oil lamp met a premature demise when I was dusting it yesterday. This goes to show that A) I need to have some back-up chimneys on hand with my other supplies and B) My contention that housework is evil does have a basis in fact.   

 
Month Seven:

1. Continue to build food storage basics. Perhaps take advantage of holiday sales and stock up on items like spices, chocolate chips, canned pumpkin, etc.
2. Buy some ground beef and chicken breast and pressure can it. Conduct a taste test and see how my home-canned meat fares vs. store bought canned chicken. 
3. Create a first aid kit for for my purse. I'm thinking of making one in a Altoid tin.
4. Buy an electric grain mill and put it through its paces.
5. Begin the process of organizing some of my canned food storage for easier rotation. I'm going to try out and review one of the can rotation devices on the market.
6. In the category of "Hope Springs Eternal": Exercise 3x per week.

Do you have any prepping plans for December or are you consumed with Christmas purchases and preparations?

Fall back, not behind

This Sunday is the end of Daylight Saving Time and most of us get to enjoy an extra hour of sleep on Sunday morning. Unless you live in Hawaii, Arizona, or have young children, that is. Baby Dear doesn't know anything about "Fall Back" and will wake up at his usual 5:45 AM, except that it will really be 4:45 AM without Daylight Saving Time. Can you say afternoon nap for Momma?

Firefighters and other safety personnel have long advocated checking your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors every six months. It's easy to remember when you combine it with changing your clocks for Daylight Savings time. Test your detectors and change the batteries every six months. It's a quick, easy thing to do that could have big benefits. Did you know there has been a 50% decrease in deaths in fires since the 1970s? This is in large part to the prevalence of smoke detectors in our homes.

Those of us with a preparedness mindset should also take this opportunity to check the status of our BOBs and other preps. Switch out summer clothing for winter gear. Check and make sure your little weeds children still fit the clothing you have packed in case you need to get out of dodge. Have any of your stored items expired? Is it time to rotate your water supply? Check your inventory - have you used anything up and not replaced it?

Make it a habit. Daylight Savings Time = smoke detector testing and prep rotation.