Today we are highlighting two fun boards, the Emergency Preparedness board and the How-to Tutorials board. On our Emergency preparedness boards we are gathering documents and information you may want to actually print out. You never know when this kind of information can come in handy, AND when you may or may not have internet access. The How-To Tutorial board is full of how-to tutorials we have made or found around the web. These are things you should learn about ahead of time!

   

• PIN 1: These are some ebooks we are going to check out ourselves, looks like great information for a long term crisis.
• PIN 2: A free download that contains a full eprep plan from our site.
• PIN 3: A video tutorial on how to turn off your gas. This could come in really handy!
• PIN 4: For those of you who are handy, or are married to a handy spouse, this tutorial is great for building racks for your water barrels!

Make sure you check out the rest of the items on the Emergency Preparedness board and the How-To Tutorials board. We’ll keep adding to these boards as we find great stuff, and we’ll see you tomorrow to highlight another one of our boards!

Don’t forget you can Follow us on Pinterest so you don’t miss any of the great stuff we will be pinning in the future.

Today we are highlighting our Powerless Cooking board. Powerless cooking is one of those things that can be really intimidating for food storage beginners. This board is full of helpful ideas including things that are CHEAP or FREE to help you cook with your food storage in a powerless emergency.

To see the whole board, click here.

• PIN 1: Build a fire pit! This is a great idea for powerless cooking. You can build this in your backyard and always have it ready for a fun summer activity, or in case of emergency!
• PIN 2:This is a way to share our powerless cooking class with friends. The first video in a series of videos on fuel and various cooking tools. Some you can even make yourself.
• PIN 3:Something often forgotten in planning for powerless cooking is pots and pans. We think this could be an interesting thing to learn more about.
• PIN 4:Who wants to haul out their powerless cooking gear mid winter! This is an awesome option!

Make sure you check out the rest of the items on the Powerless Cooking board. We’ll keep adding to that board as we find great stuff, and we’ll see you tomorrow to highlight another one of our boards!

Don’t forget you can Follow us on Pinterest so you don’t miss any of the great stuff we will be pinning in the future.

We’ve been looking into what options are available for cooking indoors and how you would store the fuel for those options. Some of things things we’ve been reading about are wood-burning stoves, fireplaces, alcohol stoves, butane stoves, and also just getting a generator that will allow you to use some regular electric cooking tools.

Today I did a little video showing a Butane Stove that I recently got. I’ve been nervous to use it but it was very easy and now I feel like it is a really great option for me. You can get these at most camping stores or online.

The food packet I used was from Wise Food Storage. It tasted good and had a good consistency. They cook their pasta and then dehydrate it before packaging it. That way you can just add boiling water and let it sit and it will rehydrate. This is great if you are concerned about fuel conservation. Lindon Farms is also another great option for just add water meals. Most of their meals need to be boiled in order to cook them so you would use a little more fuel but the price per serving is fantastic. We store a combination of both those products along with some #10 can entree items as well. It’s great to have some quick and easy meals on hand that use very little fuel if you are just having a short term disaster type situation.

What We Learned

While we have done evacuation exercises in the past, we always learn something each time we do it. Jodi has been disorganized lately and had her “grab list” items all over the house. She has always felt like her front hall closet is too full and small to REALLY contain all her evacuation tools. But on this day she realized that her basement would be a better “landing pad” for evacuation. There is an exterior door that leads to the driveway and she has storage shelves right by the door already. Definitely a light bulb moment for her.

Julie attempted the evacuation with her husband and got to try out her new and improved grab lists that she posted right on her front closet door for a fast and easy evacuation plan. Check out her great lists.

We both realized we still had some items to add to our Emergency Binders (Julie needed a will, Jodi had a missing birth certificate for one of her kids). We’ve had a few frustrations with our binders as we’ve been trying to expand them to consider more scenarios where we might need them. A few weeks after this challenge we discovered an amazing product that has helped us a ton. You can check it out here.

What YOU Learned

A few of our favorite comments from our Facebook discussions and comments:

Take the photographs, leave the teenagers

Well in my haste guess what I forgot? I forgot my medicine !!!! Fortunately my husband did not. On his last quick trip through the house he saw my pill case on the table and grabbed it and then looked in the fridg. to see if I had forgotten that too? Yes I did so he grabbed it also. Thank God for the blessing of a thinking husband ! It is good to have two minds working at the same time, especially if you are elderly and if you are excited and in a hurry. You can be as prepared as you can be and still something can go a miss ! God Bless All.

This challenge prompted us to straighten up the store room. Now to clean up the garage. It was a real pain climbing over stuff to get to our gear plus we couldn’t get near the tent & couldn’t find a few other thing we know are in there.

I thought my binder was in good shape, but had to spend a couple of hours this afternoon updating it and adding a few more things. My inventory is a mess. I started several times. Some is photos from a couple of years ago, some is digital and now I am motivated to get it all together, digitize everything and get it in my binder. Thanks for the kick in the butt!

Don’t forget about your pets!

Read more about how people “survived” this day’s challenge

Follow-Up Questions

Where can I learn more about evacuation tips?
We have a page on our site that includes an evacuation list.

What is an emergency binder for?
An emergency binder is where you want to place all of your important documents, insurance information, etc. so that you can easily grab it and go in case of an evacuation. For more info on how to put together your binder read this post. If you are struggling with putting together your binder properly, check out this post for a solution that worked miracles for us.

Our To-Do’s For This Year

To Do: Redo our Emergency Binders using the Prepare My Life Planner, move as many grab list items as possible to one location
To Learn: Figure out different grab list needs depending on different evacuation scenarios
To Buy: Add some more “hot meal” items to 72 hour kits along with a method to cook them

In our Emergency Binder post we did awhile back, we talked about how important it is to have your documents safe and ready to grab and go in case of an evacuation. I had been meaning to put my binder into a better binder and get special sheet protectors ever since our 7 Day Challenge this year. Well I somehow kept procrastinating the job and when I saw this Prepare My Life Planner I was so thrilled because Tami – the creator of the Planner thought of EVERYTHING I have ever thought of doing with my binder and MORE.

The binder I was using didn’t have a zipper OR a handles, so things would always fly out. With the important documents I had in there this always made me nervous. The Prepare My Life Planner has both a zipper and handle and is easy to carry around.
 
I had a nice set of tab dividers in my binder however, they didn’t extend PAST the documents. The documents were in sheet protectors which made them extend too far past these regular tabs and they were pretty much useless because of it. The tabs in the Prepare My Life Planner go well beyond all the sheet protectors and are logically labeled with the proper sections.
 
My passports seemed to make an escape every time I even looked at the binder. With the zipper sheet protectors, I don’t have to worry about this.
 
The cash I kept with my binder had no where to go, but since the Prepare My Life Planner has a sheet protector for EVERYTHING you can possibly think of, it now has a home.
 
Some more features I LOVE about my Prepare My Life Planner are:

• Complete with Emergency Preparedness sections: Prepare My Family, Prepare My Home, Gather Supplies, Prepare to Evacuate, Prepare to Stay.
• Also includes comprehensive sections on: Personal, Insurance, Financial, Assets, Final Planning.
• Forms for you to fill out ALL your information that you can access and complete online as well, save to your hard drive, and print copies for loved ones.
• Each section walks you through checklists of things you need to do, and things you need to place in your planner in the appropriate sheet protector. Each sheet protector is unique to the type of document you are storing.
• Comes with emergency cards you can pass around, and pen

The Prepare My Life Planners retail at $169.95, and but we can get them for you for $139.95, and FREE SHIPPING. These make great gifts. I’m already planning on getting my parents this for Christmas. And I just might tell them, they ought to get one of these for each of my brothers and sisters for Christmas too.

Please note: Free shipping applies to the United States only. We will invoice you for an additional amount if you order internationally. Thanks!

What We Learned

We spent a large part of our summer practicing our powerless cooking skills, so on this day we were excited to put them to use. We did use the quickstove (use referral code jodi&julie and get 50% off per can) for the first time on this day of the challenge and we were pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to use. Julie also cooked pizza from scratch this day – like ground the wheat for the dough, used freeze dried cheese, and cooked it on the Volcano kind of “scratch”. This process will get its OWN video in another post.

Julie shows you how she cooked her breakfast:

What YOU Learned

A few of our favorite comments from our Facebook discussions and comments:

I personally think this one will be the easiest We have a sun oven and have been using it for most of our cooking this entire summer. It saves on the utility bill, and doesn’t heat up the house like the oven does! as long as there’s a bit of sun we can cook with it. And because we’ve been doing it all summer, we’re used to it, I personally think all my food tastes better using it, stays moister.

We have many choices for powerless cooking – small folding hiking stoves & fuel (we need to add more cans of fuel), charcoal grill (could use a few more bags), a butane stove that we bought at the self reliance fair (only 3 cans of fuel & having trouble finding more), propane grill w/ 2 tanks (only a tank and a half on hand), several of those disposable charcoal emergency grills (caught them on sale for a dollar a piece), and Teff’s cat food stove.

Well, this was my 51st wedding anniversary! Thank goodness last year I canned swiss steak so that is what we had today. We heated it up on the grill, along with some peas and corn, made some instant mashed potatoes with water and canned milk and some home canned butter. We don’t eat cake in this family but we do like the hobo pies made with a pie iron held over the hot coals.

Trying to cook on the grill with pots that have wooden handles is NOT a good idea Need to replace one of the wifes pots now and get at least one that can be used on the grill or over open fire. Wish we hadn’t given away all our camping gear when we moved.

Read more about how people “survived” this day’s challenge

Follow-Up Questions

How do I learn to cook without power?
We spent a large part of our summer practicing our powerless cooking skills. Visit our powerless cooking class page and learn more.

Where can I buy the Quickstove Julie used?
You can purchase the Quickstove at this link. As Food Storage Readers you get 50% off per can if you use referral code JODI&JULIE.

Our To-Do’s For This Year

To Do: Research generators (if we lose power, we may want to extend the life of our fridge/freezer foods)
To Learn: Learn more about canning without power (Jodi also wants to look into some more options for cooking inside)
To Buy: Generator – maybe – if we’re lucky (Jodi also wants to buy a butane stove to use for indoor powerless cooking)

What We Learned

In past years’ challenges we have practiced full days with no water. It definitely takes a lot more water to cook, clean dishes, wash yourself, etc. then you would think. The 1 gallon per person per day is NOT enough for proper hygiene. This year we wanted to focus on the sanitation aspect of things because last year we wasted TONS of water flushing our precious stored water. We knew there had to be a better way. This year we hinted that people should put together a basic “Sanitation Kit” before the challenge

Julie highlights some of the contents from her kit here:

What YOU Learned

A few of our favorite tips from our Facebook discussions:

Milk Jug Shower/handwashing: Tie large nail to a string and tie it to the handle of a milk jug. Shove the nail into the side bottom (1/2 inch up) of the jug – it acts as a plug and string keeps it handy after you pull it out to get water. The lid tightness adjusts the water flow. —– Put heated water in it and hang from your shower head for regular shower. It doesn’t give good volume to wash hair but showers great. Put one on kitchen/bath sink side to keep hands clean.

I emptied the toilet bowl by shuting off the little faucet, took an 18 gal. plastic garbage bag set it in the bowl. (Had to use some paking tape to keep it in place.) Sprinkled a little cat litter then went to the restroom! Sprinkled a little more on top – closed the lid & it was ready for my next trip.

For in between shower days, instead of baby wipes they also have oversized ‘shower’ wipes. They use these in hospitals instead of the old fashioned sponge bath. They carry them at the pharmacies. They’re nice because it’s large and thicker than wet wipes and helps stretch the days between baths

I did go out and shut off the main water supply, so I can check that off my list. Unfortunately, I was gone for a walk when hubby got up and he called the water company, then had to call them back when I got home and explained what we were doing for the week. Yes, he called and explained to them that there had been an error and his wife had intentionally shut off the water because she was spending the day being a pioneer.

Read more about how people “survived” this day’s challenge

Follow-Up Questions

Where were the instructions on how to put together a Sanitation Kit?
We hinted about this on the blog a few weeks ago. Click here to see the post.

Where can I buy the “SuperSorb” mentioned in the Sanitation Kit list?
We found it online at Amazon.com. Click here to go straight to that product.

Where can I just buy a ready-made sanitation kit?
The kit from the video above is from Shelf Reliance. It is a deluxe 4 person, 1 week kit and costs $135. It’s not available online but we can take phone orders for it. (Email fsmethrive@gmail.com if you are interested in buying a kit).

You can also buy a less deluxe kit from Emergency Essentials for about $50 at this link. Individual items for homemade kits can be purchased at Shelf Reliance, Emergency Essentials, and Amazon.com

Our To-Do’s For This Year

To Do: Research water purifiers in depth, add to our first aid kits
To Learn: Learn more about safe first aid practices
To Buy: A water purifier system and add to first aid kits

Something fun we decided to do this year is feature a new emergency preparedness product on our site EACH DAY of the month. This will hopefully give you some ideas on new things to add in to your 72 hour kits, or things to help with powerless cooking. Food storage is just one small aspect of being prepared so we are excited to highlight some other items too!

What to Expect

Each day we will be updating the graphic on our main homepage to feature a new “Product of the Day”. You can click the banner to go straight to a page with more information about that product. If you miss a day, you can always click the link at the bottom of the banner that lists out each of the day’s featured products. You may have noticed this already happening each day, we will continue it throughout the rest of the month!

More About the Products

You will notice that many of the products featured come from Emergency Essentials. In general they have very reasonable pricing and offer the best selection of emergency preparedness products. A few of the products come from other companies that we have chosen to become dealers for because we could get even lower prices for our readers.

EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS CRASH COURSE
With the recent hurricane on the East Coast we have seen a surge of traffic for emergency preparedness, going without power, and evacuation plans. We thought it would be good timing to do a quick little crash course/refresher about resources and posts we have created on our blog.

	EPREP Basics: Family Plan It’s a good idea to be on the same page with your family as to what you would do in case of an emergency.
	EPREP Basics: Disaster Kit (72 hour kits) Be sure to have a disaster kit with supplies, 72 hour supply of food, and your important documents in an emergency binder.
	EPREP Basics: Evacuation List Having a good car kit and grab list will help in case of an emergency where you may need to evacuate.
	POWERLESS COOKING Do you have alternative ways of cooking foods without power? Do you also store the necessary amount of fuel to actually use those methods?

Remember this info is always available on our eprep section up top. Click on Emergency Preparedness and you’ll get an index of everything in this topic. The sections listed above are just the mains ones to get started on

Remember to accomplish these tasks using BabySteps, and don’t let fear or becoming overwhelmed stop you.

We recently asked for people to submit ideas of emergency situations to use for our upcoming 7 Day Challenge (you can still submit ideas and enter for a chance to win one of our binders!). Several of the submissions touched on some basic sanitation issues and we thought this would be a great time to touch on this topic in a little more detail. (YES THAT IS A HINT THAT THIS MAY COME UP IN THE CHALLENGE THIS YEAR!)

One of our readers sent us an awesome sanitation kit handout that we have converted to match the other handouts included in our Food Storage Made Easy Binder so you can print it off, add it to your binder, and have it ready to go in an emergency situation. We highly recommend putting together a kit of this sort as part of your emergency preparedness plans.

We previously posted instructions on how to make an emergency chemical toilet but this new handout contains much more detail.

p.s. We know a lot of our readers are currently experiencing different emergency situations in light of Hurricane Irene. Check back later this week (when hopefully everyone has power back!) as we go over a Natural Disaster Crash Course to remind everyone of the important things they should know in situations like this.