Today we are highlighting the Make Your Own board. There are so many household cleaners, body cleaners, and food mixes you can make your own, rather than buying them pre-made. Not only are making them yourselves cheaper, but you can make a variety of things with basic ingredients, allowing you to store less. Pinterest is a gold mind for finding make-your own recipes. We haven’t tried many of them yet, but look forward to trying them out!

• PIN 1: Who remembers to, or WANTS to store drain cleaner. This looks awesome, and who doesn’t have these ingredients?
• PIN 2: A whole list of household cleaners you can make your self from ingredients you have on hand.
• PIN 3: Homemade ranch, onion soup mix, and taco seasoning. Talk about saving you in a pinch when you run out of something!
• PIN 4: Baby wipes? That’s the last thing you want to run out of in case of emergency. Must try this!

Make sure you check out the rest of the items on the Make Your Own 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 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 Canning board. This board is a great place to find canning recipes and tips. Canning is one of those things it’s hard to remember all the instructions and directions, so having a place you can go back to reference is very helpful!

To see the whole board, click here.

• PIN 1: This is something we saved because we HAVEN’T tried it yet, and really want to try it. Curious to see what that food is? Go to the pin!
• PIN 2: These are jar “containers” that we are really curious about, and want to test out ourselves! Seems like your jars would stay protected in here.
• PIN 3: One of Jodi’s first things she canned. Since then she has ventured into much more foods.
• PIN 4: The book Jodi has named the Canning Bible. She doesn’t can anything without referring to it.

Make sure you check out the rest of the items on the Canning 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.

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.

Today we are highlighting our Food Storage Shelves and Pantries board. Oh how we love to look at other people’s pantries and Food Storage ideas. When Julie goes to the parade of homes, she spends most of her time in the pantry, and food storage rooms at model homes.

To see the whole board, click here.

• PIN 1: This BEAUTIFUL food storage room. What we love most about it, is that they used the empty space through the middle of the room. So often we’ve seen Food Storage rooms (ours included) that line the walls with shelves, and leave a lot of space in the middle totally wasted.
• PIN 2:This way awesome way of taking advantage of those hard to use corner pantry spaces
• PIN 3:This great tutorial on how to make your own cardboard rotating racks. Thanks to Jodi’s hubby
• PIN 4:Some of our favorite shelves to use in our Food Storage. They sure do make rotation easy!

Make sure you check out the rest of the items on the Food Storage Shelves and Pantries 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.

Start now, so you’ll be ready to join the fun in February. (It may take a few days to get in since it’s currently invitation only)

To let you know how it all started – here are actual excerpts of conversations between Jodi and Julie.

Last Fall
JODI: So do you know what this Pinterest thing is that everyone is doing?
JULIE: NO idea. I think you have to be invited or something.
JODI: I’ll start us an account to see if there’s anything food storage on there
JULIE: Go for it.

Just Before Christmas
JULIE: I think there’s something to this Pinterest thing, but I just don’t get it.
JODI: Ya, I started that account, but didn’t know what was going on, so it’s just sitting there.

After Christmas
JULIE: So I actually logged into Pinterest, and messed around a little. I think it might be AMAZING!
JODI: I still don’t get it

Last Week
JULIE: I’m addicted to Pinterest, and keep finding Food Storage stuff all around I want to pin.
JODI: LET’S DO IT!!!

Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests. (Like Food Storage)

I HEART PINTEREST FEBRUARY

PINS WE WILL BE SHARING

• Awesome pantries
• Shelving solutions
• Food Rotation ideas
• Recipes
• Bread tips and recipes
• Tutorials

If you’re already on Pinterest, follow us! If you’re not already on, you can request an invite from Pinterest, but your friends that are already on it can typically get you added much quicker. So, get on facebook and ask your friends to send you an invite and come join the fun. You’ll want to do this soon so you can be ready to save and pin starting February 1ST! We are so excited to show everyone how useful this will be for building their food storage (but forgive us in advance if you get addicted)

February is going to be SO fun!

p.s. If you’re not a member of Pinterest, you’ll still be able to SEE our stuff, you just wont be able to save our pins to your own personal board. So no need to feel left out

One great way to have information off line is through books, printed recipes, and your Food Storage Made Easy Binder.

Food Storage Books

We have done a number of Food Storage Book reviews that we wanted to remind you about, and encourage you to figure out which books would best fit your needs. These are great things to ask for as gifts, or to give as gifts. Here are some of our current Food Storage Book reviews, along with some books we will be reviewing in the future:

Emergency Food Storage in a Nutshell – REVISED review to reflect the new edition
Country Beans – Amazing book on all things beans
Cooking with Food Storage Made Easy – Cute book with tons of easy recipes!
Jan’s Fabulous Food Storage Recipes – Treasure trove of great information
Dinner is in the Jar – A different approach to food storage

It’s in the Bag – COMING SOON
The Dehydrator Bible – COMING SOON
Cooking with Sunshine – COMING SOON

Food Storage Recipes

Recipes is probably one of the MOST important things to have in print format. Not only will it save your laptop from tomato slime by having it in the kitchen, but you’ll be able to cook without power and internet!

For some great tips about building your recipes offline see these posts:
How to Organize Your Recipes – Jodi shares her approach to compiling recipe binders with a great little tutorial
FREE Shelf Stable Cookbook – Compilation of over 200 shelf stable recipes you can print out and add to your binder

Food Storage Made Easy Binder

As a part of our Food Storage Made Easy ebook binder, we’ve included tons of informative articles and recipes you can turn to in times of need. We also encourage you to print other resources you find online or at classes you may attend and put it into your binder. Use the binder as your main go-to resource for building and using your food storage.

Usually when we take on big projects, vacations, and even having babies, we make sure to time it with each other. There’s always at least one of us who tries to stay relatively available. Well we mistakenly decided to take on the holidays, while one of us MOVED, and the other FINISHED A BASEMENT. Bad, bad idea folks! It left us merely capable of handling urgent emails and slightly comatose the rest of the time. Well, Jodi is mostly settled into her new basement (although her food storage is still inaccessible), and Julie has running water, gas, and internet at the new house, so we’re ready to get back in the saddle. We’ve missed you on facebook, and on the blog.

With it still being early January, we wanted to share with you our Food Storage Goals for 2012!

• Put my food storage room back together after the move. I have my rotating racks set up, but the rest of the food is in open boxes. I moved across the street so I was spoiled in that, I didn’t have to “carefully” pack it. More on moving food storage later this month!
• Now that I have moved into a different house, and I “practiced” a garden at my mom’s house last year. I’m going to try my OWN garden, in my OWN yard!
• Make my own granola on a regular basis. I’m good at having my family eat oatmeal often, but I want to try and make a good multi-grain, sprouted granola to add variety in nutrients to breakfast time.
• After living without gas in our new house for a couple days in the middle of winter (long story), I want to learn more about ways to STAY warm without power

• Get a better system for my UPSTAIRS pantry situation. I have a great food storage, but I get a little tired of running downstairs for ingredients almost every single night. This has been extremely annoying the last few weeks as most of my food storage has been completely inaccessible. I would like to have a decent amount of things upstairs and have a good system for moving things up from the basement in batches every now and then.
• I want to learn dutch oven cooking this summer. Last summer I had fun trying regular recipes in my Sun Oven, but that was pretty easy to do. I feel like dutch oven cooking will require getting some new recipes to try and learning to cook in ways I’m not used to. I think it will be fun!
• I definitely want to get more into dehydrating this year. I like freeze-dried foods but it can save tons of money to dehydrate your own plus you can have a lot more options with the different foods you are dehydrating. It’s also great for preserving extra garden harvest.
• My final goal is to start sale shopping/couponing again. Having three kids and another on the way, I haven’t done great at stocking up when things are cheapest over the past little while. It takes conscious effort and some planning to do this. I’m always buying extras of things when I run out, and my long term storage is well stocked and rotated into my regular foods, but I think I can get my 3 month supply a little more robust and do it cheaper if I am couponing. This may have to wait til things settle down after baby #4, but it is a goal for me this year!

What are YOUR food storage goals for 2011?

Stay tuned for more in depth posts about Jodi’s new refinished food storage room, and Julie’s adventures in moving a food storage!

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