Where is it? Where did I put them? Do you have my flashlight? Do we have batteries? Is there any food in your backpack?
Without organization, our preps are just stuff lost in our house somewhere.
We'll discuss how and where we organize our items on today's episode. Our aim is to get you thinking about unusual areas and ways you can store your preps. This is what we do. Maybe it will help you.
First thing it to separate your preps by category
Food
Tools
Survival Gear
Medical
Etc
Then further separate food items:
Non-perishables like canned goods or powdered soup mixes, etc.
Dry foods - pastas, beans, rice, etc
Shorter termed items -
Cereals, oatmeal, Grits, coffee, etc
Long-term foods can be stored in tubs, under beds, and forgotten for a few years.
Most can be consumed a few years after the "Best if used by" date.
There are exceptions:
Highly acidic foods, such as tomatoes in cans need to be rotated on a somewhat regular basis; maybe every year, so we won't put those under the bed for two or three years.
Garage, basement, and crawl space storage
Less often used survival gear and small camping gear can be stored in heavy totes and labeled.
Some say use the clear totes so you can see what is in them.
We much prefer the heavy duty black, yellow top totes from the home improvements store. You can print out the contents on an 8.5x11 inch paper (large print in my case, so I can read them from below). Place the paper in sheet protectors, and tape to the tote.
Or, you could use wide masking tape and a wide magic marker to label.
We have shelves that go as high as ten feet in the garage, and are about 15' in length. They are just right for one tote, turned sideways, so the sheet protector goes on the side.
We also have a bit of storage near the opening of the crawl space. Items stored here are subject to rodents chewing through the plastic, so it is good to keep some rodent bait near the tubs.
For Food Storage
Utilize wall space
Krista had a set of three bookcases in her living room at her last house.
With tension rods at the top of each, she hung decorative curtains over them, almost top to bottom.
No one could see behind the curtains.
Perfect place for storing food or other preps.
You can build shelves, or use commercial units, covering it on three sides
Had 8' of heavy metal shelves in a spare bedroom. Krista had those in her pet store holding 50 lb bags of dog food.
Utilize underbed storage
Snap top plastic containers
We have the bed on risers, because it's easier getting out of bed
Gives us 6" more storage space for the containers, designed to hold blankets.
Under or behind furniture
We add a 12" X 4' glass table on plaster pedestals.
We pulled the couch out, put a cloth cover with knick-knacks on it, and used the storage space underneath for food storage.
We had a 3', 3-legged glass table with a floor-length covering over it. Our TV sat on it. Under it was a storage space approximately 24"x24" space between the legs. It was never seen. That's covert.
Much of what we are talking about here was covert storage. Anyone coming in had no idea it was there.
Just a note:
Most food items and all medications need to be kept in a temperature controlled environment. Do not store medications in a garage, unless it is temperature controlled!
Inside our prepper pantry
Heavy commercial plastic shelves I had in a previous office.
8' louvered cabinets, three shelves
(2) 6' 1"x12" unpainted shelves with heavy brackets
Floor space beside plastic shelves, for paper products and gallons or 2.5 gallon water containers.
For Gear storage
Exterior storage
*Rubbermaid cabinets-diff sizes
*Store firewood, fuel tanks, tools
*Patio, basement, balcony
Additional Storage Containers
*Blanket chest, cedar-lined
*Ottoman cube
*Shoe cabinet
*Over-the-door shoe bag
*Chests of drawers, asst sizes
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