Week 15: Food
This week add 6 pounds of grains per family member to your General Store. This can be wheat, oats, rice, brown rice, wild rice, quinoa, popcorn, spelt, cream of wheat, you get the idea. Remember we are storing by food group, the grains your family will eat.
If you do not know how to cook with wheat and you have no food allergies to wheat, I would strongly recommend you learn to bake bread as that is one thing your family will probably really miss if you are without for an extended period. During the pandemic the supply of bread has been low and often very limited for purchase when it is in stock. Bread is filling when food supplies may be scarce, and you need to conserve foods in other food groups. If you do not have a grinder or know someone who does, store flour for bread making.
A word about popcorn. If you have a grinder popcorn can be ground and used as cornmeal.
Week 15: General Store
Let’s continue our dental care theme this week and add toothbrushes and dental floss to your storage stash.
Consider how many people you have in your family plus those who may evacuate to your home during an emergency. Toothbrushes are inexpensive at dollar discount stores so be generous. Toothbrushes never go bad so you will never have to throw them away because they become outdated. Dental care is extremely important to good health.
Last week a friend was brushing her teeth when her son came in and informed her, he had lost his toothbrush. Just to see what he would say she asked if he wanted to use hers and he told her, “No, that’s ok. I used that one to clean my rocks”. Be prepared!
Dental floss can be used for many, many emergency fixes so store enough to add one or more to your Five-Day kits, auto kits and workplace kits as well as to the dental care section of your General Store.