Another Lesson Learned.

Most everyone that knows me, and those few of you that have been reading here for a while, know that I’m a vocal and ardent advocate for preparedness.

There are a number of factors that led me there, starting with a family Patriarch that grew up in the Depression era and the Boy Scout years of my youth.

Anyhow, I started getting really serious about it around 2008 or so, and while I wouldn’t say it’s my “lifestyle”, it certainly has been a constant in my life.

There are a number of pillars to preparing for the unknown – food, water, shelter, medical and hygiene, energy and a means of self defense.  The people that really go down the rabbit hole concentrate on a lot of other things too, but if you focus on the pillars, you’re going to be in much better shape than the vast majority of people, come what may.

When I first got serious about preparing, I was recently laid-off from a job, and while I found a new gig rather quickly,  we were very much in the world of the working poor.  Living check-to-check, no savings, nothing extra… barely squeaking by.

Nevertheless, I knew it was important and I was determined to build up food reserves, even if it was only a can or two a month.

I stuck to the sage advice I’d found online at the time – “store what you eat and eat what you store”.  The idea being that you would rotate through the backup foods without them spoiling and also avoid sending your body into  shock with an instant diet change, should disaster happen and you need to rely on your reserves. 

So that’s what I did, a couple cans here, a couple cans there until I started feeling like we had a good start on things.

Fast forward a short while, the employment situation had improved, I wasn’t quite destitute and I started getting smarter about my buying.  I would scour the weekly mailers from the 3 different grocery chains in our area and take advantage of the “loss leader” sales (big thanks to Jim “Lord Bison” Dakin for showing me that!) and then upped the ante even further with a Cosco membership so I could buy in bulk.  Things were looking up in the food storage realm, to the point of needing new furniture to store it all in!

Then, as often happens in life, things change.  We started trying to eat a little healthier, so we started going to farmer’s markets and avoided canned goods.  And we were all working more hours and I was constantly stressed out from work so we started getting lazy and relying more and more on takeout food.  When our daughter moved out, it seemed more of a hassle to cook and clean for just two so we got even lazier about cooking.

But in 2020 when “the Plague” hit, I really went off the deep end.  I was buying food like a maniac, storing it away and we continued eating out as much as possible, with the thinking that “this was it” and we needed to hold on to our stored foods as long as possible because there might not be any foods to obtain in the next year…  Or if there was, we might not be able to afford it. (Been there, done that!)

It seems foolish now, looking back, but the fear mongering propaganda was in hyper-drive at the time, so I was simply doing what I thought was prudent to make sure we could eat when everything fell apart.

Anyhow, that’s the (mostly) concise version that brings me up to the last couple weekends and a very important lesson that I learned the hard way.

As I said, I went off the deep end with the food buying AND we were cooking significantly less at home over the last 3+ years, and the Mrs. and I had determined that this year we were going to get back into cooking.  I’m no slouch in the kitchen and the Mrs. is an AMAZING cook, plus it’s better for both our physical and financial health, so it seemed like a smart move.  The problem was I had filled every nook and cranny in the kitchen, plus 6 or 7 large plastic crates and at least that many 5 gallon buckets on the periphery of the kitchen, so trying to find anything was an excersize in frustration. Keep in mind we live in a 650 square foot apartment!

It was time to clean house.

Over the last two weekends I spent close to 20 hours going through all the kitchen cabinets, checking expiration dates, looking for signs of deterioration or infestation and I threw out  LOT of food.  I do mean A LOT.  So far six big Hefty bags, full to my limits of lifting them, have gone in the dumpster.  It was painful. I felt like I was just flushing hard earned cash down the toilet.

But, I have no one to blame but myself.  I was lazy about it.  I didn’t bother with “proper” food storage techniques,  thinking we’d use it all before we needed to bother with that stuff.  As a consequence I had to throw out multiple bags of flour, boxes of pasta, cereal…all kinds of stuff that bugs got into over the years.  I didn’t properly rotate canned goods, so I found dozens upon dozens of expired foods.  Now, I’m not really a stickler for expiration dates, I’ll usually be comfortable with something a year or so out of date…but cans of tuna that expired 4 years ago? Canned beans with a “best by 2017”.  Nah, I’m not gonna risk it.

In short, I feel like a moron.  And what’s worse, I’ve been living with a false sense of security for a number of years.  Thinking you’re squared away and actually,  factually BEING squared away, are two different things.

I foolishly thought we had 6 months of food on hand, but after the cleanup, I’d guess we’re closer to 2 months.  Nothing to sneeze at of course, but it’s a shock to the system to make this realization.  I guess the silver lining is that I made the discovery BEFORE we needed to rely on it.  And while I was beating myself up about the “lost” money after throwing so much away, I convinced myself to look at it as having paid an “insurance premium” and didn’t need to make a claim.  For whatever reason that makes it easier to swallow.

I’m still a strong proponent of preparedness,  don’t get me wrong.  But take it from me, if you don’t do it with care it’s gonna cost you one way or another.  Luckily it only cost me money, and you can nearly always make more of that.  Much better than risking Botulism or something because the family is starving…

Right now with the world on edge and uncertainty and chaos around every corner,  I feel that preparedness is more important than ever, but don’t do it like I did – be SMART about it.   I’m out here learning lessons the hard way, so you don’t have to!

Be safe out there!  Thanks for stopping by!