Prepping/stocking supplies

[Chic Rustler]

what do you guys keep a supply of now that weve been educated by the covid lock downs and shortages?.....besides the obvious rice and ammo?



stuff for your car? how much gas, do you keep on hand just incase? fluids and filters? idk if yall noticed but motor oil prices are spiking high and there have been some shortages.

cleaning supplies? how long can you go without buying dish soap or laundry detergents and stuff?

light bulbs? pther regularly used items around the house?

 

[Chic Rustler]

so a friend was cleaning out his shop and gave me 5 unused oil lamps. after a little cleaning and some oil they are perfectly operational!

 

[Chic Rustler]

finding places for things can be a challenge for sure. I find that we have to be creative

 

[baymule]

I can’t burn scented candles, they are poison to me. Don’t have any unscented ATM, need to get some. I do have a couple of Tac lights that give lots of light and one wind up LED light that takes no batteries.

Now that I’m moving, I dragged out my prepper buckets, ELEVEN of them! 25 pounds of oatmeal, rice I’m whittling down so I can refill. But used mostly to put in chicken leg quarters and rice canned for the dogs. Pinto beans, using them down, 12 years old and hard as rocks. I soak 24 hours, pre-cook and can them. Several buckets of wheat berries because they store longer than flour.
Sugar. And more.

I like the canning jars under the bed! LOL! I currently have a nice pantry, but not at new place. I have tons of jar lids, but are there ever enough? I started writing the year on the box so I can use the oldest first.

A new place will bring its own challenges and I’ll adapt. When I find Home, I’ll have a different set of challenges to adapt to.

 

[Hinotori]

Freeze flour, too. I've see weevils in flour more than anything else.

 

[tortoise]

I doubled the cleaning items and light bulbs I stock. I keep 6 months' worth now. Two factors in this were 1) I had underestimated the rate I would use cleaning supplies and 2) when panic buying started unscented cleaning products were slow to recover. I'm allergic to fragrances.

 

[Chic Rustler]

i have a lot of beans and garden seeds, oatmeal and we usually have toilet paper for about a year. aside from the canned and frozen foods there isn't anything else i particularly stockpile.

do bookshelves full of books count? i have a fair number of those now and i barely touch most of them since i've already read them or they are references "Just In Case" of the Great Tacolips (what i call the apolcalypse because it's easier to spell and i don't have to care if i got it right or not).

we have lightbulbs up the wazoo because we have track lighting and i took advantage of an ultra cheap sale of LED bulbs to replace all of them. since we use them so rarely i could swap out one of those for one i use more often and would likely not even notice for months as i hardly ever use those or many others. they're there and useful but do not get used that often.

for fuel and oil, those happen at the gas station or the mechanic's place and i'm quite happy for them to keep them there until we need them. same for most other items. we just don't have the space for a lot of extra. if i get some things then i have to start thinking of what i have to get rid of.

rice, nope, i'm not much into rice, we have some on hand, but not normally nearly as much as oatmeal. and beans i probably have 100-200 x more beans than i have rice.

chocolate we do stock at a good amount. that's always useful in all sorts of ways from immediate food/fuel to cooking so many recipes.

instant coffee, sugar and flour fit in with the baking supplies, we normally keep those on hand in enough quantity that we can make a few thousand cookies or other things.

water.

worm bedding materials, i'm hoarding some bean pods right now until i can get them fed to the worms. they seem to like them better than shredded paper so i have been building up more paper shreddings the past few months. i'm mixing some of the paper in with the bean pods. just to get the worms at it. eventually they do break it all down.

i tend to just hord anything i think ill need later. its not really a good thing. like the tower of mason jars. glad i have them now tho!

the motor oil thing...well i got a buddy that just took his truck in for an oil change. it cost him $90 for the fancy synthetic his truck requires. it cost me $12 to change my oil at home because im always looking for sales and stock up when i find them. i have enough oil and filters to change the oil on our vehicles 5 times and my mower 3 times. i need air filters for the cars tho....


speaking of filters its cheaper to buy filters for your home air-conditioner by the case from an hvac supply house. saves money and you have them on hand when you need em.

 

[Hinotori]

Mom did yell at me for forgetting a box on our last trip down. It's a bunch of old oil lamps. Some from my great grandparents.

No one else wanted them when my grandparents died so Dad took them. Parents are cleaning stuff out of the shed now 15 years on. We lose power enough that they would be useful. Not sure what types of oil they use or if it's kerosene.

Normally I use beeswax candles. Got a bunch of votives on sale once, plus a whole box of beeswax tealights.

I did make a makeshift olive oil lamp the first year here with a bowl, some foil to protect the rim, and a cottonball pulled and rolled into a wick.

 

[JanetMarie]

We still have oil lamp fuel from Y2K. Don't know if it's still good. We use candles if the power goes out. I would like to make an olive oil lamp.

Baking soda is a great cleaner to have excessive boxes of, and inexpensive. Also good in place of tooth paste.

 

[Chic Rustler]

so you guys i spired me to try and make an oil lamp. i split a regular lamp wick in half popped a hole in a mason jar with a chisel and filled it with a mix of 1/3 lamp oil to 2/3 olive oil. its reported on line that olive oil doesnt wick well because of the viscosity thats why i used the lamp oil to thin it down some. both oils mixed well