Being in New Zealand, the Christchurch earthquakes were a timely reminder of the unexpected nature of natural disasters. All countries have their own natural hazards: bush/wild fires, cyclones, tornadoes, etc. Being ready is key to peace of mind, and should the worse happen, survival. Today I will talk about emergency food and items and how I keep them organised and from expiring.
We keep our emergency food on shelving in the garage, it is the only single level part of our house, so we figure we will be able to get to our items in an emergency. We use plastic crates, which contain food and other essentials. Alongside them are blankets, stashes of warm clothes, our camping gear, and other recommended items.
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| Emergency Food stored in crates, with contents & dates label. |
Our emergency water is in a garden shed. We use large empty fruit juice bottles. Each bottle is labelled with the date it was filled. Once we had the required number of bottles in there, we continued adding a bottle per fortnight (our juice consumption rate). As a new bottle is added, an old one is removed, emptied onto the garden and bottle recycled.Back to the food. In a ziplock bag on the front of one of the crates is a list of the items of food, and their purchase and expiry dates. It means I can check at a glance what is due to expire, and replace it when I do my fortnightly shopping. Since this is mostly a 'set and forget' system (who wants to be thinking about disasters continually??) I have three monthly reminders in my phone to check and replace items. The replaced items are either put in our pantry for use, or donated to the local foodbank. Foodbanks are not too fussy about taking things close to or past their best before dates.
Here is a link to some information to help you be prepared for an emergency, like what kind of things to have on hand:
http://www.huttcity.govt.nz/en/Services/Emergency-management/Emergency-preparedness/
This is a useful post also:
http://www.ifonlytheytoldme.com/emergency/
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