Ward Goal: July begin 90 day food storage plan

One year of food storage sounds like an awful lot most of the time, and can be overwhelming to think about. Sometimes its so overwhelming that people think about it and then decide to do nothing thinking its too hard. But what I have learned about doing things the hard way is to eat the elephant one bite at a time so to speak.

This is where the church's request that we work on a 90 day supply of foods that our families eat everyday. 90 days is a lot easier to come by and to work on, and when your done, you will have 3 months out of your 1 year supply already finished.

Here is a website www.3steps.org that has an easy to follow storage plan for getting your 90 day supply together along with shelf stable meal ideas. It is important to store things your family will eat for your 90 day supply. If your children won't eat it it won't do them any good and they can end up starving to death in emergency situations if they refuse to eat.

First make a plan. Choose 18 meals, and write out the ingredient list for each meal. Multiply all ingredients listed by 5. If you buy enough for 5 of each meal, you will have 90 days of dinners. Make a budget. Look over your finances and see where you can cut a little to put to food storage, or decide how much money a week/month you want to donate to food storage and then begin to purchase meals. If you can spare it choose one meal a week and purchase all 5 of the meal ingredients you will need. to make those 5 meals. Try and look for cans with dates that are 2-3 years out. Also be mindful of food types that are fatty or have oil (nuts, brown rice, flax etc.) only have a shelf life of 6 months unless vacuum packed. So when planning meals be aware of that fact and either do without those items, vacuum pack them or pull them out to rotate them every 6 months.

After having purchased all 90 meals you should start rotating them out by eating one storage meal a week. Be sure when putting your cans in to write the dates in marker on the top so you can easily see the dates, so you can use up the meals before they expire.Continue to purchase food to replace the stuff your eating, just be sure and use up all the old meals before you start to dig into the new ones.

Creative Food Storage Solutions

One of the biggest problems I hear about when it comes to food storage is where to put a years worth of food, when your crammed into a tiny apartment and feel like there is barely any room as it is already. I am here to tell you there is a plethora of ideas out on the web to creatively store your food, without it having to be "in your face" to visitors and your family. Here are some ideas from me, followed by pictures from around the web to creatively store your food in small spaces.

• Re-think your spaces often there is unused space in our homes that could be utilized for storage.
• Under cribs, or children's beds or bunk beds - if its full of food there won't be room for toys to get shoved under there anymore, which would solve 2 problems at the same time.
• Under your bed - You can purchase risers for it to make it even higher or to get your bed off the floor.
• Have a bar in your kitchen but no bar stools? You can stack buckets underneath it up to 2 high. 
• Have space under a staircase? Use it!
• Pull out your couch a foot or two and stack buckets 2 high behind it, place a board over the top and cover with a table cloth or runner and use the board to put decor like pictures and such. 
• Floor space on closet floors A lot of times we have things hanging but not much on the floor, put boxes of #10 cans or buckets in the closet on the floor. 
• Put hanging organizers on the backs of doors to put in storage items like toothpaste, bucket wrenches, first aid supplies and the like.

 Bag meals - 90 day supply

 How to store bag meals

 Other bag meal ideas

 Looks Pretty Right? Guess what?

 You got it, Food storage!

 A side table...or is it?

 Boxes of food storage, a table cloth, a picture frame.

 Homemade can rotater

 Magazine rack turned can rotater (check DI)

 Drink a lot of soda or know someone who does?

Food Storage inventory list, so you always know what you have

Ward Goal for June: 2 Weeks of Water

This months ward goal is to have 2 weeks of water for each member of the family. Each gallon is not only for drinking but also for cooking and for cleaning/bathing. Here are some water storage tips to help you in fulfilling this goal.

• Use food grade plastic bottles such as juice or pop containers. Do not use thin plastic containers such as milk jugs.
• If you use a juice or soda container be sure to clean it very well with bleach and with soap to get all the sugar out. Otherwise the bacteria can feed off the sugar and begin to grow in your water containers rendering the water undrinkable.
• You can bring water to a boil to purify water
• You can put 1/8 of a teaspoon or 8 drops of  non-perfumed bleach in water to purify it. After adding the bleach, thoroughly mix the water to incorporate the bleach. Wait 30 minutes then smell the water. If it has a slightly chlorine smell to it, it is safe to drink. If it doesn't add two more drops and mix again. You may do this up to 16 drops altogether, without it becoming unsafe to drink
• If you do not have the funds for a portable water filter, you can purchase coffee filters at the dollar store and use it to filter out large particles from your water. You will still need to purify it by boiling or bleach.
• Gain knowledge on how to build filters out of natural materials such as gravel and sediments. 
• Rotate water at least once a year. 

Remember you can live three weeks without food but only 3 days without water!