40 Items to stock up on before a SHTF situation

[baymule]

My preps are nonexistent. Just kinda forgot about that stuff with homestead life. I do keep some water, oil lamps nd first aid kits

Prepping doesn't mean only for the end of the world. Prepping also covers you if for some reason you can't work, due to lay off, sickness or injury. Your garden and canning is a form of prepping. Laying in extra groceries, consumables, soap, toothpaste, the things that you KNOW you are going to use. if you need one, buy 2-3. Over time you will have stocked in a good supply of the things you use and need.

 

[baymule]

I will mention fish antibiotics. They are the SAME as people antibiotics. You can order them online or buy them at the feed store with no prescription. In a SHTF situation, a good stock of antibiotics could save a life.

 

[Hinotori]

We mostly prep for emergencies. Like power out for days. When another earthquake hits here. Or when the Cascadia Fault decides to knock out services for a while

If the stupid mountain starts smoking or bulging funny, we're going to listen and pack up to visit family.

 

[Marianne]

I don't prep like I used to, either. Like Hinotori, I'm ready for emergencies or winter in case we can't get out or something. Some years back, we didn't have power for 8 days. I learned from that.
My health went down the tubes a few years ago, so our priorities kind of changed.

 

[Marianne]

Oh, the other night, I thought that for soapers, a good stash of bar soap would be a good barter item and wouldn't take up too much room. Also, any bar soap will last a lot longer if it's unwrapped and allowed to dry. The longer it dries, the longer it lasts.
Back to basics son and I have made simple lard soap, tallow soap, hamburger/bacon grease soap (yeah, really. He saved about 9 pints of it then we boiled it with water/cooled/removed fat/repeat). It's just as good as the tallow soap. My favorite is coconut oil soap that I also use as a shampoo bar, hubby likes the olive oil bar and he also uses that for a shampoo bar.
I'd be okay with either the lard/tallow/bacon grease soap if son hadn't put tea tree and eucalyptus in them. I can't stand tea tree. But in India, where he lived for years, that and eucalyptus is used as a bug repellant, so he thought he'd get double duty out of his soap. He's going to use it for laundry, as well.
My mother told me that she remembers her mother grating soap into a bottle w/ water for shampoo. That would have been in the early 1900's.

 

[wyoDreamer]

I have a neatly stacked bar soap in the storage area. DH prefers to use "body wash" but I like to use bar soap and a washcloth. I feed cleaner afterwards and it lasts a lot longer than a bottle of body wash. plus ti takes up less room. I have "Zest" and the Dove "beauty bar". I grew up using Zest, so that is the sent that I associate with clean, but after the breast cancer radiation my skin is more sensitive in that area so I can't use soap and need to use the Dove.

I am going to restock the #10 cans of freeze dried fruits that I am using up right now because they are about to expire. I am really liking that they are there on the shelf for me to use for fruit in the winter.

 

[sumi]

have made simple lard soap, tallow soap, hamburger/bacon grease soap (yeah, really. He saved about 9 pints of it then we boiled it with water/cooled/removed fat/repeat). It's just as good as the tallow soap.

I'm intrigued now. Please tell us more?

 

[Marianne]

I'm intrigued now. Please tell us more?

All he did was pour off the liquid after he browned up the ground beef. He poured it into a pint canning jar and left it sitting on the counter. Each addition sealed off what was below it, so that helped keep it from smelling. He added to the jar in the same way until it was fairly full, then put a flat and ring on it.
After we had nine pints of it, he dumped it all into a big stock pot and added water. Yeck. A couple jars didn't smell very good.
We boiled it for about 5 minutes, let it cool, then put it in the garage to cool overnight. It was dropping below freezing at night. The next day, we took the solidified fat that was on top, dumped the water, put the fat back into the cleaned pot, added water and repeated. All in all, I think we 'washed' the fat three times. It had virtually no odor, was white like fresh tallow. Then we made tallow soap.

Bacon grease would go into the lard stash for soap. Usually we just put that in the freezer when we had a surplus as I use it in cooking.

I'd never use it for cooking, but it worked well for soap. I want to add that this guy was eating at least two pound of ground beef a day, sometimes more.

 

[Hinotori]

That's how great grandma got the fat for making her soap.

I store my filtered bacon grease in the fridge. It gets used up for cooking pretty fast. We don't eat bacon more than once a week.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Wow! My dh would do that if he could, lol. He loves ground beef...