YOU MUST KNOW THIS About Stockpiling...

hey folks this is Jr with DIY prepper welcome to the channel as Preppers we know that we're supposed to be stockpiling a lot of different kinds of things but what isn't as clear is how much of particular items should we have on hand and when a lot of people hear the word stockpile they think of hoarding as much of everything as they possibly can but if you stockpile correctly it's going to be more well thought out more well balanced and it's also going to be less expensive and result in less waste so today we're going to be talking about how much of particular items you should be stockpiling we're going to be covering things like food medication and household essentials and there's a lot of things out there that do have an indefinite shelf life so that means that technically you could store as much of those as you want to without ever having to worry about them going bad salt is an example of a food that never expires it's a mineral and those don't really go bad but just be aware that if you're storing iodized salt that that iodine may lose Effectiveness after around five years so so the salt will turn a little bit yellow but it's still going to be safe to consume it just won't have that added benefit of that iodine sugar is similar to Salt in that it never expires so that means that for either one of those you could put them in a mylar bag seal them up and your great grandkids could open them up a hundred years from now and it would be perfectly safe to consume but do not put oxygen absorbers in there because if you do it'll turn salt and sugar into pretty much a big Hawking brick however just because these can last forever that doesn't necessarily mean that you should fill an entire room of your house with them estimates for how much salt you should store per person per year do very widely but a lot of them fall in between 3 and 10 pounds on the higher end that's also going to include other things Beyond just consumption like using salt licks to attract Wild game and things like that for sugar 60 pounds per person per year is a number that comes up a lot and while you should definitely do your own research and base your food storage off of what your family actually consumes these can be a good starting point for figuring out that exact amount then there are some non-food related items that have an indefinite shelf life things like paraffin Lamp Oil and Propane and once again just because these can last forever that doesn't mean that you should waste all of your money storing those particular items your preps still need to be balanced so that you can spend money on other things that you need as well however knowing the items that have an indefinite shelf life can help you save money and reduce waste because you can purchase those items rather than similar items that don't have as long of a shelf life an example of this would be I have a dual fuel generator that can run on both gasoline and propane and I try to store way more propane than I do gasoline I don't have to worry about rotating it I don't have to worry about adding fuel stabilizer to it it's just a very nice set it and forget it kind of thing which is very good because I got a lot going on and I don't want to let rotating that gas or adding fuel stabilizer to it fall through the cracks and then result in me wasting that resource and my money but even if you store a little bit more of these than what you need they do make excellent barter items so that you can trade them for other things that you're a little short on next there are items that can store for around 20 or 30 years and that's pretty close to having an indefinite shelf life as well but a lot of these are going to be dry food items white rice is going to be the most obvious example when stored in mylar bags with oxygen absorbers it can last for around 20 or 30 years brown rice on the other hand says it has such a high oil content will probably only last around five and estimates for how much rice you should be storing it does vary widely depending on which expert you're listening to like I think and how to survive the end of the world as we know it James Wesley Ross said around 30 pounds that if you look at the wallaby food calculator online that number's around 70 other places say like 50 so what I would do just get information from several sources and then balance that with the habits of you and your family to determine that then also the numbers that we're going to be talking about are for one person per year if that's a little bit too intimidating for you then just divide it up like if you're aiming for a month right now because you're just getting started then divide the number that I'm saying by 12. if you want two years of food storage then double it just use math as your buddy to customize these numbers for the needs of you and your loved ones other ways to store grains include having wheat berries and dry pasta and both of those can store for 20 or 30 years if packaged in the way that I mentioned earlier estimates for how much of those you should have are around 200 to 220 pounds of like wheat berries and then also around 20 or 30 pounds of dried pasta beans are another item that can store for at least a couple of decades pinto beans are the easiest to store in bulk because they're the easiest to find in large packages but you should also store other varieties like Black beans along with other things like lentils and peas to give you some additional variety and cover some nutritional gaps and a good estimate for these would be around 70 pounds of assorted beans and peas per person per year and as far as foods are concerned these dry goods are probably going to comprise the bulk of your overall stockpile they're pretty cheap they give your body a lot of the different things that it needs to operate and they last for a very long time freeze-dried foods can also last for around 30 years but they can be prohibitively expensive to store in large quantities if you're somebody that can afford to go out and buy a year's supply of freeze-dried food go for it but even if you can't afford to have a large stockpile of those things it's still good to have a few of them on hand so that you have an easy to prepare meal and things like bug out bags different emergency kits and if you do find yourself in a long-term situation even if you can't eat them for every meal having a few of them on hand could provide a little bit extra Variety in your diet which would be pretty important for morale then there's items that have a shelf life of around three to five years and those can be things like flour and brown rice and a lot of folks avoid storing those because their shelf life isn't nearly as long as some other foods but there are some situations where having at least a little bit of those things would be a good idea an example of this would be if you don't have a manual Grain Mill then turning wheat berries into flour would probably be a pretty difficult task although there are other ways that you can use wheat berries if you don't have 400 or 500 to put down on a Grain Mill or you don't have space for one then storing flour would be beneficial because you would at least have that in your inventory the key to storing these foods with a shorter shelf life is to just keep track of them and rotate them even if your goal is to have a Year's worth of food storage or even two years worth of food storage you could store that amount of flour a Year's Worth or two years worth and then just rotate through it so that it doesn't go bad and even if there is a longer term disaster you would have enough of that gradient to last you for that time frame and I mean a year or two is a pretty lengthy period of time and estimates for how much flour you should store around 30 pounds per person per year then there's other situations say you have somebody in your family with certain food sensitivities maybe they have celiac disease or they just have a gluten intolerance then storing flour for them would be beneficial it might be difficult to recreate those different blends of gluten-free flour if you're having to store all those different ingredients or you're having to grow all of those different kinds of plants storing flour and rotating through it would just be a lot easier then there's items that have a shelf life of two years or less obviously you aren't going to be stacking these as deep as something that you can store for 30 years but items within this category are still good to have around an example of a food item with the shelf life like that would be Ritz crackers they're not going to store for like 30 years or more I think they'll last maybe around a year but figure out how much of those you could realistically expect to use within that year's time frame and then store that amount and then rotate through them because the mean of force comes to worse you do a good job rotating and replenishing that Supply you'll have enough to last you a year and then some other items in this category would be different kinds of medications and just generally speaking most medications do have a shelf life of around two years give or take but there have been government studies that have shown that a lot of medications actually retain around like 90 percent of their effectiveness for up to five years after the date printed on the bottle and this of course can vary widely from medication to medication so you want to do your own research based off of what you're storing so you and your family stay safe but generally speaking medications that are solid like pills they are more stable than their liquid counterparts so kind of keep that in the back of your mind as you're buying different things but the bottom line is that most of us can realistically expect to get sick sometime within the next year or so so storing some basic medications isn't probably going to result in waste and I did a video a while back showing different over-the-counter medications that you should be storing and I'll put a link to that at the end of the video but it basically comes down to easy things like pain relievers and fever reducers stomach medications and then if you have some type of medication that you take regularly for a condition like heartburn or also allergies you want to have plenty of those on hand the good thing about medications is that most of us aren't going to have to stockpile absolutely huge quantities of at least the over-the-counter stuff two small bottles like these could realistically last my wife and I for a round of year and since we tend to buy generics it's not going to cost a whole lot of money to have enough enough medications to last us for at least a year or two and if we don't use a lot of them since they were so cheap it's really not going to be that big of a dent in our finances it's also a good idea to have some antibiotics although these are going to be more expensive than the over-the-counter stuff there's a lot of services out there now that you can use to get legally prescribed antibiotics from a doctor and if you're in a situation where you need these there's very few alternative options they're going to be as effective as them so they're very good things to have around cleaning chemicals are another thing that have a shorter shelf life but it's still good to have some around an example of this would be hydrogen peroxide when unopened it can last for around three years but once you break that seal on the bottle it'll drop to around six months but it has a lot of different uses you can use it in your laundry you can also use it for cleaning surfaces even though it doesn't have like a really strong smell like bleach it can kill things like norovirus which a lot of other household cleaners including sanitizing wipes really struggle with and hydrogen peroxide also has medicinal uses when it's diluted you can use it as a mouthwash and it can also prevent an ear infection from requiring antibiotics if you nip it in the bud early you can just put a couple of drops in there and it'll kill a lot of the stuff if it hasn't had a chance to take hold and when I'm talking about hydrogen peroxide I mean the version that you would find at the pharmacy section not the more powerful commercial grade stuff sanitizing wipes are also good to have around even though they may only last around a year or so but the good thing about them is that they will reduce the amount of your water storage that you have to use for cleaning tasks which would be very beneficial especially in a longer term situation or you live somewhere in a desert area where you're not going to have a whole lot of rainfall that you can collect and when it comes to figuring out how much of different cleaning chemicals that you should be storing take a look at first of all their expiration date how long do they last and then figure out how much of that you could reasonably expect to use within that time frame that's a good place to start earlier I mentioned that I did a video covering all the different over-the-counter meds we should be stockpiling and if you want to see that click here and if you want to see ways that you can make your water storage last longer during a disaster check this out thank you all for stopping by y'all have a good

Channel: DIY Prepper TV

Views: 245,421

Keywords: Prepper, Prepping, DIY Prepper

Id: ld7y0-VvVsQ

Length: 12min 16sec (736 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 02 2023