It’s Monday, the day when I tell you this week’s item. Which will be THE most important thing in your entire food storage. And it’s not even food, it’s WATER! Fortunately you don’t need to have a three month supply of this on hand; although it would be nice. We’re going to take baby steps and get a few days worth at a time.
I don’t know about you but we had some scary weather last week. It really brought to light all of the holes in my preparedness preparations. Water is the thing you really, really don’t want to be without. (And heat. But we’re not going to worry about that this week.) We’re going to store up water by baby steps. So this week you water assignment is:
Just the regular size of water bottles. Round up if you need to–if you have 3 people in your family you’ll need 30 bottles of water. But there might be a flat of water bottles at the store that has 36 bottles–get it! Understand? Water is not expensive. And it’s the item you really do need to find space for. Clean out some stuff under you bed and stash some water bottles there instead.
You can do it!
With the research I've done, I believe that as far as water goes they recommend a two week supply. Which I believe is 14 gallons of water per person. By my math–it equals 5 cases of bottled water per person. That's what we have in our house–stacked up in a closet. Actually I have 4 people's worth of water in cased bottled water, and then the other 2 persons in Gallon water bottles.
How often do you need to replace that water?
Getting some water tomorrow!
The easiest thing is to buy one of those 50 gallon BLUE (not white) water tanks and fill it with a hose, plus 8 drops of Clorox. Then refill it every summer. Not as swanky as water bottles, but holds a lot more, and you can keep it outdoors. In fact, Jennie, I believe you have mine!
The storm also inspired me. I went out and bought a 3 month supply of rice, beans, flour, yeast, sugar and salt. Because I have NOTHING ELSE TO EAT!!
I"m so glad you posted this. I've been feeling horribly guilty and scared lately that I haven't refilled my water supply since dumping it in order to move all the water bottles here (they're 1 1/2 gallon bottles). Sometimes I remember when I'm driving, or in the shower, or wake up from a bad dream, and then I am mad at myself for not doing it. But then life gets crazy and I forget again. So today I went out and JUST DID IT. Not quite a 2 week's supply, but I have 11 bottles filled up now (that's 16 gallons), and I feel SOOOO much better! Next job, filling my big blue water drum.