It was time to make up more homemade laundry soap so I inventoried my soap supplies.

I've been in cleaning mode lately. Putting up shelving in closets and sorting through sewing and linens. I found I have a huge hole when it comes to twin sized sheets so those were added to the master list awaiting a good sale.

Jnauary is usually "eat from the freezer month" to eat up all the leftover bits and clean it out. Saves some money too although it makes for some strange meal combinations!

I've really been off my game as far as prepping goes since about mid November. Preparing for Christmas is a lot of additional work that throws me for a loop, at home and at work. I am so looking forward to Spring.

Pretty much up to my @55 in plastic containers that I salvaged from the recycle bin at work, so put that on hold for awhile. Still collecting the roll ends of toilet paper when I have to clean rooms at work, have two shopping bags full. (The other cleaners just throw them away.) Started saving the mylar bags from potato chips and rice crispy minis, for experimenting with the Food Saver. Is that a dumb idea?

Was walking along the street a couple of weeks ago and spotted a green plastic gold pan lying in the gutter. Got talking to my dad about prospecting, he and my mom used to be very interested in it years ago. So I've been reading an armload of his books on the subject. Anybody else out there interested in prospecting, anybody living off grid on a claim?

Thanks to Chinese New Year's specials....stocked up on 8kg sized bag of rice and trying out some shelf stable Udon noodles and some tinned toffee peanuts.
This week Canadian tire has lidded bins on for $9.99.... 60 litre ones that the lid opens from the front...we got 4 of those for storing potatoes, onions, bagged and oatmeal , packaged/boxed pasta.
Going to be taking a roast out of the deep freeze for jerky, as we just ate the last bag.
Got Blood Oranges from the store so may try to put up some Blood Orange marmalade.

Picked up a few sale items this week...canned tuna, evaporated milk, etc.
Soooo glad to have stored water lately as our pipes froze overnight as temperatures dipped to below -30.
I have been filling 2l soda bottles as well as buying 4l bottles (at $1.00).
I like the store bought stuff for the bottles more than the water in them, but it all adds up.
Used the wood stove to melt snow to flush & do dishes with (used the mellow yellow rule).

Still trying to get back into 'normal' mode after the Christmas/New Year's hubbub. It's a big deal at work, took over a week to take down, pack up, and store all the decorations.

Couldn't resist, brought home 2 large buckets from the recycle bin at work, they don't have lids, but a bucket is always useful for carrying stuff even without a lid. Just keeping my food preps topped up. Shoppers Drug Mart has a super deal on instant Maxwell House coffee: 2.99 for 200 gr. (could be a good barter item for teotwawki)

Been canning off and on: meats, soups, stew, chili, some plain beans, and marmalade since it's citrus season. Picked up some Bernardin plastic storage lids for my wide-mouth jars because I made yogurt last night and couldn't find anything but regular mouth plastic lids (I know I have some wides, but they must all be in use).

Added two more 6 gallon buckets of organic wheat and a bucket each of organic rolled oats, (unbleached organic) white flour and organic jasmine rice to the stores closet, which meant a reorg session--all tidy again! Also picked up several 900g bags each of split peas, navy/pinto/black/red kidney beans, and barley on sale to bucket up with buckets I picked up from the bakery dept of our local Co-op grocery store.

Keeping track of all the fruit/veg/jam/pickles canning we did in the summer months now that we're halfway to summer/gardening season again, and it looks like we've done well as we have more than half of most things left. Actually have only used up about an 8th of the jams and quarter of the pickles so that's good to know.

Cold weather this week (-27C for a high today) after a month of almost spring so this morning I made sure the vehicle kits are in good shape.

Plan to defrost the chest freezer in the basement tomorrow since the weather is cold enough to put the food outside, just steeling myself to box it all up and carry it all up the stairs and out onto the deck.

Picked up the book "Country Wisdom &Know How" seems like an excellent read 476 pages covers everything animals, cooking, crafts, gardening, health and well being, and home. price was excellent as well $5.

I picked up a doggy Rescue from a shelter;
90lb Cane Corso, female aprox 1.3yrs old
picked up a doggy pack for her
doggy coat
metal bowls so they can be heated up and ice melted over a fire, or heat source.
2.5 months of food for her as well.

working on training, retraining as well as socialization with her, mostly working on her and I getting to know each other and like each other, the best defence.

Some things were on sale this weeks so added 48 cans vegetable soup, 24 cans flaked tuna, some ramen noodles, 8kg rice, toothpaste, shampoo, and I ordered 6 #10 cans of Thrive freeze dried vegetables. Re-organized some of the shelves and made sure that the older foods were in front.

3 cases of soup, 3 cases of tomatoes ( whole, chunky, sauce) 18.1 kg rice and a couple more jars of instant coffee... some good sales at the moment! Bought an old school chafing set-up with insert, lid etc at the thriftstore for $4 ...perfect for warming up food in a small blackout or the like and safe to use in the apartment. Found a black granite wear stew pot and Foley food mill at another thrift store when out and about with VanIsleMom!

Finally, he and I went on a big pinecone drying/dipping in beeswax binge. Lot's of firestarters now!

So...I went to Costco in Burlington ON as it's better than the one in Ancaster ON...and they had a quite a few good deals
2 6 packs of Stagg Chili $7.99 ea ....reg. $9.99 ea on for $2 off
8x172 tissues boxes of Puffs with lotion for $16.99 (I'm positive there was a $3 discount on these but it didn't show up on the receipt)
80 tablet pack of Gravol good till 2014 for $9.79 (this is even better priced than the Life Brand equivalent)
1.13 kg bag of Duck Jerky dog treats ....this is a fabulous price and I'm going to keep these in the preps rotation as long as Costco keeps carrying them
500ct 500mg Kirkland chewable vitamin C $11.99
1.36 kg Folgers ground coffee $11.79

I only went for flour, coconut and ScotchBrite srubber sponges ...sigh 😆

To my library I added "Preparedness Principles" by Barbara Salsbury

Picked up quite a few cans of misc. foodstuffs like fruit, veggies, etc...
Also, been spending a lot of time on Frostwire downloading non copyrighted (that's my story and I'm stickin' to it) books.
Now I just gotta remember where I put all that refill ink.

Not a dam thing.

Beth said: "Not a dam thing."
😆
Literally, I laughed out loud. I've been feeling that way lately too. The odd thing here or there...

BUT, today was an awesome prepping day. Not in the 'traditional' foodstuffs way. Paintergirl, her beau, and I went on an epic second-hand store crawl. We went to five (5) second-hand stores and one RV parts and services store. Got all kinds of things: paintergirl got more pots and pans, and utensils for cooking over a campfire, her s/o got axes and saws, I got lots of plastic storage containers for the RV and 3 folding chairs and 2 folding side tables for camp. Then we went to the Warehouse Store.

And we learned something interesting about RV solar panels which I will elaborate on the RV Rehab thread.

Two bags of candy ...Walmart's Great Value econo-bags are 2 for $6 ...so we got a bag of "gourmet"jelly beans that look to be Jelly Belly knock offs and a bag of Werther's knock offs. Both are BB date of May 2013 ...which works out great because if we don't need them or give in to temptation, we can dole them out next Easter and replace them.