We still continue to look through the flyers for deals on juice and extra stuff, even though my girlfriend and I are prepped up to a little over 2 years supply of food each, more if we ration it. The 2 years is more so for job loss as a personal SHTF event. If it were large scale SHTF like we are planning for, then we will have 6 months for 8 people. Which is around the number of people we will be taking onboard when TSHTF.

We have basically EVERYTHING we need, to ease our way into a self-sustainable lifestyle. The only thing we lack are bigger ticket items. Generator, chain saw, other tools and materials for securing our windows etc. More so because we still like to buy our toys and things 😛

If the sh*t doesnt hit the fan come mid 2013, or shows no evidence of going in that direction, then we will buy property up north. $10,000, can get anywhere from 20-120 acres, depending on exact spot. Though we have not put away money FOR this, but come the time I just stated, We could easily pull that amount together in a few months, load up our 32' trailer and roll out. The END goal is to live completely off-grid.

If SHTF within the time we're expecting, we're fine, we live at our B.O.L. We have thousands of sqft of green houses on the property, as well as materials and tools to keep the place running. None of which we OWN, but when TSHTF, we already have agreements in a sense to do and use what we need to secure this place. I would say the property here is approximately 8-12 acres in size and we plan to accomodate many people. Most people will be staying in their suburbs, trying to black out windows and secure their doors, stay low-key and HIDE...we have the ability to help others, survive, thrive and provide all the essentials for anywhere from the approx.20 expected people, up to 20 families of 3. We have the shelter, security and food growing ability. Which with regards to our food supply, we have the 6 months for 8 people as mentioned, enough food there to ween ourselves off and onto our crops and harvests. We're also surrounded by many many farm fields. One of which that grows "people" corn, hidden away behind their feed corn and barley and what ever else.

I know this is about organizing, so ill touch on that, kinda got lost in rambling. Lol.

We organize our food in approx. 12 containers. we have 3 containers for immediate priority, example. G1 (grab) G2, G3. If we have to bug out, those have enough essentials to get us through for a couple months. If we have the time and space to keep grabbing more, we have CL 1,2 and 3 (Cross-load). In these, we take everything that was left, and equally divide it between the 3 containers. Then we have a medical supplies bin, with our 10 self-made medical bags and of course an immediate grab toiletries container. Then we have overflow toiletries, which of course, once the beens bullets and bandaids are on, and we have room and time, we'll grab that stuff as well. Depending on the situation or event, we will of course grab the coleman kerosene heater, with the kerosene, our 5 20L gas cans and 2 20L diesel cans, our fire-making bin (matches, lighters, dollarstore fire logs, etc.) and our batteries tote, with flashlights, batteries, our 5 sets of walkie-talkies and their respective chargers. Plus the other charging equipment for our super high-powered spotlights (3). Gotta have those for setting up perimeters and such. AND THENNNN...lol...the clothing that we may need.

But all in all, thats how I organize, I organize it based off of what will be the easiest for us when/if we need to make the horrible BUG-OUT.

We lack some literature, but my girlfriend and I are both certified in first aid. As well, my girlfriend is a big reader, so she reads the stuff that pertains to growing and medical and so-on. We have "arks", if you will, that contain a vast amount of information I have put together. Gathered from the internet, military guides, and so-on, all put onto 4 memory cards and given to our team. 1 card I place in hiding. I'm more into the weapons and defense tactics, and with that, I'm currently taking a career course to become a gunsmith so that will come in handy for barter and our own/team members firearms and such.

...I can't really think of anything else that isn't accounted for, so... IM DONE. ..phewww... smoke break? Lol. Hope this is what you were asking.

In my case, I won't be bugging out but rather staying put here on my little plot about 40 kms from the city where I've lived for over 30 years. I've built up my firewood supply (I heat my house with wood) and have become quite handy at splitting wood. I have a wood cookstove which I use during the winter to cook and heat. In spring, I plan my garden for several hundred pounds of potatoes, 30 lbs of onions, carrots, a couple dozen winter squash, etc. mostly from my organic garden (but I will purchase any that I need, in the fall), to store in the fall in my coldroom. I also eat out of my garden. I continually add to my storage pantry by replacing used items (food rotation system), via store specials. I've learned, sometimes the hard way, what foods I can store in my garage (like pasta - in 'mouse proof' containers like glass Mason Jars) and which foods I must store above freezing.
I don't have a deep freezer , for meat, which wouldn't work during an extended power outage anyway, so I'm eating meatless meals most of the time. I'm continually trying to dry or 'can' more foods for storage.
I have accumulated many, many tools including axes, scythe, shovels, garden hand tools, and alot of power tools....all of which I know how to use as I use them on a regular basis.
I do have 2 generators, a 10,000 W whole house genny which my late husband wired the house to connect to it......and a 3,500 W which is our "loaner"......works great if gas is able to be pumped (needs electricity/generator @ gas station).
I can fish, clean, and cook it plus there's a river nearby. I've identified my farmer neighbours (dairy cows, cattle, chickens, etc) for any supplies I could need....
I have a "wish list" also which includes an Excalibur dehydrator, a solar oven (which I'm going to try to make this year and try out - I found plans online), more fruit bushes (I increase my blueberry and raspberry "patches" every year), chickens (I've had both eggs layers and meat birds before and still have their pen), and solar panels (my most expensive wish).
I don't have any "bad habits" which would be harder to deal with if the SHTF, like smoking or alcohol.
I have some plans like increasing my storage space in my mudroom, for more bulky items like toilet paper.
And when the SHTF, I just hope we still have internet lol.
P.S. Many of our food supplies and savings were depleted a few years ago when we had a personal SHTF crisis. I've been slowly bringing my food storage back up to where it was.....slowly but deliberately.

Thank you for your answers.

I was thinking more along the lines how do you pick what order to prep things. Food and water are a given but with limited funds, how do you figure out what is the next important thing to do?

Well, if your talking food and water with no money.

I would put all my money into food and built a biofilter.

Water can be found, gathered and harnessed from many sources. Food not so much.

Rice, and Ramen. Purchase them first as the staple, then build from there. Thats how we did it in the beginning.

But as far as water, of course its important, so keep enough containers to put the newly filtered water somewhere, but also keep a couple cases of water per person. a 24 cnt case of water can cover 1 person for approx. 6 days, @ 2 liters per day. Doesnt allow much physical labour, or water for cooking or cleaning, but that isnt the point. You can eat raw Ramen like chips, and drink your bottled water. Or soak rice in water for a couple hours and it will be ready to eat.

Hey, Oldschool, I hear 'ya regarding limited funds.....food has to be accumulated "one can at a time" whenever you can afford it (buy extra pasta, sugar -on sale this Saturday only for $1.47 at Food Basics-, salt, rice, canned goods you eat on a regular basis, etc.-and don't forget the hand can opener)) I think that food/water, heat (afterall, we live in Canada), and shelter, in that order, are most important. When the '98 ice storm hit, most people were unprepared to live in their homes without electricity for 2+ weeks. You need electricity to make your water pump work in the country for drinking water, flushing, toilets, bathing, etc. or make your furnace blower work (natural gas was still available, but peoples' furnaces wouldn't work). Heat in January was paramount!
So also think about how you could keep warm.....and if you live in your own home, put some money aside each month to save for a wood stove. You can often find a used CSA certified (required for house insurance) wood stove and even insulated chimney sections in the paper or Kijiji or Used(city). For now, read up about it....online or community library are free and book fairs or garage sales are an inexpensive place to purchase.
Maybe you could increase your income by renting out a room or something....
Sometimes it can take years to save for a 'big ticket' item on your 'wish'-need list when you're on a limited income, but if you don't get started now, then you'll never reach your goal.

I started off with food and water.

I made a list of 7 breakfasts, lunches and suppers that were common meals for us. Some of them required a bit of tweeking to make them more shelf stable.

For example a typical breakfast was hot oatmeal. We bought oatmeal, raisins, cinnamon, milk powder and sugar in bulk.
1/2 cup oatmeal, 1 Tbsp. raisins, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 1 Tbsp. milk powder, sugar to taste and hot water is breakfast for one person. All items are easy to store and not expensive when purchased in bulk and on sale. When finances allowed I added flax seeds and honey for extra nutrition.

This is the method I used for deciding how much of everything to store - start simple but buy HEALTHY foods to begin with. I don't store ramen noodles because they are white flour with virtually no nutrition - oatmeal is good for you 🙂 I look through the food flyers every week to see what is on my list and can be added that week. I try to keep a balance with the meals - no sense having 50 pounds of sugar but no oatmeal.

Following this example I saw the need to have boiling water and came up with several methods to store water and to heat it.

So I started with a weeks worth of good healthy easily stored food and then moved on in a logical manner to some of the other necessities: water, shelter, heat. Soon I had added another week and another - expanding my breakfast past oatmeal to other recipes that we could store on the shelf. That's also where the rotation comes in - now we needed to EAT oatmeal for breakfast - no point storing it to find out everyone hates oatmeal or their bodies have to go through a huge adjustment stage to handle the extra fiber.

I now have exhaustive lists for prepping items to purchase and things to do. I keep adding to them as I come across ideas and spend some time deciding how high on the priority list they are. DH and I have a Priority meeting each week that helps us stay on track with prepping and finances and other areas of our lives.

We decide what our next large item will be and save for it specifically - right now that's fencing for our animals so every extra dollar goes into the fencing fund. As soon as that's done we'll be working on the woodstove fund. I coordinate classes for Financial Peace by Dave Ramsey and that has helped our family to get on track and stay focussed on the PLAN 🙂

Not sure if that completely answers your question or not 🙂

Thank you everyone

vehicle and firearms are my priority

vehicle and firearms are my priority

Hope you are feeling better now.....sounds like you have a high fever or something....and I guess food and water might not be a priority for you at the moment....lol
Seriously, get better soon

vehicle and firearms are my priority

Hope you are feeling better now.....sounds like you have a high fever or something....and I guess food and water might not be a priority for you at the moment....lol
Seriously, get better soon

got two wells....and the sad fact is with vehicles and firearms i can probably aquire food. 🙁

got two wells....and the sad fact is with vehicles and firearms i can probably aquire food. 🙁

How true that is

I'm doing this on limited funds as well. My priorities are:
Collect rainwater - I have a (full) 1000 litre rainwater tank (installed by me with the help of 4 hacksaw blades and a big box of bandaids) Food - dehydrating, making jams, preserving fruit, gardening (almost year round...I'm sorry!) and stocking up on staples that I can't grow or make myself. Purchasing manual tools & equipment - gardening and home maintenance/repair stuff. Gaining Skills - bunny butchering 😯 , foraging and identifying edibles in my local area, fishing, bashing people with big & little sticks for protection 😈 AND the reason I'm here is to gather instructions, wisdom & info 👿 so I can survive when SHTF (in whatever form it comes)

Along the same lines....

How do you organize your space? I have been looking at store ideas for hidden spaces - http://internationalpreppersnetwork.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=680&hilit=hidden&start=10

Since I now have most of the "extra" stuff out of the house I am now trying to figure out "regular" storage. Based on prices, I think I will try to make do/reuse/recycle to try to build some of the stuff I have been looking at.

This is about $1,000.00.

This shouldn't be too hard to make

Looking ideas

I agree with many, a slow start by purchasing what I can on a budget
The first thing I did was create a list of basic needs and decide what level I could obtain the very basics
Once all the basics where covered I began to replace with better quality items as I was able
The wish list is a real important thing that I keep up dated and watch yard sales auctions and sales to complete
Every thing is always in a state of flux as I absorb different ideas
ie: I started with a get home bag for local area truck to house
it is now a modular bag with components 1 local area evacuation
2 more intense Medical and first aid
3 light weight and nutritious foods
4 larger water supplies or treatment choices
5 long distance travel from home
6 local or distance bush craft
7 cached components if separated from BOB
8 escalating security measures
Each modular addition has its own pouch or bag on the shelf that can be grabbed and added to the base get home bag as required
The home storage is building steadily and I try to keep balanced with one month at a time purchasing so I do not end up with 6 months of beans but no TP kind of thing
As with all its a work in progress so keep on pluggin out there