Self-sufficiency and self-discipline: Be practical and use your survival preps daily

Don’t let movies and TV shows fool you: Preppers are different from hoarders. While a hoarder fills his home with useless things and trinkets, a prepper stocks up on essential food, supplies and gear before disaster strikes.

A practical prepper rotates and uses up their supplies before they expire to prevent spoilage. As a prepper, you also need to be disciplined and replenish your supplies before SHTF. (h/t to Survivopedia.com)

Be practical and rotate your food supply

Starting a survival stockpile should be one of your major goals as a prepper. Having enough food and water to last your whole family during a long-term disaster scenario should be one of your priorities. (Related: Prepping on a budget: Tips and tricks for preppers with limited storage space.)

But you should also keep in mind that your supplies won’t last forever in your basement. Perishables have a short shelf life, so it makes no sense to stock up on food without rotating and using it before it expires. The same goes for other supplies like batteries, firewood, or fuel.

If you don’t want to waste the money you spend on your food supplies, keep a detailed inventory and rotate all items to prevent spoilage. Rotating your supplies ensures that you use up items before they go bad in storage. To track the shelf life of your supplies, take note of the purchase date and the expiry date.

When choosing items, always use the oldest one you have. When you use up your supplies, make sure you also replenish your inventory.

Below is a list of prepper pantry staples that you should stock up on:

• Baking ingredients (e.g., baking soda, flour, shortening, sugar, etc.)
• Canned fruit
• Canned meat
• Canned vegetables
• Coffee and tea
• Condiments
• Dried beans
• Granola
• Honey
• Jams and jellies
• Pasta
• Peanut butter
• Powdered milk
• Salt and pepper
• Spices and seasonings
• Tomato sauce

Managing your home garden

If you have a home garden, you should also learn how to preserve any excess harvest. This ensures that you have access to nutritious fruits and vegetables even when they’re out of season or if it’s not safe to leave your homestead to buy more supplies.

Learning how to grow your own produce may take some trial and error, but this skill is a valuable one that will help you survive when SHTF. And if you don’t have a large backyard, you can still grow herbs in a container garden.

Below are some crops that you can plant in your survival garden:

Summer crops (or greenhouse)

• Banana peppers, bell peppers
• Cantaloupe
• Corn
• Cucumbers
• Sweet potatoes
• Tomatoes
• Watermelon
• Yellow squash, zucchini

Winter crops (or greenhouse)

• Beans
• Beets
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Kale
• Potatoes
• Parsnips
• Pumpkins
• Turnips

Heating your home and using your preps

The average family spends more than $200 per month on heating alone.

To save on heating costs, consider getting a wood-burning stove for your homestead or set up a fireplace so you can easily heat your home when SHTF. If you’re worried about fuel, you can get some for free by offering to cut down trees for others.

Alternatively, you can offer to haul dead or broken tree limbs for free. Other people might even pay you to do so, which means you can get paid for getting fuel, which isn’t too bad for a little hard work.

Once you have a steady supply of firewood, you need to use it up before termites and other pests get into your woodpile. Rotate your stock and use old firewood that has dried to make room for new wood you’re going to cut.

Prepping is a lifestyle change. Once you have a survival stockpile on your homestead, manage your inventory and check your supplies.

Rotate items to prevent spoilage and replenish anything you use so you always have enough of what you need if and when SHTF.

Visit Preparedness.news to find more articles with tips on how to be a practical prepper.

Sources include:

Survivopedia.com

UrbanSurvivalSite.com

PrepForThat.com