Taking stock

Thanks so much for the positive feedback on my last post! Its been hard to stay away from church, actually. It has paid off SO much, just in the 2 weekends I have missed. I hope you will visit my other blog and check on our home projects.

One of the things that I have been doing to prepare our family for hard times, be they financial collapse in our nation, natural disasters, or any other unforseen trouble, is to replenish our long term stocks of food and supplies. We had started doing this a few years ago, when our finances finally allowed us to buy extra and put it away, but we ended up using it! We decided to use our stores while we were saving up money for our house and it was very helpful. Now that we are in the new house, its time to start that up again, but how do you feed a growing family of 6 on a budget?

How? First we are returning to our budget. With our savings and tax rebate for buying a house, we have become pretty lax in our spending habits! We have used it to run out and buy materials for things, eat out when we are too tired and its really gotten out of control! Now that our reserves are pretty much depleted, things must change!

I have set the grocery budget (which includes clothing spending, school supplies and gift giving) at something pretty modest and will adjust it if I discover that it's just not possible to keep us fed or floating on that amount. Food in Alaska is much more expensive than the contiguous U.S., no matter what retailer you shop at. Gas is way more expensive. But there has to be a point to start from. I buy 1) what we need for the week for food and home care and 2) any extra in the grocery budget goes to stocking the shelves with future necessities. This means I have a list of things that we absolutely could not live without in a pared down existence and if something is on a screaming sale that week, I get it and check it off. I am rotating thru the list on a monthly basis, so I am purchasing an extra one of each storage item every month. The goal is to stay under budget each week, and build up some savings (again, since we kinda used it up working on the house!) Hopefully, at the end of each quarter (so that would be the end of May, since I started in March?) make a bulk order for grains and things that are VERY hard to come by at my local stores and must be ordered.

Now, my organizing of these items is sub-par! We have shelves in the basement, but they are currently crammed with all the boxes and random junk from the move. I have to get down there soon and reorganize! I should probably make a master list of expiration dates too, to help me keep on top of using what I have and keeping it replenished. Its a lot of work to get this set up, but as I learned with the last time we needed it, it is worth the effort.

Tomorrow I have a fun list of things that I am doing at home to help make our lifestyle less a "consumer driven dependency " and more self sufficient. Well, they are fun for me :)