A Combo Entry: What We Store And How We Prep (Cereals), and Bargain-hunting For Books

This will be a two part entry because I want to keep up with the "What We Store and How We Prep" series in this blog, but I also want to explore how we can snag inexpensive books, for those of us bookworms on a budget.
One of the more "silly" things we store in our food supply is cereal.  Any parent can immediately understand why.  For the whole family, cereal is yummy, has a decent shelf-life, can be filling, and is relatively easy to stockpile, if you know what you are doing. 
Right now, we have nine boxes of cereal on hand.  Some are Cheerios, seeing as I have itty-bitty kids in the house, two are Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, some are organic granolas, organic raisin bran, and all natural, un-frosted wheat squares.  There are an additional two opened boxes of Kashi Blueberry Oat Clusters and Cheerios on the top of our fridge.
For those of you who enjoy the comfort of cereal as much as we do, here are some tricks of the trade:
1) Shop with coupons when your supermarket is having a combination sale.  For example, my store will run sales where you can get $6.00 off instantly when you buy four boxes of cereal at full price of a certain brand.  Say, it's Kellogg's this week, and each box at regular price runs $3.29.  Times that by four, and you get $13.16, minus the $6.00 off sale, and that takes it to $7.16.  Add a coupon to the mix.  Most cereal coupons give you so much off of multiple boxes, which, in this case, you are buying.  If you have a coupon for $2.00 off of three boxes, take $2.00 off of $7.16, and you just scored four boxes of your favorite brand name cereal for $5.16.  If your grocery store doesn't do this, look for some that will.
2) Warehouse clubs often have great deals on "staple" cereals, like Cheerios.  We buy the most commonly used cereals in our home this way.
3) Check scratch and dent grocery stores.  I get organic cereals at a local discount grocer for $1.75 a piece.  Even if they are a month or so past their best-by date, they are still good.
4) Bulk food stores often have plain cereals, like corn flakes and such, and even generic Lucky Charms, for bulk, but are stored in plastic bags instead of boxes.  These too can be a good deal.
5) If you like organic cereals, but not the price, sometimes, if you look diligently, stores will occasionally put them on sale if you buy multiple boxes of a brand.  These sales are worth the splurge if you are into organic food, and will often make the organic cereals competitive.  I recently caught Kashi cereals on sale for $2.00 a piece if I bought three.  That is cheaper than the generic line of non organic cereal.  But, you have to look for them.

Now, onto another subject dear to my heart.  Books.  Lately, I have been devouring all the wonderful books I can find.  I unfortunately love the splurge of a brand new book, and my bank account has taken a bit of a hit as a result.
That being said, I love used books, too, and have recently been enjoying books via my Kindle Touch as well.  You can find both for cheap or free, with work.
For your Kindle: There are many resources for FREE Kindle books.  Books on the Knob is a link that I have posted on the list to your right, and they will showcase free books worth mentioning.  Also, there are lots of lists that can be emailed directly to your email account (though I don't often have the time to look at those as much), such as EReaderIQ.  You can look under the Kindle Store (Amazon)'s Best Sellers lists, and they will have the Top 100 Best sellers for various genres of free books that you can peruse.
Hard copy books: Check out yard sales, thrift stores, and library book sales for treasures that often cost mere cents.  Today, at my local library, I bought two self help books, a book on training a household dog, and a book about the Apollo space missions--for $1 TOTAL. 

Hopefully, you've gained something from these tips.  Happy shopping!

What We Store and How We Prep: Meats

I am such a guilty carnivore. A fair amount of my friends are either vegetarians/vegans, due to the fact that we all like volunteering our time for animal causes/rescue (pets), but I struggle giving up meat products, mainly due to personal beliefs and preferences.
My in-laws bought us a freezer a few years ago, and at the time, we didn't buy much meat because it was essentially two of us eating (our oldest was no more than a few months old at the time, and on formula), and we felt that meat was very expensive, let alone having somewhere to store it. Between the new freezer, and finding a local butcher where the meat was high quality, locally grown, and grain fed for less money, we ran out of excuses.
Now, I consider meat a vital part of our family's three month supply of foods. We keep on hand at a time (these are averages):
-10-15 pounds of ground beef
-10-20 pounds of chicken (boneless)
-about another 10-15 pounds of various chicken parts or fryer chickens (bone in)
-about 5 pounds of ground turkey
-10-15 pounds of various sausage products
-5-10 pounds of bacon
-10 pounds of roasts (about two of them)
-10 pounds of hot dogs
-5-10 pounds of fish (this can fluctuate, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on sales)
-a few pounds worth of ham steaks (I usually try to keep 4 or 5 ham steaks on hand)
-10 pounds of various other meat products, like an occasional rack of ribs, steaks, pork tenderloin, pork chops, and the like
The main worry I have with this aspect of our food storage is that it is very electricity dependent. If the power goes out for several days (we've lost it for two days before), then what? This is something we are still working on figuring out. We have started looking into canned meats and meat alternatives. We have a few cans of tuna (the hubby really doesn't like it, so we don't buy it much), have started keeping canned chicken (several pounds worth), and are venturing into using textured vegetable protein, a soy based meat alternative, that you can get in various forms, like bacon flavored, chicken flavored, beef flavored, and even taco beef, but we only have 2 #10 cans of this, with plans to buy more in the future.
Any experience with canned meats? Self canning meat? Ideas how to preserve freezer items when the power goes out? Good recipes using TVP?

What We Store and How We Prep: Personal Hygiene/Toiletry Items

One of the many things that we store in the event of an emergency/financial downturn (in our home) are personal hygiene and toiletry items. I do this for several reasons:
1) I have tricks to scoring them in bulk, for minimal cost.
2) Generally speaking, a lot of this stuff doesn't expire. (I ask you, have YOU ever had a box of tampons "go bad"?)
3) In an emergency, maybe, for example, deodorant isn't something that will save your life, but if you are already sacrificing a lot of comfort, maybe not being stinky will make you feel better. I remember someone saying that they would pack a razor because smooth legs would be comforting to them. If it makes you feel good in a time of crisis, why not?
We stockpile toothbrushes/toothpaste, deodorant, hand and bar soaps, body washes, shampoos, razors, lotions, tampons/pads, and toilet paper. I'm sure I might be forgetting something, but you get the general idea. Sometimes, I'm not as good with keeping up with a stockpile of pads and such, but I try to keep at least some excess around the house.
So, what are the tricks to getting these items for little $$?

• Utilizing warehouse stores. You can find stuff like deodorant for really inexpensive prices. For the amount of two bars of it at a normal store, you can snag four at a warehouse club. And they do carry name brands, like Secret, Dove, and Degree. Warehouse stores are also excellent for toilet paper, feminine hygiene products, body washes, shampoo, razors, toothbrushes/toothpaste, soap, etc. If you're not much of a couponer, you can still get great deals using this method.
• Shopping sales. The weekly circular of your local grocery store is key here. A lot of grocery chains will post their ads on their websites (I know mine does), if you don't wanna pay for a newspaper (I know I don't). A lot of times, stores will have "stock-up" sales, which are where you will be able to find these items for less. For example, at my local grocery store, I picked up Dial hand soaps for $1 a piece. 8 hand soaps for $8 is pretty good. Items like toothbrushes and toothpaste can be good deals going this route, as well.
• Coupons. I am NOT a coupon sort of gal, but I do use them on a few items, and this is one aspect of my storage where I am known to use them on occasion. I can get low-cost, swanky razors this way, along with pads/tampons, lotions and shower gels, shampoos...the coupon market seems to love this subsection of the grocery store. And, once again, you can find many coupons online, or have a friend save the circulars out of his or her newspaper, if you can.
  

To give you some rough figures, we have 11 bottles of hand soap, 24 bars of "normal" soap, about 6 9-roll packs of toilet paper, more body washes and shampoos than I can count, same with lotions, two large pump bottles of baby wash (and I mean LARGE), four large bottles of kid-friendly shampoo, about a dozen (plus) toothbrushes, three full sized, unopened things of toothpaste, plus numerous sample sized ones (we also like hoarding sample sized products when we can get them)...I say this not to brag (OK, maybe I am a little), but to show that getting a good stockpile is POSSIBLE on a LOW budget. We have a grocery budget right now of about $300-500 a month, which includes all food, emergency prep items, long term food storage, extra for our short term food storage, personal hygiene stockpile, cleaning supplies, kitchen utensils and small appliances/supplies, AND our children's clothing budget and formula/diaper budget. With the right tools, you too can do this. If my terrible-at-finances self can do it, I promise you...YOU CAN, TOO!! Get motivated, and start stockpiling/preparing for a rainy day!

What We Store and How We Prep: 72 Hour Kits

(Our 72 hour kit is growing...I think we need a second tote!!)

I have posted about this subject recently, but one of the ways in which we are attempting to become more "prepared" is by creating a 72 hour kit. My husband has been wanting to work on this project for a while as a family, and I kept stalling because I thought it would be too time-consuming, too expensive, unnecessary, yadda yadda. I made up a lot of excuses.
But, thanks to a few minor emergencies, and the realization that I have more to care about than simply myself, I managed to get inspired after doing some searches on Pinterest, and found a post that encouraged me to get started. I modified the list a bit, since we have an infant in the house, as well as a dog, and I tweaked some amounts to work for our own family, but the premise is still very much the same.
Our kit isn't complete, not by a long shot, but we're getting there. I still need to pack food for the baby and the dog. We need to add in some lists of important information, phone numbers, etc, as well as adding in some money and change. I need a few more various supplies, like a spare leash for the dog, a copy of his rabies certificate (in the event a shelter requires one), matches, bug spray...you get the idea. There are some small gaps to fill.
But the thing that intrigued me the most is how much of the stuff we already had on hand, since we believe in buying in bulk and stockpiling. And I think that preparing our 72 hour kit has inspired me to stockpile even more. Last night, I managed to snag 8 hand soaps and 10 boxes of bandaids to stockpile, and we went to Sam's Club to get things like regular soap and toothbrushes. The hubby wants to get some MREs to put in so we can have meals that are more filling. I think that, with any kit, there are always things you can keep adding. We have added a lot since my last post on this concept. And there's still plenty more that can be done.
We also have an unfulfilled goal to create a kit for each car. We have a semblance of one in one of our cars, but it's a bit pitiful. Our idea list is:

In addition to two car roadside emergency kits with jumper cables and such—

-a small first aid kit for each car

-spare shoes for me

-a blanket or space blankets

-clothing for kids (pj’s) and pants for me

-diapers/wipes/underwear for Goob

-a couple portable baby food containers, granola bars, and a baby spoon

-four bottles of water per car

-flashlight per car

-very basic tool kit

-duffel as containers

We contemplated getting premade 72 hour kits for both the home and the car, but at the end of the day, we actually felt it was cheaper to raid our stockpile first and make our own, than to add to an already created kit. The kits for the cars are our next priority, and we need to get started on them.

What do you have in your 72 hour kits, if you have them?

What We Store and How We Prep: Sugars/Sweeteners

I find that, with the downturn in the economy and as I grow into my role as wife and mother, I have developed a real passion for food storage and emergency preparedness (in case you haven't gleaned this from my previous posts).
But, much like my goals when it comes to my marriage, parenting, finances, etc, storing food and preparing for "what-ifs" are a work in progress. Our food storage and our emergency kits are NOWHERE near complete; please don't get me wrong about this. But, I do have a developing love for this subject, and I figured it would be helpful for me and my readers to follow me on my journey to self-reliance. So, I decided to start a series in my blog on what we have chosen to store in our household, the ways we "prep," and also, our progress (are we meeting our goals, how have our goals/aspirations changed, and so forth).
In my introductory entry, I think I want to talk about one of my favorite things as a sugar junkie: sweeteners. In my opinion, if an emergency ever takes place, or if we need to rely on our food storage for a time, I don't want my food to be boring and bland.
The obvious solution to this would be to have sugar on hand, which we do. We currently have several #10 cans of white sugar, a 5 gallon bucket of the stuff, two 7 pound bags of brown sugar, and a very small amount of powdered sugar (which, admittedly, I don't use very often, and don't keep in good supply). We buy our sugar at warehouse clubs, mainly. I like buying the 25 lbs. bags of white sugar and placing the contents in a bucket you can buy at Lowe's or other home improvement stores. Admittedly, I don't buy food grade buckets (and I should), but we use the stuff so fast that I'm not overly concerned about anything leaching out from the plastic. We also buy our brown sugar at warehouse clubs, and brown sugar freezes WONDERFULLY. It thaws in about a half an hour on a table, if that, and you're good to go. Dump it into a big Tupperware container or something comparable that is air tight, and you're set. I probably should buy some more powdered sugar, but am not sure of a good way to store it, so if anyone has suggestions, I'm all ears. In terms of shelf life, sugar can last for years, if stored correctly.
An alternative sweetener is honey, which we buy locally and in bulk. We are lucky to have resources available to us in our area to buy inexpensive, local, pure honey, and I typically buy it in 3 lb. or more jars. It doesn't go bad easily, though it does crystallize, which you can remedy by placing a jar under warm/hot water for a bit. Honey also has a lengthy shelf life.
We also buy Karo corn syrup. I'm not sure why there is so much hatred of corn syrup, but I have yet to buy into all of the ire, so we keep some on hand. We just buy small bottles of the light and the dark both to keep on hand--we do use it, but not often enough for me to want to keep more than maybe 4 jars on hand at any given time. Also stores well.
Molasses...I keep a jar of this on hand, but don't use it very much. I have heard that the shelf life is poor, so that is a deterrent for me, though I haven't researched it much because, well, we don't really use it.
Agave nectar--just bought our first jar of it, and have not tried it, but have heard that a little goes a long way, and that a small amount can replace sugar in some recipes. If anyone has any information to share about this, please feel free to comment.
Maple syrup is a sweetener that I absolutely adore. I'm talking real deal, pure maple syrup, and this is something that I just recently started using. I use it in lots of applications, but most often, as a glaze for meat, oddly enough. Has a shelf life of a year or two on the shelf, and about six months to a year in the fridge, judging from the research I have done. I have been told that occasionally a harmless mold can grow on the syrup, but you can boil the syrup, skim the skin, and replace it into the bottle, and you've fixed the issue.
I do also store other syrups, like commercial artificial maple syrup (like Mrs. Butterworth, for example), and fruit syrups that we have come across on sale at discount stores in our town.
Jams and jellies are an easy sweetener alternative. They are inexpensive, come in all sorts of varieties, and have a lengthy shelf life. Plus, you can make your own if you're canning inclined or like making freezer jam. Between our jams and jellies, as well as our fruit butters that we have on hand, I would say we have easily a dozen to a dozen and a half jars on our food storage shelves. I canned homemade apple butter with a friend a couple years ago, and it turned out OK, but the majority of our jams are commercially produced, or made locally by a small producer. I really like what preserves have to offer in the way of variety and shelf life, and they can be a very appealing option when looking to add to your food storage without breaking the budget.
I think my goals would be to 1) widen our repertoire of sweeteners and know how to use and store them (like molasses and powdered sugar), 2) to not go overboard in this category seeing as I love jam, for example, and could buy unlimited quantities if given the option, and 3) I would still like to have more white sugar on hand, as well as a better means to store it--maybe keeping some in actual food grade buckets, buying more #10 cans of it, etc.
So, what do you do to make your kitchen/food storage a bit "sweeter?"