There
are several situations where one may find themselves tight on living
space and or funds. You could be living in a trailer, apartment, or
even a family member to get back on your feet. Regardless of the size
of your living space, you can still prepare yourself and your family
for an emergency situation.
The
following tips I will be providing are not only helpful, but can be
squeezed into a tight budget.
As
any prepper can tell you, food and water are the first key supplies
that you should focus on, but the tip I will give is, focus on
multi-purpose foods and packaging. Multi-use packaging can be things
like durable plastic bottles, buckets, and canisters, which can be
reused for storying food or water once the original contents have
been used. Some multi use food examples include:
Honey is
natures magic food. It never goes bad, in-fact archaeologist found
some ancient honey in an Egyptian tomb and it was still eatable! That
is just the beginning of honey's awesome properties, it also acts as
a natural antiseptic and will help clean and purify wounds. This is
because bacteria cannot grow on honey. Besides, honey can be added to
foods and drinks to improve the taste, and a good tasting meal is not
always possible in a survival situation.
Salt not
only tastes great on food, but it can be used preserve meats!
Aloe
Vera, a common house hold plant, can be grown indoors. After
cutting away the outer layers of the plant until only the translucent
part of the plant is left, this translucent part is eatable and can
be added to various drinks. When ingested, Aloe Vera acts as a
natural antacid, as well as a antibiotic for reducing fever, and
infection, and helps treat arthritis. The gel from within the plant
is also fantastic for topical application for treating burns, frost
bite, and cold sores.
Pine
Needles can be used to create a tea that has 5 times the
amount of vitamin C as orange juice. Once cooked, when the tea has
been cooled can also be used as a topical antiseptic.
You
will find that, over the life of this blog, I will regularly stress
the importance of multi-use prepping. It is far more efficient of a
prepping style, as you get more for less, and if you ever need to
bug-out then you will not be loaded down with a ton of gear to
survive.
Although
multi-use foods are fantastic they will not be the only foods that
you will need. Canned foods are best. My wife and I try to pick up
an extra can or two every time we go to the store. This will cause
your food storage to build up faster than you may think. And if you
are living in a limited space, there is no need of only storing your
food in a pantry. Pack the space under your bed, or I have even seen
people store a flat box of cans in the space under a couch which was
covered by a couch skirt. If you are a single person just starting
out with very few furniture, then you can try something I did,when I
was first out on my own, invest in some of those plastic storage
tubs, once filled you can have them double for a nightstand. Get
creative with your packing.
After
food and water, I would recommend that you invest in a first aid kit
of some kind. I prefer to shop around for deals and put them together
myself, as you can save yourself a little extra money and it forces
you to learn about each item you are purchasing and including in your
kit. Makes it easier if you ever need to use it.
Next
I would recommend looking into what forms of security are available
for you and your personality. You will want to take a few things into
consideration. First, are you a “defend your stuff”, or a
“conceal and hide” prepper, or a mixture of both? What I mean by
this is, are you willing and or capable of fighting, comfortable to
rely on your combat prowess and/or training, be it with weapons or
hand to hand? Or are you the kind of prepper that relies on stealth
and concealment for yourself and supplies. Now many preppers are a
combination of these two personalities, but one will usually lean
towards one or the other. This is important as it determines the
types of preps that you invest in.
For
instance, if you are a combat oriented individual you will want to
invest in purchasing firearms and firearm training, or some form of
martial arts and combative classes, which can often get pricey, but
prove vary valuable to those skilled in this prepping style. On the
flip side, if you are not comfortable with firearms or combative
training you may choose to instead invest that money into getting and
outfitting a bug-out vehicle, renting a storage unit to stash your
preps, or higher quality camouflage netting,bags,clothing, ect. I
personally try to include a mixture of both of these styles, however
my grandparents prefer to invest in various means of concealment for
both themselves and their supplies, as neither one of them have much
experience with or desire to use weapons.
Below are some websites that
you can visit for both ideas and supplies.
