I have been prepping for Mad Max for decades now. I have a shit ton of Mountain House and other emergency food.

When COVID started emerging, I stocked up on beer, wine, chicken, beef, pork, canned goods, beer, etc. Now, I had frozen food in the freezer, but I only had the normal freezer. I still have weeks worth of food on hand. I have to open the freezer slow or shit will fall out. Eggs, half and half, coffee, soap, toilet paper, bottled water, I'm good until Christmas. Same with dog food.

But my gaps (I have been working from home for 6 weeks now) are in creature comforts. I wish I had some chocolate right now. I had to make a run for vanilla and cinnamon. I wish I had a deep freeze, but that isn't a necessity for this deal. I'm almost out of black pepper. Things that make our everyday lives comfortable and nice, the extras, stuff you never see in a prepper guide. That's what I am missing. Also, rawhide chewies for the dog.

My wife nearly had a stroke when the February Visa bill came in.
She will ask: Do we have that? And we do.
Due to manageable OCD, I keep copious lists and fill gaps immediately.
The cheap $1.00 spice section is your friend.
Trader Joe’s HUGE Chocolate bars freeze well.  

Not really.

There was like 1 week of severe groceries shortage, which didn't even register for us, and then we've been able to find everything we ever wanted.

Sitting on thousands of dollars of Mountain House, even if it didn't come back online.

Had a great supply of nitrile gloves.

My only regret is that I had a box of N95s in my preps list on Amazon that I was too lazy to ever buy. Same for hand sanitizer.  

Oh well.

No masks
No hand sanitizer
Let our flour,sugar,rice and paper products get very low.
Low on vitamin c and other helpful ones.
Low on gloves.
Need repair kits for glasses.(screws and nose pads)
Condoms so the wifey does not get prego. meds really mess with her.


I know i am missing some things.

I did very well, honestly, but two things I was low on.

One was TP. Still have month's worth, but if it weren't for a happy accident involving septic issues, it would have been worse.

The other was tylenol. It's out of favor for pain relief, so I had gobs of ibuprofen and very little acetminophen, and it became clear that wasn't a good thing.

My wife thought my prepping was a little crazy, but she came into my office a couple weeks after things started kicking off and told me how grateful she was that I'd created a place where she knew she'd always be safe and fed.

I'd have liked to do a little better on fuels but there's practical safety considerations behind why my stores aren't where I'd prefer, and even this hasn't really changed my mind on that.

No. I'm still trying to figure out what you'd need to be stocked up on. Doomers told me that 10% of the population is gonna die from this...but the numbers say the vast majority will be non-producers. Soooo more supply but less demand. Not only will things be available, they'll be cheaper than they would be otherwise.

Guns/ammo might be in short supply at the LGS, but let's not kid ourselves. If you lived through the AWB and Obamascare, you've been stockpiling for years.

Nope.  I just went to the grocery store for the first time in 2 month + 3 days. Normal is once a month and only went to stock up on beer and get the boy things he wanted while I leave for a 5 day camping/ rat shooting trip tomorrow. I don’t consider myself a prepper per say, but I was a Boy Scout growing up. So I’m prepared.

Been on my property since 3/01. Month and 9 days. Maybe could have loaded up on more frozen pizzas. Dog food caught me. Had to amazon a couple bags.

I'm an old submariner, so this is very familiar.

actually, no

ended up taking stuff to daughter house, Kirkland Tinned Beef and Chicken, T.P. Masks, Salmon,  and
still good on the homestead..even sent a dozen masks to a friend in Cali who's a nurse getting ONE mask a day from the hospital.

I do want to get some Nitrlle gloves when this is over, DO NOT Like the vinyl I have and they do NOT last very long.

Yes. Gym equipment, outdoor playsets, home network and IT infrastructure. Webcams are near unobtanium these days. Dumbbells are fetching silly money etc..

Also PPE. Should have gotten more respirator cartridges.

For us, its been almost impossible to find flour and  yeast.  My wife does a lot of baking in normal times, and we're almost through the supply we had.  I wonder how many folks are buying flour and yeast and not doing anything with it?

Toilet paper and paper towels are also in short supply.  We have enough of both, but I was concerned about resupply until my wife scored more of both online.

We have plenty of hand sanitizer and cleaning products, but resupplying is going to be almost impossible.  

There are no masks and gloves to be found.  Fortunately, I have plenty of both.

Other than those items, we have had no problems getting food.  Walmart pickup orders, Instacart and Costco delivery have been great.

Although, there have been some weird substitutions going on at Walmart.  The other day, I ordered cheese sauce.  I got garlic teriyaki marinade in place of it!

I've gone to a variety of stores based on what they stock but,
other than cleaning supplies and TP, Aldi pretty much has every think on my list every day.
Great Pork Ribs but they were out last night.

I had quite a few things on the shelf but hadn't noticed that my son ate all the canned chili and refried beans so I have picked up a few cans of each.  Will get more when the panic ends.

I am not a big peanut butter eater but I did run out during this. Turns out not a lot of people don't like Adams natural so I picked up a few jars.

My freezers were pretty well stocked.

I am almost out of Kleenex, but I have a good stock of TP and wipes.

I had a couple bottles of dishwasher detergent but got down to the last bottle of liquid for hand washing.

Not really a surprise but its still amazing how much food 3 teenagers plus one who's nearly a teenage can eat.

LARGE deep freezer, large pantry, can rotating rack, large fridge, we cook a lot, so in general we have what most would call an excessive amount of food on hand. 1 month into this basically and its the freezer emptied quicker than we hoped.

What I never thought I'd miss is fresh veggies such as salad greens. Garden isn't putting them off and we eat them a lot. Canned and frozen veggies are still plenteous here but I want a salad.

People thought we were hording TP. 7 people, 4 off them are female. We go thru so much on a normal basis now its even more.

As I posted a few months ago, boredom. Some of the things I could do require me buying parts and my thoughts are "what if it gets worse" and then i think do I really need to work on that LS swap on my Jeep? Or does it matter that my kids AC in his car is fixed etc.

Not just my boredom. My kids are getting cabin fever. Rain and poor weather limits how often we fish. Buffalo gnats and skeeters are limiting how much we can get out in the evenings. Our bandwidth options are terrible so we're not much of a streaming media and online family. But since everyone else it what was usable internet is not hot garbage.

Our garden is in, but not much work around the place is needing done.

I got way too far off topic.

Gaps in preps?  
Financial preps. I have been working hard to get debt free so our savings is far too drained.
Gardening stuffs. I have a few more tractor attachments I wish I had already bought to help. Glad I have a tiller, box blade etc.
Car preps. I was too prepared for the chance of needing an extra vehicle and now I'm wondering why I have 8 running cars. I need to downsize.
Food. Unless I can get the wife onboard with it there is no way I can see having 6 months of food supply for this mass amount of calorie requirements.
Mentally. I always felt like days like these would come but its amazing how just adding a little more stress to our lives can effect nearly every other aspect of life.
Pets. I'm not sure why we have dogs, now I have to feed them too? :) Chickens. We keep plenty of food and most supplies on hand for them. Wish we kept more hay and bedding on hand. I really need to build a small barn.
Preps for the virus itself. We're good on masks, cleaners, disinfecting stuff, gloves etc. For now. If we're talking doing this for another year or more then no way I can make our stuff last that long with the limited availability of replenishing supplies.

I think my mindset has been that nearly anything I was planning for would be a few months at longest and either it was world ending time, or life would return to near normal afterwards. So that is evident in all my preps.

Nothing in my preps I didn’t already recognize.  It has made some items a lot higher in priority to the point where 6 and I have decided to take on some debt to fill one of the gaps instead of waiting.

This was probably the best-case scenario for preppers in that things really rolled out fairly slowly and if you paid just a little attention, you had time to get things. The week before things started to lock down I started stocking up on important everyday items and buying a few things to fill gaps. Once work closed the office, I took the hint and hit every store on the way home stocking up on everything. Most people were on edge that night but I was the only one with a full cart at the grocery store. People were in denial. I bought tons of supplies in the stores and more on Amazon before things were gone. I even bought another dozen packs of Mountain House in mid-March sniping on Amazon. Also, knew to buy sweets and chocolate as they keep you sane. Already have easter candy stashed for Sunday.

The biggest purchases have been a video camera with NV (what I can afford for now), infrared flashlight, and bought HESCO plates to fill two carriers that I was kicking the can with. Also, we have been buying some things that could be harder to get or much more expensive in our new economy. Made sure we had clothes for the year in my kid's next size. Maxed out my CR123s. Stuff like that. Been buying small things for plate carriers, more magazine holders, SAW pouches, etc. Spent a few nights loading all the mags I have in case I need to move them. Prepped to bug out to my in-laws if things got worse.


Still need to get an IR floodlight for the driveway as my ring cam light doesn't reach and that's my current camera solution. Cameras another thing to address once it ends. Having everything covered in cameras would make me sleep better at night.


There are a hundred other things I could justify, but I could easily be out of a job in a few months and don't want to overspend on stuff that's not relevant to our situation.


My wife also came to the realization that I had done a lot to keep us safe. She's demanding we get a freezer in the garage now. Prob won't since I can't power it independently. We have lots of blackouts.

Had lots of TP, Paper Towels, masks, sanitizer, gloves, etc. I am always on the ball on those items and now my wife is not rolling her eyes about how much TP we have. Mid-level prepping has paid off. It would be much harder to do this shelter in place and have to source everything from a store.

Just so happens I was kind of in a redo of food items and toilet paper. Was kind of letting this run down a bit the past year.
was going to rethink some storage and organization.
water I usually purchase by the pallet at sams, unfortunately I put that off to long.
overall we're good though. When it did happen to start, my water was at 18 cases. #10 cans we haven't touched except for some turtle beans which we started using prior to run through them.  Not tasty, but food.
i has been saving money for an MP5 clone, and buy the time the wife agreed to put on card, it was to late. Gotta wait unknown timeframe now. But plus side we are getting Glock 19x as well.
she went out to get meats before it ran out, it's in freezer. We will be getting second freezer sometime.
move started growing some veggies, and will start trying to grow more now with news of all farmers having issues..
trying to stay ahead of things a bit on that one.

overall I do have known gaps, and will probably spend a long time filling gaps

Not sure I can ever be fully prepared for every scenario but we are pretty well set up for this situation. Looking at how much food we've gone through has me wondering if my freeze dried and canned prep is enough. I stocked up on a lot of on sale Christmas chocolate as a comfort item. We have 4 refrigerators and 2 freezers. Of course a frig freezer goes tuts up and it was moved to the garage as an extra on the suggestion from my12 yr old.

We've done well I believe. Like the poster above I went to all three stores in town and spent about $400 around 3/1 and we haven't been back to the store except for pool salt and a couple of other non-food items. My Doc and Dentist shut their offices down but my Doc answered his phone from his home. I need to beef up our meds a LOT. The problem is the insurance co ( medicare) will only let me do a 90 day supply once a year otherwise I have to pay cash out of pocket. I might just do that as a one-time expense so that I'd essentially be getting a one time 180 day supply with the ability to then go back to a 30 day supply and still have medicare pay for monthly refills.

Fuel has not been an issue, whole house genset is doing well, Self Defense preps were solid. We had a great trip scheduled with a match on the front and back end with a few days in between in the Tx. Hill Country but one match was rescheduled which made us cancel the trip. Dammit. Still getting out this Saturday for a day trip but after that it's back to the grind of being retired and no place to go.

My wife, like many here I suspect, was a bit concerned with how this deal would all shake out but she seems quite relaxed as she can still cook whatever she dreams up (her hobby) with no restrictions. Tonight we're have GIANT!!! grilled shrimp. We've had tuna sandwiches and prime Rib Eye and everything in between. It certainly is nice to walk in the pantry and see our stores. It looks like we went shopping yesterday.

No masks. Wife works at a nursing home an gets one cheap ass one to last a week.

I ran out of ketchup......that count?

You could see this coming weeks ahead of time. My pantry is well stocked.

On the other hand, the things yall call "preps" I either use all the time, or won't be touched until things get much, much worse than this.

Found a bunch of my stuff was past expiration dates (medical and canned goods).  So, I had less on hand than I thought.

If there were power outages, I'm not as good on fuel and power as I want to be.

Long-term food production is still a ways off, unfortunately, but I'm going to practice more gardening to at least have a small supplement and develop skills.

Don't keep a lot of cleaning supplies on hand, although I had a decent supply of TP for my needs.

Yes. Things I really wish I had: more n95 masks, slightly better exercise equipment, a larger lot and more removed from the neighbors, an air soft 1911 for training.

Cinnamon. Damn hard to make cinnamon toast without cinnamon.

My problem is that I'm stuck down here by myself on my detail assignment. So, living in a small apartment, I didn't really put back a lot of supplies. Thankfully, I saw the writing on the wall and made a Sam's Club run before the lockdown. The only thing I have any problems keeping enough of has been heavy whipping cream for my coffee. I'm finally to the point where I have more than a week's worth so if the local stores are out, I'm not grouchy because my coffee isn't right. Back at the house, there's plenty of supplies so the wife and kid are fine.

I'd have to say financial.

I have extra money saved up, but I've also been carrying alot of credit card debt, with a high interest rate, even though I have good credit. I've prob been flushing $400-500 down the drain every month in interest because I'm too stubborn to take money out of the bank and pay it down.
I also have been thinking about where my money goes, since there's a possibility my income may be effected. $10 for lunch here. $3 for a coffee there. They aren't large expenses, but they add up.

I should have been living more thrifty the last few years and went out less, stayed home more. Brought lunch more often, brewed my own coffee. Paid off my debt, and saved the $400 in interest per month and put it in the bank.


At least we always have the chance to change.

Yes.

We ran out of Cholula.  Other than that we are in good shape.

But seriously, I need to get more home exercise equipment.  I miss going to the gym.

We’ve done pretty well, but some of it was unintentional. We always have a lot of TP on hand, we buy it in bulk and store it. We never thought of it as a prep, just a convenience. Lots of Tylenol, vitamins, and medicines on hand. Again, wasn’t a willful prep, just a convenience. We buy lots when on sale.

As far as actual preps, there’s been no holes that actually revealed themselves. We’ve had plenty of what we need.

What this has caused me to do is evaluate holes if some variables were different. Suppose supply lines were totally out. We have no source of dairy. Dairy is important to our diets. Our toddler depends on milk. We have enough put up in the freezer to get us thru so far but it would be better to have a source of milk on the farm. Power outages and no fuel for generators? Solar to at least power the fridge and freezers would sure be nice.

Fresh fruits and veggies, and eggs.

I may have to look into Augason farms in the future.  Somebody posted a while back showing a stash of cans of Augason farms dried fruits (blueberries, strawberries, etc).  

I think that I now have a better idea of things that I *should* have bought ahead of time.  A couple of big question marks remain, though, and are as follows:

What are people doing for long term storage of butter and eggs?  I have read folks on here talking of some sort of canned butter that they like.  I also see that Augason sells (or sold..out of stock now) powdered egg mix.  Does anybody here have any experience with these two things and can give advice/recommendations?

So, there is canned butter (shelf life minimum 10 years), Dehydrated butter (shelf life minimum 10 years), and regular butter. I prepped late on butter and missed the Red Feather product. I opted for the regular butter and froze several pounds. Frozen, it can last a year.

I have dehydrated scrambled eggs. They’re ok. I have powdered eggs. Meh. I have a different post on frozen eggs. I have yet to try them. I also have liquid eggs and egg beaters. Frozen, these will last a year as well. I have tried these and there is no noticeable difference. I have not baked with any of these items.

While I'm not really a "prepper" I do stay somewhat prepared living in a hurricane prone area. Lots of canned goods on hand, freezer full of venison, pork, & fish. We have meds, spices, TP, etc..  This has certainly made me think more about it. I believe I'm going to start gardening. The thing I find myself going to the store most for is fresh produce. Or maybe that's just another excuse to pick up ice cream

We don't usually eat eggs on their own - just put them into recipes.  How well do powdered eggs work for this?

There was also concern over the availability of soft drinks. I'm addicted to caffeine and I own that...in fact, caffeine tables are in my prep stock, but I NEEEEED my diet coke!!!!

We were good to TP, but discovered that we only had 12-pack of paper towels ... not enough for the long run.

Long term storage of "survival" food still seems sound, but I'm not quite to the stage of declaring  TEOTWAWKI. and we found we were not prepared to cook and eat three meals a day "normally" when the shelves were bare. We shifted to canned vegetables and meats pretty quickly.   Both of use typically eat lunch at work and we probably eat out or grab takeout about three times a week for dinner. That was a little bit of an eye opener.

One of my preps I’m pretty proud of are my chickens. A year ago, right after the baby came, I told my wife we needed to start chickens then so they’d be established in a year. We started with 12 pullets, added 20 jungle fowl that I whittled down to 12 after culling roosters, and also added some game bantams and guineas. A year later we have 111 head of poultry with 5 hens sitting on large clutches due in a little over a week and 16 guinea eggs in the incubator.

So egg storage isn’t an issue. They keep for weeks unrefrigerated. And theoretically our chickens will reach a critical mass, if they haven’t already, beyond which their natural reproduction will outpace our harvesting of them so we can always have chicken meat on hand. That was how my ancestors lived on their farms and why fried chicken was such a staple of Southern cooking. Chickens of old could reproduce faster than we can eat them. Decades of hatchery raising have made chickens weak though in terms of natural reproduction and predator resistance.

I do think I’m probably not gardening on a large enough scale to meet our veggie wants or needs year-round. And I don’t know how to can and don’t have cool storage of canned food should AC go out. So those are holes I need to work on.

^^ I’m buying myself a nice home weight set when this is over

I think this Covid-19 business can be an instructive event for many Preppers.  It will certainly reveal gaps in our personal prep regimes.  If we fill the gaps, intelligently, then we are better prepared for future events.

No one can be 100% prepared for ALL possible events, but we can all learn from past events in prepping for the future.



 

So I'm thinking that eggs aren't as big of a deal as I originally thought.  The wife is an awesome cook.  If there are calories in the house, she'll make those calories count and taste good doing it.  She has found ways to make pancakes, "egg" noodles, dumplings without eggs, and they taste better than the recipes that she had that do use eggs (pro tip, the "egg" noodles use Turmeric powder).  I still want to get some powdered eggs if I can ever find them in stock again, but it doesn't seem to be as big of a deal as I originally thought.

Butter...that may be an issue as we're starting to run low.  She hadn't stocked up on it, so what we had was it.  It will be interesting to find out if we can substitute with something we do have on hand, like coconut oil, in things and still have them turn out well.

I still want to think about the "rotating" thing.  We eat (well, ate) mostly fresh foods, so this is kind of a learning experience getting used to dried and frozen goods so that we don't have to go out.

Here's an item for which I still have no solution...cheese.  We go through a lot of cheese.  Because we go through a lot of cheese, we had a fair amount on hand three weeks ago (at least 3 blocks), but that's fading fast.  I can't stand Velveeta; neither can I stand the powdered junk that comes in the Kraft boxes.  I'm not sure if there are other options for cheese other than just buying and freezing large quantities of it...though that presents its own problems because cheese that has been frozen tends to be crumbly and not as smooth, so not ideal for rotating.  Has anybody found a reasonable solution for a backup stash of longer-term cheese storage?

No specific suggestions on items to be replaced/substituted, but the future will provide such opportunities is one seeks them.

this long PDF file by Wendy DeWitt (LDS food storage expert) has  substitutions for survival cooking

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B06YYNupBx59QnpYd3BTdndpTzQ/view

So, there’s dehydrated cheese. I’ve no idea if it’s edible. I generally just buy big bags of the stuff (shredded 5lbs+), separate it into smaller bags, and freeze it. It works really well.

I was lucky and guessed correctly about nitrile gloves, masks, and tp.  My wife has handled pet foods but barely keeps enough in the house.  Could use more fruit too.  Had to make store trips for that.

As a new prepper, I definitely made some errors.  Thankfully all have been recoverable.

1.  I originally planned thinking of just me.  Not only did I meet someone, but she needed to come here because things were getting untenable in her location.  Thankfully she brought a ton of stuff, but there was still some scrambling to shore things up.

2.  I did not prep with my elderly parents in mind.  I did not prep with her elderly parents in mind.  Both sets of parents are 1,400 and 400 miles away, respectively.  While I was able to ship some needed supplies to both sets of parents, these supplies cannot easily be replaced except at great expense.  (N95 masks and other items.)  We are still covered here, but far less so than before I sent these things.

3.  I never expected a pandemic, so I only have minimally acceptable PPE.  I got lucky and found some N95 masks, a P100 respirator with filters, and found a small pile of free giveaway hand sanitizer that I forgot I had.  Otherwise I would have been completely flat-footed.

4.  Due to my own carelessness, I forgot that I used a bunch of bar and chain oil last fall, was extremely low, and forgot to restock.  I was also low on two-stroke premix.  Go figure that a third of one of my largest cherry trees would come down.  Thankfully I had just enough left to finish the job and was able to have more delivered.

5.  My existing refrigerator freezer is way too small.  Never thought I'd have a chest freezer, but I may buy a small one.

6.  I really need to get a generator to ensure I have water and that the sump pump works if the power goes out.

7.  Instead of a pile of small gas cans, I should find some decent Jerry cans.

8.  Some of my meds are expired.  I can make do with what's available, but it's time to get more that are in date.

9.  My glasses chose a wonderful time to show signs of metal fatigue.  I ordered some spare pairs and they should arrive in 2-3 weeks.  "Two is one, and one is none."

10.  More money wouldn't hurt, but I'm holding my own.

11.  I mail a lot of things.  Normally I just go to the post office and use the auto-post machine.  It'd be nice to have a scale and the ability to print postage at home.

12.  I need to map out multiple options to supply needs beyond the basics.  Everybody knows about Walmart, Pick N Save (our local grocery store chain), etc.  What about Gordon Foods, who has plenty of bulk food and gloves?  Other restaurant supply places?  Online supply houses beyond Amazon?

I should have more masks. More ammo on hand
but haven't shot any so far.  Should have bought the
lever gun I wanted just slowly looking plus ammo for it.  It is going to be my grab and go gun.  Food supply is fine.  Will rethink all supplies.  But not bad so far.

2. You aren't alone. I forgot to do that too. Shipping is killing me.

5. Chest freezers are the bomb. They can really double your capacity. If you get one, consider wiring it to the future back up generator. Before that happens, try using frozen gallon jugs of water to act as a back up.

6. A backup generator is really nice. Butfor now, can you use a well bucket?

8. See if your doc or pharmacist can advise you on suitable alternatives for meds. Also, lots of common medications can be inexpensive w/o insurance and your doc might be willing to get you a script for 90-180 days in the current circumstances.

11. The USPS provides priority mail items for free. It takes about two weeks to get the boxes mailed to your residence. If you have the option of shipping this way, you don't need to worry about weight. They have a 3rd party app by shippo. Rate structure and overview. Boxes available
Shippo.com

Have plenty of alternative paper products like paper towels and nose tissue when the TP disappears. Biggest problem I discovered is aging of items that make them unserviceable, like the elastic bands on dust and P95 masks (rarely used as a daily item). And need to rotate out similar common use items like disposable gloves. For both items, if social distancing is practiced and limited trips to public places occur, not quite as big of a deal. And the masks can be repaired with rubber bands.

For this level of normalcy breakdown I’m doing OK. With this continuing thru the start of hurricane season there is the concern that the delivery and distribution of replenishment items will get even tighter, and the percentage of good people that have a “gotta go help them” attitude when an area is hit by disaster will be less. Need to replace chainsaw sooner than expected so need to get one before they disappear, and a stock of gasoline for the portable generators. And typical stock up items for two weeks of no resupply will be expanded to maybe a month of supplies.

Wife and I are doing well.  While we arent doomsday preppers I always try to keep an extra month or two of supplies on hand.  

I was low on chicken feed but that was easily remedied early on by a trip to tractor supply.  I realize that option might not always be available so I am going to try not not let our feed supply drop  below the one month mark moving forward.

I ordered everything I had that i had in my amazon wish list that I wanted.  A new holster, A few spare PolyTac pro LED lights and some other gear and or hobby stuff.  Glad I did because stuff is taking longer to ship now due to disruptions.  I like many others weren't sure if the supply chain would have any lengthy disruptions...  

I placed a couple extra orders on battery junction, and also ordered some more ammo.  I didn't *need* any but knew it might be a while before I could get more of what I wanted.  Same goes for all the other stuff i ordered, while I didn't need any of it, it didn't hurt and complimented my preps which in my mind are pretty solid currently.  

There is very little I want or need at this point.  Even sold two older mini bikes I had in my project pile for possible projects as I realized I have to many things with motors on/in them, and its time to downsize.  Hobbies are important during times like these, and while I still have to go to work everyday I don't have much else to do on the weekends other than my hobbies.  I enjoy building small rat rod/ junkyard/ wasteland/ mad max type builds or creations.  Just finished my last project bike and realized I was running low onf flux core welding wire.  Luckily harbor freight was open so I grabbed 3 more spools.

Off topic I mated an old Honda C90 motor with an old speedway mini bike roller.  I pride myself at being able to build stuff from junk and i usually have pretty good odds at making things run and work.  I can work on vehicles but the newer stuff is tough.  I specialize more with Motorcycles, ATVs, small engine type stuff.  I also consider my "motor head" ability a valuable prep/ skill.  Skills, knowledge, abilities are sometimes just as valuable as "stuff."

I thought we had more food in storage than we really did. Worst part is that my wife decided to go vegan (yes, I know....) 2 years ago. Now I have no choice but to put on a mask go to to the grocery store at least once per week to get fresh vegetables for her. She can't cook and I can't eat what she eats because it tastes like lawnmower grass clippings. I have to cook now instead of eating out. I was somewhat spoiled and lazy to cook all the time and was eating out several times per week.  Cooking is one of the things I know wel but don't always feel like it when I'm in pain. Eating out is out of the question now. This is where the virus will be because restaurants don't screen their employees. None of them wear masks or any PPEs. They only care about themselves. Screw that!

Our cheap Oster bread machine from Wally World has been a very useful tool. The bread it makes is not nearly as good as home made bread but it saves a lot of time and efforts. Glad we had lots of flour stored.

We really need to invest into a good water treatment system for our well water. It's smelly. pH is low as well. We don't risk drinking it unless it's an emergency. To many septic tanks in the area. All drinking water comes from the store. Water purification system will cost about $5,000 - $7,000. This is on top of my "to do" list right now.

U can freeze eggs.

Doing research into a water treatment system, the cost is much less than that. I had similar problems. Used a chlorine injection system in a 120 gal pressurized holdup tank, charcoal filter and water softener. Got rid of soluble rust, sulfur, E. coli, and buffered the pH some. The original system in 2005 was $1700. Can be DYI pieced together today less than $3000. No overpriced Culligan system. Just uses liquid pool chlorine and typical softener salt.

Well, its complicated.

If this was 10 years ago, no, I would have been set, single man, living in apartment, stocked to the gills.

Since then I let things slide with moving to another state, getting a Ph.D., getting married, having a child, buying a house.

I have since plugged most of the gaps thanks to the magic of online ordering. It was never a question of knowing what I needed, because I used to have it all before. It was just re-stocking stuff I useded to keep on hand.

The only real one is masks...sort of. I have enough masks for the pandemic, but fuck, I was using one every time I mowed the lawn, plus random household tasks. Haven't been able to buy any since December so I HAVE NOT been using them for every day purposes. I had not really considered every day purposes still go on, so I need a bunch more on top of pandemic uses, for doing regular every day stuff without wasting my preps.

To be fair I used to live in apartment, so I literally never had masks other than for preps, so when I got a house and started using them I just rotated them. I forgot that I'd need to increase that stock bigly if I were to continue normal use AND have an emergency supply.


ETA::The other thing I had not considered is how much you take for granted buying fresh food for your baby. My wife and I, we'll be fine. But you're little kid at critical stages of development? You want them to have the best nutrition possible. Doesn't help when they irrationally will eat thing one day, and then refuse to eat it the next, and then eat it again next week. Come on baby, we are in a crisis here, eat your green beans..you like them, I promise!

@wmagrush, I'd love to hear more about it, if possible. Maybe through a PM, to avoid sidetracking this thread?  Just curious what chlorine injection system you used and what brand of a retention tank? Any UV treatment? Was pH low or high? Did you use a calcite based pH correction or acid injection for high pH?

Out of work now, never thought I would be unemployed and draining my savings. That being said I was saving for some NODs. Never got good comms either. I have a few Baofengs but not sure their what I want fo TEOTWAWKI