Prepare for the future

Frugal Bloggers Beware...

Ok, a lot has been on my mind, God has been once again laying preparedness on my heart.

The one thing that keeps coming back to my mind though is that my family is not that of just 3, but we have 2 feline companions and I do not feel we are to forget them in our preparing.

I read numerous weblogs that show frugal families monthly budgets which include pet food, but when you look at their stock ups, there is not a single months worth of surplus for their pets... and their oldest children are the age of my only child. This week then, I read this fabulous blog on living off her surplus for 2 full years (mind you this blogger does NOT claim to have pets, but still, they had to live off their food storage for two years, not a few extra weeks here or there)

So I have been thinking, Perhaps, while I am stocking my pantry, maybe we should put up an extra bag of food (we buy a 3 month supply for Zeke and Ebony to begin with) just in case, yes, much more than that would go rancid, but we do keep an extra case of litter so an extra container of food would make sense too…

I would love to learn to live entirely off of storage and am going to start planning meals using my stored food before grocery shopping and using the store to fill in gaps; fortunately I shop sales, use coupons and shop in unexpected places; Dollar General has awesome steals in their Non Perishable foods as do some of the dollar stores... at this point in our lives we have not used food pantries because we have not needed them as of yet. God has provided meat when there was no money, (free Buffalo came when finances didn't) I have always stocked sales when we had money, so even if it wasn't favorite veggies, they were there… (Green beans and broccoli run out before corn and mixed veggies) and I stock and rotate beans like there is no tomorrow and ROTEL tomatoes what I have is not nearly what most families even consider to be enough, but, it's a start. There is always something on hand to make Chili and various other concoctions but, sometimes you have to accept that it may not be what you are in the mood for.