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Ricky's Relocation Tips: Efficiently moving and Reassessing Food Storage
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May 21, 2024
Join Ricky on a heartfelt journey to Utah as he helps his sister-in-law move after a major life change. Watch as they creatively and efficiently tackle the challenge of relocating and reassessing her food storage needs. From budget-friendly tips to innovative storage solutions, this video offers practical advice for anyone looking to organize and optimize their food supplies during a move. Perfect for preppers, budget-conscious organizers, and supportive community members! Check out our Easy Food Storage Plan: https://pantrypreparedness.com/food-storage-made-of-the-meals-your-family-loves/ #preparedness #readyforanything #foodstorage #moving Pantry Preparedness is a trademark of Income School LLC, an Idaho Limited Liability Company
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0:00
What's up, my friends? I am just hitting the road. I'm headed down to Utah to help a family member who needs to downsize homes
0:06
And she's got tons and tons of preparedness stuff. Unfortunately, though, in the new home, she's not going to be able to hang on to all of it
0:13
So what we're going to do is not just to help her move, but also we're going to help prioritize and organize so that in her new place, she has as good a setup as possible
0:24
Even though she can't quite keep everything and things won't be quite as ideal as they've been in there
0:29
passed. We're going to make sure it's at least really, really good. All right. So, thanks for joining
0:35
me on this project, and I guess let's get at it. All right, before we get into the move, we need to
0:42
go back in time just a little bit and talk about what the situation here is, like, what is the
0:46
setup, and why are we having to make much of a change? I mean, why make a video just about helping
0:51
move somebody who happens to have a lot of food storage? It goes well beyond that. The reality is
0:57
these family members, they are as prepared as prepared gets. I mean, as far as you can possibly be prepared if you live in a suburban setting
1:05
short of like being full-on homesteaders out in the middle of nowhere and completely off-grid
1:10
they had basically everything you could imagine. Now, life situation has changed
1:16
They're not going to be able to have quite the same income they had before. They're not going to be able to have as big of a home as they had before
1:22
So there's not room for as much stuff. And it's just not as practical to hang on
1:27
on to as much of this stuff and be able to kind of cycle through it and rotate it and be as prepared
1:32
as they've been before. I mean, they had hundreds of buckets that, lots of them that were created in the hygiene
1:39
kits that they were prepared to literally just give out to people as needed, as well as lots of
1:43
food to share. So, because there's not going to be as much space, they had to start to prioritize
1:50
One of the things they did was they got rid of, they probably had well over a thousand mason jars that they just got rid of
1:57
They have some, they'll keep some and do some canning, but there were some preparedness scenarios they were prepared for
2:04
that they're going to be a little bit less prepared for now
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And I think that's okay. The scenarios are probably some of the ones that are lower risk
2:14
or less likely than others. And even if the scenarios were to happen
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I think we could work things out. It'd be just fine. And that's something to keep in mind
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is it's always about prioritizing. Most of us are not going to be able to set up
2:26
the perfect ideal preparedness scenario where no matter what happens in our lives or in our communities
2:32
we're going to be prepared for everything. We just need to be prepared for the worst things and the
2:36
most likely things. All right. So here are some things that she did to help prioritize. One
2:41
she started by getting rid of the excess amount of jars and lids and that opened up a lot of space
2:47
Number two, those hygiene kits, she just wasn't going to have anywhere to store them. And so she had to
2:53
focus a little bit more on preparedness for her own family and a little bit less. on preparedness for her entire community
2:58
The next thing that she did was she went through her food storage and got rid of anything
3:03
that was already past its expiration date. She's got a lot of food storage that's supposed to be able to last 20 plus years, but
3:10
some of it was over 20 years old, so she got rid of some food storage that she just hadn't
3:15
cycled through in the past. But this still leaves a lot of food storage
3:20
So now it time to go and actually move this stuff As you can see here this is what the food storage room was looking like just a couple of months ago completely stocked You got this cold storage space you know off to the right
3:33
Before we have to get this totally empty. Empty, right? Off to the left, same situation
3:40
There's just a ton of stuff here. Then they had this internal storage room where it's climate controlled with the rest of the house
3:47
where they have a ton of other food storage. They have some of these shelves. They have lots of shelves, which is fantastic
3:53
It helped a ton with organization even at the new house. And some of these are on wheels so that they could stack shelves too deep, which is fantastic
4:01
We're able to make use of that at the new house. But we had to get all this stuff out there
4:05
So there were three of us, and we spent basically the whole day moving these boxes full of number 10 cans
4:13
Number 10 cans are the ones that are about this big around, and yay tall
4:17
and they're really, really common for dry canning, dry pack canning. We store things in those like oats, sugar, rice, even salt
4:29
She had salt. She had lots of herbs in hers. I don't know what anybody needs with six number 10 cans full of rosemary, but I think
4:39
she had multiple boxes of that. Each box containing six cans. But the nice thing was those were some of the lightest
4:47
boxes, so that was nice. Salt, on the other hand, it's not light, and she had lots of that too
4:54
As we went through this food storage, we didn't really prioritize what to keep. The goal was to
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try to keep all of it. So, at the new house that's smaller and that doesn't have a nice storage
5:04
room for this, we had to figure out what we were going to do. She said we could put it in the
5:10
garage. If needed, we can in the future, maybe put in like a window air conditioning unit
5:15
to help control the temperature in this garage just so that we don't get huge temperature swings
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But this food for the most part is the dry pack canned stuff that's going to be able to handle temperature shifts a little bit better than, you know
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canned jars, you know, of fruit and things like that. So in this garage, we put shelving all along the back wall
5:35
and all along this side wall of the garage. And in some places we even went two shelves deep
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There's a picture here you can see where this was in progress. By the end, we had filled up all of those shelves with over 300 boxes full of these number 10 cans
5:54
She has enough food storage, I think, for herself and her kids to last at least three to five years for staples as well as seasonings and stuff like that, which I think is fantastic
6:06
My recommendation for her would be to actually start really working through some of this food storage
6:12
I don't think I would buy flour or sugar or salt or any of the other staples that she has
6:17
especially any seasonings that she already has. I don't think I'd buy any of those again
6:21
for at least a year because I think it would be good to start
6:26
one, eating down on some of the stuff that's getting a little bit older before it goes bad
6:31
And two, that will help free up more space in her garage and help her land on a food storage amount
6:38
that I think is going to be better and a little bit more appropriate for her family
6:42
Also I would recommend that she make a really good food storage plan based on foods they actually eat We have created that sort of a plan here In fact it something that I link to in the description and in a pin comment in this video where it a whole system to come up with exactly what you need to be storing
7:00
based on specific meals, specific recipes that you're already eating and that your family
7:06
already likes. So I think that would help her a ton. And I think that's going to be a next step
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She also has a ton of these boxes of Mountain House freeze drive
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food. This stuff lasts, I don't remember exactly, but it's something like 30 years. It's
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freeze-dried, so, I mean, and it's complete meals, so you're not having to worry about
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cooking stuff. Basically, all you need is hot water, and you're good to go. I really like these
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for 72-hour kits, for camping, as well as just for emergency food storage, but they are a little
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bit pricey. These aren't things that she's going to necessarily eat through a ton in the short term
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And so we decided to make use of this little teeny tiny niche, this little look in kind of in a storage area in the basement
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It's super narrow. I mean, maybe three feet wide, but probably not even that wide
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And it's kind of deep. It's too narrow to be able to put shelving along the wall and actually be able to walk through there
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So the question is, what do you do with a space like this? So we took this food that is almost none of it's going to get used in the short term
8:15
and we literally packed it floor to ceiling. And so now, you know, if she needs to be able to get to a box
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she'll have to pull something out from in front of it. I'm sure that she'll put other things down there, like a vacuum and stuff right in front of it
8:28
But no big deal. You reach through there, you grab a box, and one box of that stuff has 30-some-odd servings of food in it
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But this food really is pretty perfect. If it wasn't so expensive per meal
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I'd say get your whole year's worth of food supply out of this kind of food. It's just really pricey
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And my family, we cook and we bake a lot with just normal raw ingredients
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And so having the staples isn't a really big deal for us. We can cook with those
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I think a lot of people today would struggle cooking with just, you know, sugar, flour, rice, beans, and other staple items
9:01
without a lot of the kind of prepared and somewhat processed foods
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that are available to us today. This project also taught me a really valuable lesson
9:11
and that is if you think you're ever going to move, and you're storing your food storage in the basement
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and the food storage is really heavy just planned on getting a lot of help
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because like I said it took the three of us basically all day to move these 300-some-odd boxes
9:29
because we had to carry them up a flight of stairs and the boxes are heavy enough that you carry one
9:35
or maybe two if there's some lighter stuff at a time there's no way we were going to be able to load
9:40
five or six of them on a hand truck and then pull that up the stairs. It was faster just to carry them up one at a time, which was a very slow and tedious process
9:49
But we got them all loaded up. We would load them up, fill her entire van
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She has this huge 12 passenger van, fill it up back to front, with none of the seats in there
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and just take them over one load at a time. And it was exhausting work
10:04
There were a few other projects. She asked me to get done while I was down there, and I was more than happy to oblige
10:09
I put some shells here in some of these cabinets that they already had in the garage so that she can make better use of that space It the garage so it not ideal but she going to be storing I think a lot of toiletry supplies but also kind of pantry supplies
10:24
So the idea is hopefully nothing's being stored in there for too long
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so that you're getting huge temperature swings. And again, if we can kind of climate control the garage a little bit
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I think that would make the food storage a little bit better in the garage
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But also, we were trying to make as much use as we could out of every little space
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I mentioned about the food storage in the basement and putting all those mountain house boxes down there
10:48
But the same thing was true in her shed. She has this little shed there at the new house
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And we had some furniture, like some beds and a huge TV stand and stuff
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that aren't going to really work in this current house, but that she couldn't part with
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She's not going to get rid of them. Hopefully someday in the future, she'll be able to make use of them
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So we put them in the shed and we lined this whole wall in the back
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And you can barely see them because we've got them all wrapped up. And then we built a shelf right in front of them
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so that we can make use of all this space in the shed. And you can see here in the shed
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I mean, she's got the generator, she's got all these propane storage and stuff. But there's also lots of room on these really nice, heavy-duty metal shelves
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You can get those at Costco. I think the generators at Costco. The mountain house boxes are at Costco
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Costco is like the preparedness dream store. All in all, going down to help her was a really great
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and very fulfilling couple of days. But there's a lot of work still to be done. just for the move and everything in general
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but also in figuring out what preparedness is going to look like for her and her family going forward
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Obviously, there are some things that she's been used to being able to have that aren't available to her anymore
11:54
But the cool thing was, is by using space creatively, by using some of these shelves that are on rollers
12:01
you have to be a little careful with that, by the way, because if you fill them with really heavy boxes full of number 10 cans
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the wheels will bend, which we discovered. But by filling those with some of the lighter boxes with the herbs and things like dry oats and things like that
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we're able to stack some of these shelves two shelves deep. So now we can still, like they had at the old house, we can roll these shelves out of the way and get to what's behind them
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So using the space creatively, we were able to actually hold on to most all of the preparedness supplies that she had before
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except for the ones that were already expired and some of those kits and things that she
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had prepared to give out to other people as well as those mason jars
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So she could get rid of just a handful of things and still be mostly prepared for pretty
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much whatever life's going to throw at her. And that is what I hope for you as well
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So I'd love to hear from you. What are the things that you would love to be able to get a little bit more prepared
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for if you had the resources or kind of what's your next project
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What's the next thing that you want to do to level up your preparedness? Because when it comes to preparedness, it's you
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usually not going to be won and done unless you just like won the lottery or something
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It's basically always going to be taking a step to be a little bit more prepared today than
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you were yesterday. So what's next for you? I'm excited to share more with you about what I'm doing for myself and, you know, maybe we'll
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be able to check in again in the future with this family member and see how things are going
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for her too. Thanks for joining me in this video today. I'm excited to see you again next time
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