{ Similar to Noah }...

" The revelation to store and produce food may be as essential to our temporal salvation today as boarding the ark was to the people in the days of Noah."

President Ezra Taft Benson

WOW! I don't know if everyone has heard that quote before, but the first time I ever did, I was blown away with the realization of just how important it is for us to listen to the words of our Prophets, past and present. Did you know that we have been counceled concerning preparedness for over 70 years???

I have only been good at food storage and preparedness for the last 3 years or so. The start of it all was when my good friend Amelia was in my basement and she discovered my little food storage area. She let me know that I needed to get my bum in gear and get preparing... FAST! She shared with me how strongly she felt about food storage and that was when I realized that this was real. That I was no longer a college student who could run home to mom and dad in an emergency, but that I was mom and dad and I needed to get prepared for my family. I started out by just randomly stocking up on things that we used whenever I would go to the store. That worked for awhile, but it wasn't organized enough for me and I felt like I was spending money, but not really getting anywhere. This was on my mind a lot and I prayed to know how to go about it because I knew how important it was. My answer came about 2 years ago in Relief Society when I was visiting my mother in laws ward. They had put together these little books about how to get your year supply in one year! It was mapped out with something to purchase every week. I was so grateful! How easy is that!? Purchasing a year supply of something every week could get a little pricey. That might work for some of you, but I wasn't able to do that, so I just tackled one or two things a month instead. For ex. I purchased my entire year supply of salt one time I went to the store and then I purchased all of my pasta another time. This worked for me because I liked that I could focus on one thing at a time and get it marked off the list and then work on the next supply, all the while rotating what I had. I also didn't have to try to figure out all of the necessities of what I needed to purchase because it was all written out for me. One of the books also tells you how much of each supply you need per person. It really has worked wonders for me. Here are some pictures of my little system:

This basket sits on my office space in my kitchen and has all of my important things in it for running my household. One of the folders in here is marked preparedness. Each time I do my grocery list, I pull out my folder and check my inventory to see what I should be buying.

These are my tools for food storage. They are kept in my preparedness folder. I also have a list of substitutions. Like eggs for ex. You can't store eggs, but if you have gelatin and water you can use them to substitute for an egg. I wouldn't have even thought to have gelatin in my food storage.

I hope that for those of you who might need help in this area, that this can give you something to go off of. I am not an expert at all and I can ALWAYS use help and new ideas, so if any of you have something that really works for you, please share! If anyone is interested in these papers that I have e-mail me @ krysta_casey@yahoo.com and I can scan them and get them your way.

Are we going to be ready?