I have been doing some thinking on how to get the most out of a small spapce in terms of storage. I am going to discuss a couple of easy slightly BS ways to answer that question. The first one is to store stuff with a family member. This is great if you have a gun nut uncle with a ranch who lives 30 miles away; however in that case his place would probably be your retreat and your stuff would be there anyway. Unless I move back towards home that option is not practical. The second is to get a storage place. This is an option I have considered myself. A reasonable amount of apartment complexes also have on site storage. That could work well. A place acrost town could work if you were able to go grab all the stuff in one trip and GBTD (get back to dodge, my own new acronym). However this strategy is a small stepp above going to the store while the shit is hitting the fan. Since I drive a hyundai (not bad assed but fiscally wise) I'm not moving alot of anything fast.
I am soliciting any ideas that you think I miss.
Here are the ideas I have so far:
Obviously fill the pantry with food and the medicine cabinet with medicine/first aid items
Raise the bed an extra 6 inches. I have a queen so this will add a heck of alot of space. Enough space to do better then the inadequate 20 gallons I have currently (thanks for pointing that ou Jerry in the soil). So after that mod I could almost fit all of the food and water I need under the bed. Since your moving the bed up you will probably need to move the nightstand up also.
If you do not have a coffee table make one out of a bunch of food or water piles up with a 2' x4' piece of plywood on top. Cover with a sheet. If you do have one fill the area under it with stuff and cover it with the same sheet.
If the cabinet under the sink is not full of a nice redundant supply of cleaning supplies and bleach then putting some food in there might be a decent idea. I would put that in a food grade bucket because of potential moisture or chemical issues.
I could rpobably fit 100lbs of rice under my tv stand.
In the back of the closet put a row of buckets and throw a piece of plywood on top of it. Use that as a shelf for shoes.
Organize plates and pans efficiently so they do not sprawl all over the kitchen, thus more space for chow.
Use space under book shelves etc.
If you are in the house use the attic.
I did not meantion major mods such as hanging shelves, hanging the bed so you have 3 ft of space under it etc because most folks who are living in a pretty small space are probably renting.
The only idea here (it is not new I read it somewhere or another) which will create significant space is under the bed. However 20lbs of rice here and 20lbs of beans there and pretty quickly you are talking about alot of food.
The other thing I wanted to talk about today was my bitter paranoid survivalist bud in the desert, James Dakin (http://bisonsurvivalblog.blogspot.com/). Yesterday he wrote a great article called "ammo first, gun second". He simly said that you need to consider the cost of ammo not just its availability while looking at a firearm. Consider it like looking at the cost of maintenance and fuel over the life of a vehicle. .308 ammo is so expensive right now that it costs more to buy 2 cases of ammo then it does to buy a cheap .308 battle rifle and good luck finding one of those which is worth the steel its forged out of. This post hit me like a blind flash of the obvious and will probably keep me out of .308 unless something changes in the near future. I just can't see myself being able to put enough money into ammo to have a worthwhile amount and there is no point in spending 1200 bucks for a rifle and mags then keeping 500 rounds on hand. Thinking I may either expand farther in .223 and 7.62x39 (which I will do either way) or look at getting a garand. A semi auto 30-06 could be a nice hard hitting gun to have around. I am not going to tell you what gun to buy, if you really want my opinions then read back aways. However before you buy any gun add up the cost of the amount of ammo you think is needed and THEN compare it with the cost of other weapons with the same amount of ammo. Also figuring in mags would not be a bad idea either.
Anyway it is getting late and I did not get to write as much as I wanted to. Tommarow I will post about Get Home Bags, equiment to keep in the car and strategies for getting home safe.
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4 comments:
I use 5 gallon buckets to store everything, bullets, food, tools everything. You can fit about 30 of these buckets under a queen size bed. My four and a half foot square coffee table holds 16 and I have a couple of two by six foot window seats which hold 12 each.
The buckets are great because you can easily move them.
It works for me.
Thanks for the advice. I will probably emulate that plan.
Supply storage is such an unglamorous subject. But you know it really is one of the more important thing in preparedness.
Organizing is the key. A good prepper needs to be almost anal about hiding, storing, and rotating your usable stock.
Great to see the non sexier topics being addressed here. Its a sign of a true prepared thinker.
Also, for everyone about posters and postings.....I was turned on to a idea called Critical Thinking back when I has going to school for special education (as a major, not actually in it, although some internet trolls and close friends would argue that). It has to do with you, the listener, to think about what the speaker is saying. And not just his/her words, but their background, upraising, social status, ect. Basicly a put yourself in their shoes way of thinking before you react. It also is expanding on in other areas of interaction such as, speaking, non verbal clues, and socializing. So, maybe some readers can stop and think about Ryan's (or Jim's, Rangerman's, ect) thinking and situation and how it is given, before reacting with a post.
Jerry
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