One of the most true things in survivalism is that ‘you are your own worst looter’. You, your kids, your spouse, whoever, will ‘borrow’ from your stash and not replace/return it long before any panic-driven locust horde breaks down your basement door and helps themselves.
Case in point: I keep some Advil and Tylenol in my Bag O’ Tricks(tm), which is good because I had a bangaroo headache the other day. Popped open the tube, took two Advil, went on with my life. Did the same thing the next day. Sooooo…my stash is down four pills. Now, this isn’t a big deal. There’s another twenty or so in there. But the way things are supposed to work is that a) you use it, 2) you replace it, III) you replace the replacements.
But, no, I sat onmy hands and waited until this weekend to go to the Big Bottle Of Advil, shake out a half dozen tablets, and replace them into my bag.
Bad survivalist.
Yeah, yeah, its only a few tablets…whats the big deal, right? The big deal is that nits become lice, acorns become mighty oaks, and little minor oversights become Three Mile Island…want of a nail,. buddy.
Its so bloody easy to get complacent about doing what we’re supposed to, in terms of preparedness, when the sense of urgency isn’t as great as it could be… we take a jar of spaghetti sauce from the food storage stash and forget to update the list, we use one of the emergency flashlights and figure we’ll just pick up a new one ‘next time’ to replace it, etc, etc.
You’re your own worst looter. I am too, and I’ve been doing this crap for decades. But the day you get stuck in your office because of a power outage is no time to discover that you ‘forgot’ to replace the flashlight you ‘borrowed’ from your EDC and never put back.
That little stuff adds up fast, and although something simple and basic like aspirin, batteries, a razor blade, or a bottle of water may seem like not a big deal today…when you’re in a situation and one of those items is exactly what you need and it’s not there, you’ll sing a different tune.
Moral of the story: yeah, its a pain the butt…but suck it up, go to the store, and replace that item that you pulled from storage that you really shouldnt have used. Future You will thank you.
LMAO. I was just thinking the same thing. Gouged my calf muscle last night moving several book cases around in the new casa. Couldn’t find ANY of my baggies of assorted bandaids anywhere. Had to use one from BOB.
Called my son and yes THAT box is sitting there waiting to come over. Lol
Good advice. Thanks. Keep them coming.
Good advice. Course using it so it won’t expire Is good too
Need more wine! I looted the cellars!
Yeah my vodka supply is never caught up. My bad!
What has future me ever done for me?
You are ABSOLUTELY right, CZ, and it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if you ran this same reminder 2-3 times a year. What has yanked my shorts lately is how my “store up to 10-year” batteries (likely Duracells) have started spewing chemicals out their arses after being on the shelf maybe 18-24 months. Word on the Internet is that this is happening to everyone. I’m swtitching to Energizers, but they’re likely all made at the same plant in China. If you have done any research on AA and AAA batteries, that would sure help a bunch of us out.
I was laying up Ray-O-Vac batteries because the local big-box sold them in bulk. A year into storage in a temp-stable, cool, dark, dry place, and the damned things are all leaking… and they’re made in the USA!!! I’ve also had similar results with the Duracell batteries. I’m actually having pretty good luck so far with Amazon’s house brand, believe it or not.
You’re hitting on my Achilles heal; MAINTAINING my preps. I go for the battieries and they’re leaking. I go for stored OTC meds, and they’re SEVERAL YEARS out of date. I have a small supplemental first aid kit in the Jeep with the usual things in it; OTC pain meds, bandaids, antidiarrheal pills, and the like. I pulled it out last week and noticed the P-Touch label I had put on it; Inspect again, February 2014! Granted, this was an almost “afterthought” first aid kit, but still…
Try to stay up with these things, folks. Watch the “news.” Parts are flying off the machine…
For long term storage of small consumer-type batteries, you need to go to Lithiums. I recommend Eneloops.
Lithiums store great + wont leak.
Of course, youll need some solar or other way to recharge them in an emergency.
What i do is keep some AA/AAAs on the charger at all times and rotate them every few months or so. If you do leave a Li and it deep discharges, you can often bring them back by shock charging them with a short shot from another electrical source (similar voltage and i do mean a SHORT pulse juice).
not to start an argument, but i put enegizer lithium in my gps, they puked in a couple of months. i have used eneloops for a decade or more but lately a few have puked. sadly. just my experience.
I discovered the Eneloop batteries purely by accident, finding a brand new, unopened set at a yard sale for ten bucks. They work, folks, and I haven’t had leakage from them yet.
The only thing I don’t like about the Eneloops I have is that they’re all AA/AAA. There are “adapters” for C and D batteries, but face it; the reason C and D batteries are bigger is to delver a higher amp/hour rating. True, the AA will provide the same 1.5VDC, but put it in a device designed to use C or D batteries and they’re not going to last worth a damn.
Eneloops are Nickel Metal Hydride – not Lithium. A lot of modern electronics have a few circuits that are always energized. The drain is low, but over time it will kill the battery. My old flip phone will stay fully charged for 6 months if turned off. My new one even if turned off kills the battery in about 4 days. My ancient GPS – black and white screen, no maps other than the track that I have walked has had the same Energizer Lithium AA’s for more than 5 years, and it powers right up. The batteries in my new one (about a year old) are dead within a few weeks. I now keep the batteries in a ziplock bag with a rubber band around them to keep them together. Problem solved.
I keep telling you guys – buy the Energizer Lithium ultimate in AA, AAA and CR23A. 20 year shelf life, good to -40 degrees and NEVER leak. Yes, they are more expensive. Put them in your flashlights and you NEVER have to worry about them dying or leaking. Period.
Thankfully, I’m really anal retentive and always go out of my way to replace things as quickly as humanly possible after I use them. For the past two plus decades, my philosophy has always been to buy two more to replace one. Use up a tube of toothpaste? Take the next one from the shelf and buy two more the next day. Of course storage space is getting to be a real issue these days.
energizers are crap too. and i had amazon and sam’s batteries puke well before the best by date. i once thought eneloop rechargeables were immune but they have begun puking on occassion. as of now i buy whatever, keep some WITH but not IN my devices in case they puke.
I’ve taken to doing the same thing, storing batteries WITH my emergency preps, and not IN the devices themselves; usually wrapped in a zip-lok bag. As for the “ready use” items, in the past year I’ve had leaky batteries destroy a radio, a couple of TV remotes, a smoke detector, …the list goes on. Alkaline batteries NEVER used to leak. Now it’s expected. A lot of my ready-use emergency preps; flashlights and the like, are using rechargeable Li-Ion batteries now. So far, so good with those.
Oh; and for the record, the only alkalines I store that HAVEN’T leaked are those old-school 9V batteries. Go figure. Those sit forever too, me having only a few devices that still use them. Go figure…
Those 9v batteries can leak. just like the AA/AAA types. Tends to be more spectacular. I’ve had the entire guts puke out the base of Duracell 9v.
At this point, if you bother to use Duracell, consider the item you put them in to be a disposable.
9V are made up of six AAAA batteries [Also called LR61 or MN2500 batteries] most of the time the individual batteries leak inside the outer case.
For years most people could not find AAAAs in the shop, so if you needed them for something [likeStreamlight Stylus 3 AAAA LED Pen Light] you had to open up the 9Vs up. Now you just order them over the net.
Spend the money and get the Energizer Ultimate Lithium. They don’t puke.
Last Friday, found a bottle of Wal-Mart EQUATE brand nose drops. Expiration date – 02-03. Yep only 18 years gone, might have been interesting using it and finding out if they worked.
Ran into this exact issue over the weekend. My stash of small unopened ibuprofen bottles had been used for kits without realizing it. Yes, we have plenty of large bottles around still lol.
So, a reminder is set into the phone to go off after work to get more.
Steelheart
Thing about storage of foods like canned goods, is you have to rotate the stock and use them up while replacing what you used.
I try to do that, but have had some food stuffs slip through the cracks and ended up throwing a bunch of it out because of spoilage…yes, even canned goods.
As far as OTC meds, even if out of date, they should still be good, albeit less potent than fresh. Just like a good structural engineer will over design a building, manufacturers of medicines usually put in a “fudge factor” when assigning “use by” dates. I believe the military or VA actually did a study on it.
I read that study or one similar. The OTC Tylenol, ibuprophen, and many other things were still good 10 years later.
it took me years but i finally got the looter-in-chief, my wife, to quit using up preps w/out restocking. i let her run out of coffee.
If you bought your leaking = in the package= batteries at Costco, and the package is clearly marked “good until xxxxxx” and that is some time in the future, they WILL take them back and replace them.
I’ve done it, and the batteries in question were so old my purchase wasn’t in the computer to easily look up. The returns manager gave me a look like “Dude! you bought these 5 years ago!” I pointed to the package, “good til 2025″…. Replaced.
There are lots of online discussions of the merits of various brands. At some point most people I follow/read/know gave up on Duracel consumer batteries. The kirkland have been fine for me, backed up by eneloop. Eneloop WILL self discharge if they sit long enough. Rotate your entire stash thru a charger at least once a year. I’m happy to use eneloop aaa batts in my EDC flashlight, a Pelican 1920.
At some point, all the manufacturers seem to have changed their alkaline chemistry, as the leaked stuff gets hard and clear or white, and easily flakes off to clean it up. I much prefer that to the old green crap eating the contacts in everything.
The absolute gold standard for industry and I assume .mil is Tadiran Batteries.
https://www.tadiranbat.com/
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I know you’ve had little comments in posts over the years about the way CZ’s internal processor works as far as reminders to check over/check out preps (from the gas cans, to the generators, to the canned goods, etc.). I’d love to see a top 10 list of CZ’s self-reminders some day. I mean everyone on here probably replaces the smoke detector batteries twice a year when the time changes, but to see the inner workings of the beautiful survivalist mind of CZ would be impressive I’m sure, as well as probably a little bit scary. LOL!
Regarding Battery ‘shelf life’ and leakage, as a Kid in the 60’s, the Eveready Carbon-Zinc D-Cell was the ‘standard’ for all our Battery-Powered Toys. They had about a Year’s ‘shelf life’, and their Discharge Curve was pretty smooth, they would gradually loose power, and then got transferred to things like Flashlights that needed less Voltage to run.
The MOST IMPORTANT THING was to REMOVE the Batteries EVERY TIME the Toy (or Flashlight) was not in use – this was drilled into us by our Fathers, who with the exception of the Flashlight in the Kitchen, Never left Batteries in anything. ANY Battery, being a Chemical Reactor, can and Will, eventually Leak damaging Chemicals into a Device.
ALWAYS Store the Batteries in your Survival Kits and Weapons Sets in doubled, Ziplock Bags. If they Leak, no Harm is done to Expensive Devices.