Tag Archives: logistics

Standardization

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So this popped up in comments from the last post, and there’s a lot to unpack, so it becomes a post all its own:

At what point is it a good idea to standardize?
Lets say you plan to use 308, 9mm, 12g and .22.
Other than some “trade goods”, why carry other calibers…
Having just to have costs – either financially or in storage space.

“Standardize” means different things to different people. Are you standardizing on a particular caliber? A particular firearm? Both? Theres some big differences there. Lets give a couple examples and the problems they incur.

Let’s say you standardize on caliber. Everyone in your family/group/clan/stick/team/cadre/cell//whatever decides that .223 is the way to go. That way everyone can use the same ammo. You’ve got an AR,, Bob has an AUG, Uncle Billy has a Mini-14, and Crazy Steve has a .223 AK. You guys can all eat from the same pot of .223 ammo. And then…Steve loses some magazines in an impromptu bugout, or Billy only had a few to begin with and needs more, or the feed lips on your mags are getting tired and you think its time to swap out for some new mags. Well, you’re all shooting .223, which you standardized on, but everyone has their own magazine logistics. Billy can’t give Steve any of his mags, and your mags wont work in Steves gun, and you see where I’m going with this?

So, maybe you standardize on a gun (‘platform’). We’re all gonna rock the AR. For the most part, we’re all gonna be able to swap parts and accessories if we need. Your AR is 7.62×39, mine is .223, Steve’s is .300 Black, and Billy has gone way off the res and adheres to the 6.8 SPC. But we can all swap small parts, optics, lights, accessories, and we all share the same manual of arms. But…I’ve got plenty of .223, Billy is having trouble finding ammo, Steve can’t give any ammo to you, and .300 Black isn’t found at the local trading post. Again, see where Im going with this?

For me, I’m thinking long term. As far as guns go, my thought process is “If I can’t buy more tomorrow, will I be able to spend the rest of my life with what I have?” And spending the rest of my life with what I have is a lot easier when its common to what my buddies and the locals carry.

For me, the end of the world looks like an AR in .223 and a 9mm Glock. Two platforms so widely supported that you can literally build them from parts you purchase online and a receiver you make yourself.

Other than some “trade goods”, why carry other calibers…

Because not every problem has a solution that can be optimally met with the survivalist’s classic calibers. Do you have livestock? Do you have bears? When you’re woken up at 2am to the sound of your goats/chickens/cattle getting mangled by a bear you’re probably gonna want something with a bit more horsepower than a .223 or .308…and out comes the Marlin in .45-70…or the Mauser in .35 Whelen…or the Browning in .338.

And you may have a gun/ammo preference for hunting that you’re comfortable with. For example, I have rifles in .308 to hunt with but I have sentimental attachment to a 7mm Mauser I had built up years ago and prefer hunting with that. Logistically it makes no sense, but since I have three dozen AR’s, a thousand magazines, and piles of .223 ammo, I don’t feel that having a little boutique gun/caliber is creating a risk for me.

Having extra guns/ammo in ‘non standardized’ calibers does cost, financially and in terms of space. I agree wholeheartedly. But I have the financial and spatial margin to have a few things just because I like them or think theyre cool. I wouldn’t run out the door to WW3 with my Marlin .357, but I enjoy it enough that I don’t mind making room for it in my gun safe. If youre living on a tight budget then, yes, be as practical as you can…get your AR or AK, your 870 or 500, and the ammo you need. But once youve done all that, if theres a toy or two you want where is the harm? Just know that it isn’t part of your preparations and is just a ‘want’.

As for trading purposes…we’re seeing that now. There are plenty of people who went heavy on primers, for example, who are making crazy money selling them off and using the proceeds to plug whatever holes are left in their checklists. If you have the space and money, by all means, have something for trading purposes so that one day you can get the extra ammo or extra mags you thought you didnt need.

But the standardization thing goes beyond guns, as you know. Batteries are a great example. CR123, coin batts, AAA,AA,C,D batteries are needed for all sortsa useful gizmos. Who wants to keep that many different types of batteries around? And its virtually a promise that whatever battery you need will be the one size that youre out of. For me, its AA and D batts. Thats it. Anything that runs on AAA, C, or CR123 is either available in another battery format or is available as a USB rechargeable.

Same for fuels. You have a diesel truck, propane stove, kerosene heater, gas generator, and white gas lanterns.Thats just asking for troubles.

If you can afford the money/space, then logistics may not be an issue for you. You can have a steel building full of cases of different calibers, different size batteries, different types of fuels, and therefore don’t have to worry about each piece of gear requiring a different item to make it work. More power to you. But I want the smallest, most efficient, logistical footprint possible and for me that means standardizing on things.

“Having just to have” does, in fact, cost. But if you’re able to absorb those costs then there’s not really a problem. When I was but a wee baby survivalist in my early 20’s, I had no margin in my life at all. I had an AR, an 870, a 10/22, and a.45. That was it. Money was very tight and rather than pick up a gun I wanted for fun, I kept that basic survivalists battery. Nowadays, money is less of an issue. And I’ve had over 35 years to acquire the basics. So, if I want, I can (and do) buy a gun that absolutely does not fit anywhere into my preparedness plans….and it’s fun. I’ve got the basics covered so thoroughly that if I want a .22 caliber copy of the MP40 to play with at the range, I can do that and not feel that I’ve neglected my other responsibilities.

Not sure that addresses the initial questions, but thats where it took my mind.

Standardization is important. You need to really think it through. When it’s Day 37 in the post apocalyptic world the last thing you want to have to worry about is where to find a replacement oddball-size battery or hard-to-find magazine.”Most common denominator” is the way to think on these matters.

No doubt the comments to this post are gonna be full of “I went with this caliber…I went with these guns..” and everyone will list off their ideal mix. Thats fine, although unnecessary. More interesting comments would be from people who didnt go the ‘usual’ route and why.

Need to inventory

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I need to do some inventory this month. I’ve been a bit lax about adding things to the preponomicom and I simply cannot afford to be caught unprepared (or overprepared) given how it seems like everything in the country is in some sort of race to Third world lifestyle.

By the way, how can you be overprepared, you ask? Simple….you inadvertently acquire more of something than you could realistically need and that commitment of resources prevents you from being prepared elsewhere.

I’m reasonably confident that the future of me needing to use my preps does not look like Red Dawn, Jericho, Last of Us, or Walking Dead. I am more inclined to believe it looks more like …what it is now – inflation, scarcity, violent crime, homelessness, reckless government, and that sort of thing.

I know I keep saying it, but it’s true: You’re likelihood of being in an emergency that requires remediation using $50 bills is magnitudes of order greater than being in an emergency that requires remediation using .50 BMG.

Not saying it won’t or can’t happen the other way, just saying that my experience says the odds favor the personal EOTWAWKI occurring more than it does the civilization-wide one.

A personal EOTWAWKI is something that directly impacts you a lot more than it impacts society as a whole. Job loss. Health crisis. Divorce. A close death. Bankruptcy. House fire. These are all things that bring your life to a screeching halt but barely make a blip on the radar of anyone outside your immediate circle. Those are the things that will happen far more often than UN troops going door-to-door giving forced Covid vaccinations.

So..I need to print out the preponomicon, grab a clipboard, and hit the shelves. Its a not unpleasant way to spend the afternoon when it’s 95 degrees outside. Hanging out in a cool basement working on that warm fuzzy feeling from knowing you can take care of your needs for the next year or so……not a bad way to spend a few hours.

 

The multi-cartridge approach

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Tam, over at View From The Porch, had a post about how the .327 Federal pistol will shoot several cartridges – .32 S&W, .32 Long, .32 Mag, .327 Federal, and .32 ACP. She  opined that for those of us scavenging for cartidges after the apocalypse, this multi-caliber functionality might have an appeal.

That got me thinking about where we’ve been and where we’re going in terms of the ‘one-gun, multi-cartridge’ pistol. (Note there’s a difference between multi-cartridge and multi-caliber.)

The most common would be the .357 Magnum – it can fire .38 Special and .357 Magnum (and .38 Colt if you somehow stumble into a hardware store that hasn’t been open since 1927). Ditto .44 Magnum, but I’ll bet there are plenty of .44 Mag shooters who have never even seen a .44 Special. The .45 ACP revolvers shot .45 ACP and .45 AutoRim. Smith and Wesson’s seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time .460 Smith and Wesson will shoot .45 Colt, .454 Casull, and .460 S&W. The guys at Ruger have a Redhawk that’ll shoot .45 ACP or .45 Colt.  The old Ruger single actions in .32-20/.32 Mag, .38-40/10mm, .45 Colt/ACP, 9mm/357 still turn up but you better make sure not to lose that extra cylinder. (And, really, how hard would it be for Ruger to come out with a convertible double action revolver, hm????) The Survivor/Medusa would shoot pretty much anything in the .38/9mm range but it was kind of a sucky gun to begin with. These are all examples (and, yes, I know there are others) of a multi-cartridge gun….but they are all of the same caliber. Once you get into multi-caliber guns things get more interesting.

A multi-caliber revolver is quite a trick to pull off since a ready barrel change would be required and thats a feature found on very few revolvers. (Looking at you, Dan Wesson.)  But, when you get to automatics, its a different story. Ruger had a P89 that was a ‘convertible’ that let you swap between 9mm (.35 caliber) and .30 Luger (.30 caliber) with just a barrel change. HK had a switch barrel auto back in the day (HK4) that let you shoot .22, .25, .32, and .380.

The larger Glocks lend themselves to this sort of thing and I have seen setups where people will have a Glock that can toggle between .40, 10mm, and .357 SIG. When it comes to autos, the real bottle neck is the breechface…the cartridges often need to share a similar rim diameter.

The undeniable king of claiber conversions is the Thompson Contender which is a single-shot but has no equal in terms of versatility and potential caliber changes.

Its an interesting things to ponder….what pistol would give you the highest odds of finding ammunition for it in a crisis? There are people who are quick to point out that if a fella had a 10mm, .38 Super, .40 Smith, or .41 Magnum he could probably have found ammo during the last ‘ammo drought’ when 9mm, .45 ACP, and .357 couldn’t be had for love nor money.

There is a little merit to that. Problem is, if the caliber is obscure enough that people leave in on the shelf during a crisis then it is probably obscure enough that most stores won’t have any of it in the first place. Sure, your local Cabela’s will probably carry .38 Super but the local KwikeeMart probably won’t…so you’re back to square one.

What would be the most common calibers to find for your pistol in a world gone mad(der)? For the autos, I’d think a man with a 9mm would have an easier time of it than a .45 ACP devotee or .40 S&W fan. In revolvers, I’d say the man with a .357 would do pretty well for himself.These are, of course, centerfire cartridges. Probably the most ubiquitous ammo will be .22 LR and having a couple pistols and rifles chambered in that cartridge would be a paramount idea. And, yeah, .22 Mag or .17 Whatever is a zippy little mofo but you’ll find a hundred or more rounds of .22 for every round of any other rimfire you come across.

Of course, some folks figure any cartridge will work if you stockpile enough ammo for it. Well, yeah, that’ll work….if you’re never away from your supply, if your supply remains safe and secure, if you’re supply can last you for your anticipated lifetime, if if if…..

This, in a roundabout way, gets us back to one of those classic survivalist discussions about ‘cartridges for the end of the world’ or some similar hot-stove-league topic. I settled that argument, for me, years and years ago. I’m confident that, given the chamberings of my pistols and rifles, I’ll not have the worst time trying to find ammo down the road.

I was about to say that someday someone will come out with a modular pistol frame that will enable a broad spectrum of caliber and cartridge swaps. And then it occurred to me that we are probably 90% of the way there with SIG’s 320 model that uses the fire control group (FCG) as the legally-defined firearm, letting you buy all the barrel/frame/slide/mag combinations you want without the hassle of federal paperwork.

Hmm. I should investigate that a bit. I’m sure the aftermarket will be jumping onto that platform and getting us all sorts of barrels and whatnot. Hmmm.

 

Wanna see something cool?

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You guys remember that a few weeks back I bought a like-new Aladdin kero lamp for $25? Well,check this baby out…it is literally new-in-box from about 40+ years ago:

How cool is that? Absolutely brand new and left over from the Reagan years.

And, heres the sad thing: from a pragmatic, practical, and logistical standpoint this is a silly purchase. It’ll run eight hours on one quart of fuel. Thats four nights on a gallon, which means I have about 400 days worth of kero for this thing. Thats 20 5-gallon cans. Those take up a lot of space. And this thing generates heat, which isnt always welcome. And a degree of indoor pollutants. And a fire risk. And some delicate spare parts (mantle, chimney). Whereas a good 12v. LED light will, as I’ve proven, run 21 nights (at least) on one charge, poses no fire risk, generates several times the light, no heat, can be recharged from multiple sources (generator, car, solar, bike generator, etc.) and doesn’t require delicate spare parts. From a practical standpoint, this item makes absolutely no sense in my preparedness TOE. Except…I like them. I like their charm, warmth, good looks, and general homey-ness. But, make no mistake, the primary emergency lighting ain’t these. But…on a cold winter night, when youre sitting by the window watching the wind howl and blow the snow around, its a good deal more comforting than the harsh LED lamps.

Oh…price? $89 plus shipping. Couldn’t resist.

Article -In Remote Alaska, Meal Planning Is Everything

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That first summer in the Arctic, Adam, who had already spent several summer seasons in Bettles, arrived a few weeks before me and told me that I had to go to the grocery store in Fairbanks and buy as much food as possible. What he really meant was, buy as much food as you can push in a grocery cart back to your hotel, repackage it into boxes, then get it all into a taxi to the small Alaska Bush plane office, and pay for it as freight on the flight.

What Adam hadn’t shared — but what quickly would become second nature to me — is that in the tiny town, we would develop our own rituals around eating. Yes, things like fresh strawberries would be hard to come by, but together we’d craft innovative solutions to tasks more easily accomplished in less remote places. We’d communally grow vegetables with our neighbors. We’d order food from thousands of miles away, weeks ahead of time. And we would hardly ever be eating alone.

An interesting read on what you have to deal with when the nearest Trader Joe’s, HEB, or Safeway is hundreds (or thousands) of miles away.

Have you actually done menu planning for The End Of The World? I mean, I know you’ve got all sorts of stored food, but have you actually thought about what a particular meal, say breakfast, would look like? I have. For me, breakfast looks like the following:

  • Oatmeal, Cream of What, Cornmeal porridge
  • Scrambled eggs
  • Hash browns
  • Corned beef hash
  • Pork chops
  • Orange drink
  • Biscuits
  • Strawberries, blueberries, bananas
  • Instant milk

Thats actually a better breakfast than what I eat now. See, it isn’t enough to just throw back an assortment of storage food. You have to give some thought to what sort of menus youre going to be looking at. How many different breakfasts can you do? Lunches? Sinners? Snacks?

For some ideas, I have always recommended this website and it’s very impressive list of ‘storage food recipes’: http://safelygatheredin2.blogspot.com/2008/11/alphabetical-recipe-list.html

But the important thing to take away from the article listed above is that you have to plan out what your meals will be if you have any hope of efficiently and economically getting your food storage squared away. Go plan a weeks worth of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. How many ingredients ‘cross over’ to other meals? Figure it out, get the most variety and utility from the least amount of items. Its a good exercise.

Rotating and reminiscing

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One of the cool things about being a survivalist (or, at least, a moderately prepared survivalist) is that your stockpiles become snapshots of the economy in different periods of time. For example, today I rotated out some canned tomatoes. Tomatoes,  because of their high acidity, need to be rotated fairly frequently….a couple years is about all I’m willing to trust in a metal can (even lined ones). In glass jars is a different story, but for cans….a couple years, tops.

So, I headed up to WinCo, cornered the grocery manager, and asked him to order me up a few cases of my preferred tomatoes. As I was swapping them out with the previously stored ones, I could not help but notice:

As you can see from the image, these were purchased at CostCo in 2020. $5.99 for eight cans. Thats $6 divided by eight. That comes out to seventy-five cents per can. Todays cost at WinCo? 66% more per can. Must be that Putinflation that Dopey Joe keeps deflecting to.

Get used to it.

And, while I was at Winco, I checked for remaindered meat. WinCo doesn’t discount as much as Albertson’s used to, but they will discount by 30% when meats are approaching their ‘use by’ date. Me, I’m a big fan of animal protein, so I cleaned ’em out on small breakfast-type steaks. These’ll get vacuum sealed and put away in the deep freeze for use in the coming economic disaster….which means I’ll probably be eating them next month.

Canning deal

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A little inventory, math, and inventory math told me that while I’m pretty well positioned on canning lids, it might be a good idea to lay in a few more jars. A couple dozen cases of 12, at least. So, since Saturday is my somewhat-usual shopping day I decided to hit a few places around town and find the cheapest price on cases of pint jars. I stopped after my second attempt:

Uhm…okay. I’ll take them all. So that works out to about $0.83 for one new pint jar, ring, and lid. I’m good with that.

I like the pint jars for their single-serving proportions. I do keep quarts around, of course, but the majority of the jars I have are pints.

I’m sure there are other brands out there but the stakes are too high for me to tkae my chances on Johnny-come-lately brands or, worse, made in China stuff. Ball and Kerr, in that order. Nothing else.

So I managed to put a pretty good chunk of my jar needs into the green. Thats good. I need to get down in the basement and do a thorough inventory of jars, lids, and bands. They are something I usually don’t track because a simple look at the shelves tells me there’s “a lot” of them, but I suppose I should be more precise.

Anyway, it seemed like a good deal and that it might not be a bad idea to take advantage of it. So..I did.

Lego guns

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Someone asked me in email about gunsmithing/armorer courses. I thought about it a minute and realized that, for me, while I know enough to (usually) get a gun apart, back together, and diagnose problems, I try to avoid the issue altogether by selecting guns that don’t usually require ‘gunsmithing’.

If the end of the world happens to occur, the odds are pretty good that taking your malfunctioning thundertoy to the services of a competent gunsmith will not be an option. So, whats a survivalist to do? Well, the most obvious thing is – don’t break your gun. Some guns are more prone to breakage than others. But since we can’t always be confident our gun won’t break, the next reasonable step is to have a gun that, if it does break, does not require gunsmithing but rather a simple parts swap. For that, two guns spring to mind – the typical survivalist pairing of a Glock and an AR. (Yes, an AK wins on durability, but when it does break youre going to need a welder, rivets, a mill, or other specialized treatments.)

Starting with the AR, it’s hard to think of any other semiautomatic non-pistol-caliber carbine that doesn’t require the services of a full-service gunsmith to tweak, maintain, or repair (note I am not talking about making a match-grade target AR..I’m talking about just a rack-grade hand-it-to-a-grunt level of AR.). FAL, G3, AK, whatever…most of the common ‘battle rifles/carbines’ require some degree of professional skill to swap a barrel, or fit internal parts that need replacing. The AR is pretty much plug-n-play. I suppose the metric to be used is ‘can I repair this without needing a lathe or a milling machine’? Bad barrel on the AR? Swap the upper or change out the barrel. Broken sear or somesuch? Trigger group parts drop in. There seems to be, in my experience, very little, if anything, that requires hand-fitting or machining to be done to keep, or return, an AR to functionality.

Even more so with the Glock. If you’re building some type of uber Glock for competition, maybe theres things you want to polish or hand-fit. But for running around during a crisis I don’t believe theres a single part on the Glock that wont just drop in and function. To be fair, virtually every modern polymer gun is like that, though. Glock seems to have gotten it right first, though. The antithesis of this would be the 1911 which, with modern machining specs, has improved in terms of drop-in parts but I would bet you money that you could take a stripped frame, order a buttload of Wilson parts from Brownells, put it all together, and it won’t run because something, somewhere needs a bit of stoning or metalwork. Not so with the Glock.

Typical Glock repair kit

Typical 1911 repair kit

So, for me, my need for learning advanced gunsmithing skills is obviated a bit by selecting guns that, broadly, don’t require them…or require so little of them, skillwise, that it isn’t a challenge (or expense) to develop those skills and acquire the tools.

Shotguns? A bit trickier, but I have taken apart a lot of Mossberg 500-series and they’re pretty plug-n-play as well. Not as much as an AR, but Id say they are the least ‘skill intensive’ shotgun in terms of repairs.

When you get into things like hunting/’sniper’ rifles, all bets are off. The Savage series of rifles are probably the easiest to deal with since you can headspace and remove/install barrels with simple tools and not need a mill/lathe operation.

By the by, even if youre not a tinfoil-hat-type like yours truly, there are still some scenarios where you won’t have gunsmithing as an option even without bombs falling and boogaloos in the street.

Under a Biden administration, for example, your AR or FAL becomes a ‘Turn them all in‘ sort of item and then your option of taking it to a gunsmith is about as viable as taking your unregistered machinegun in for a tune up. You’re either stuck with a broken gun, have to find an ‘underground’ gunsmith, or DIY. And DIY is a lot easier with a Lego gun.

Whatever you get for that upcoming uncertain future, keep in mind how easy (or not) it will be to repair and maintain. For now, I’d say the Glock and AR kinda sit at the top.

The utility of vacuum sealers

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Fella I know, who is getting started in the realm of preparedness had his birthday earlier this month.  I got him what I think is one of the best gifts you can get a fellow survivalist: a vacuum sealer. For the record, the best gift you can probably get for a survivalist is a huge chunk of land in the middle of nowhere. For this survivalist, the best gift you can get is a slightly drunk and mildly self-esteem-challenged Jennifer Lawrence. Or, if you’re on a budget, her body double.

Thing is, most people have a very narrow view of what a vacuum sealer is good for. In fact, the gift was met with a ‘my freezer is already full’ response. A lot of folks, in my experience, don’t think creatively about the uses for one of these things that have nothing to do with food. So, lemme mention a few of the non-food things I do with mine and maybe it’ll send you down a new road of thought in regard to using yours. (Or getting one.)

  •  Compressing high-loft items of clothing so they take up less space in a pack
  • Preventing powdered items from clumping – The cleanser that comes in the cardboard cans? I put each can into a bag and vaccuum seal it so that after years of sitting on the shelf it hasn’t drawn moisture and caked into a rock-like consistency.
  • Water bottles that get left in the vehicle in the winter are vacuum sealed in a bag so if the plastic bottle does explode from freezing (which almost never happens) any leakage is contained. And the water is still potable.
  • All the fire-starting materials in my hunting/bushwhacking packs are vacuum sealed to keep them dry, clean, and in one place.
  • Small first aid items get vacuum sealed for rather obvious reasons.
  • Critical documents are vacuum sealed so they are protected from moisture, wet, etc. For example, my birth certificate(s) and passport(s) are sealed up and sitting in the safe. (Uhm..yeah…plural….I know a guy…)
  • In the Pelican case I keep in the winter vehicle kit there is an an entire change of clothes that has been vacuum sealed to consere space and keep the clothing clean and dry so that in an emergency it’s ready to use.
  • Bulk first aid gear that would normally take up space gets vacuum sealed to allow me to pack more of it in a smaller space, as well as to protect it.
  • Have a dog? Dog food MRE’s. Phydeaux’s kibble and treats packed into individual servings.
  • Toilet paper that you keep in the truck or at the cabin. If you’re putting together a bugout bin or kit you really, really wanna make sure the TP is protected.
  • Medications in tablet form. Most pills come in plastic bottles that offer good protection, but a lot of stuff comes in blister packs and although you’d think those foil and plastic sheets would offer good protection…not always. So, into the sealer they go. Try to keep stuff in original packaging when you do this…last thin you want is a little vacuum sealed bag of unidentified pills laying around with nothing to tell you what they are or how much to take. And the cops really get curious when large quantities of pills are loose in a plastic bag.
  • Bars of soap. Bar soap seems to ossify over time. Seal ’em up so theyre still useful years later.
  • Road flares. Seal ’em up, wrap in cardboard to protect the integrity of the plastic bag, and tuck ’em away in your vehicle. Wet flares are the literal damp squib at a rescue.
  • Small electronics that absolutely need to be protected. Handheld radios get vacuum sealed with dessicant and then tucked away in a protective case of some kind. Suspenders and a belt, perhaps… but its an extra step that costs virtually nothing and makes sure that you have communications when you really, really need it. And thats worth pretty much anything.
  • Batteries. Water and batteries do not mix..at least, not in a good way. I store batteries in plastic tubs but I also vacuum seal the large CostCo-sized bulk packs of batteries.

The list goes on, but I think you get the idea. And, yeah, they are also handy for food as well. If you haven’t bought one already, do yourself a favor and don’t cheap out. Yeah, there are some models that are $50-$75. Skip them. This is not the kind of item you want to cut corners on. Get the Foodsaver brand, not the Cabelas, not the Walmart, not the other brand you’ve never heard of. Get the Foodsaver branded rolls of material as well. Plan on spending about $200. I absolutely promise you that it will be the best $200 you can spend on preparedness gear. Do it.

 

Shelf Reliance

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Food rotation is one of those important things to keep in mind when storing food. Sure, a 15-gallon drum of rice will last virtually forever (if my Y2k stash is anything to go by), but it’s probably a good idea to rotate through whatever you store every few years.

When it comes to canned goods, there are zillions of can ‘rotation shelves’, ‘organizer shelves’, and other can distributors. I had a can organizer that I bought years ago when they were up at CostCo. It has served well for a number of years but, as of late, I’ve kinda ramped up the inventory of canned goods. This means I need to have  more cans positioned so that the oldest ones get used up first. So, it was time to expand on the modular can organizer.

First step, clear off a run of shelving:

Next step is to unbox these guys:

Grab a couple cans off the shelf to make sure the spacing is correct, and start assembling. The whole thing snaps together like Lego so…no muss, no fuss.

Finish assembly, slide into shelf, and start adding cans…oldest go in first:

I then ran a second row across the shelf next to it, but since it’s pretty much identical to this one there’s no point in documenting that.

Now, yeah, you can buy some cheaper units. And, if your even halfway talented with a saw and a hammer you can fab up something on your own. However, what I was after was modularity.This unit can be configured for variable width to accommodate different size cans, they can be linked together to form one long continuous run, and, very conveniently, they seamlessly integrated with the existing unit I had which was about 15 years old. So…very backwards compatible, which is nice.

You can order of Amazon if you’re so inclined.

Given how much I’m spending these days on beefing(!) up the food storage, the last thing I need is to waste money on cans of food getting shoved into a dark corner, being discovered years later, and having to be discarded because they should have been used up years earlier.

How’s your short- to mid-term food storage coming along? I’m feeling pretty good with what I have so far. I need to fine tune a few ‘luxury’ items I want but….starve to death? Not a chance. However, for practicality’s sake, it would be nice to take about half of this and move it to the Beta Site.