Yes, all these mags ain’t cheap when you add them up..but….I’m killing it today on the AirBNB IPO, so…thats nice.
Tag Archives: stockpiling
To sleep, perchance to profit
So although I have what actually could be construed as ‘enough’ magazines for my forseeable use, I want to be in a position to take advantage of any future ban by having extras for sale/trade*. Problem is, I’m not the only one with that idea. As a result, when my primary vendor gets stuff in stock, it moves fast. And then, I discovered something……..
It appears that, on weekdays, my vendor updates their website at several points throughout the day. As those updates hit the website, people pounce and inventory drops to zero in minutes. But…not at 3:30am. It appears that they do inventory updates in the wee hours of the morning. As a result, I’ve taken to sleeping with my phone laying on the bed next to me, with the browser opened to the product page I want, and I wake up a couple times in the middle of the night, refresh the page, and…surprise….the items I want are in stock. And then I scoop it all up for little ol’ me. What is it I’m looking for? Well, I’ve covered myself with about 500 Glock Pmags but I want more AR Pmags and AR10 Pmags.
Drawback is that I’m not exactly getting a solid nights worth of sleep, but on the bright side I’m getting a monstrous stockpile of magazines.
*= “But..but..what if they make the magazines illegal or regulated? Then you won’t be able to sell them?” Of course I’ll be able to sell them, I just won’t be able to sell them legally.
The TP hoarding returns
I got a text message yesterday from someone I know who wanted to let me know that the local CostCo was out of paper products.
:::dramatic music::::
Apparently the TP hoarding cycle has begun anew. I find that interesting because didnt everyone buy a lifetime supply of TP back in March? I’m guessing the current wave is from people who didn’t hoard in March, got left out, and are now stacking it in their basements going “Remember when we couldn’t find any in March? Well, not this time!”
I’ve heard this music before, ain’t gonna dance to it.
I’ve been (mostly) diligently shopping and laying back stuff since March. Other than my current magazine buying frenzy, I’m not seeing a need for me to do anything differently. Hopefully you don’t either.
Hows that magazine buying thing going, you may ask? FedEx just dropped another case of Magpul Glock mags at the door so….pretty well, actually.
Lucky
So as you know, the Preponomicon has a list of everything I’ve deemed worth keeping track of…mostly consumables – food, ammo, cleaning supplies, toiletries, etc. It lists what I have as well as what i need. So, literally the easiest thing for me to do is go down my grocery list of things to stockpile, order them up for pickup on WalMarts website, and just get it all done at once. So I did that. Scheduled a time to go there and pick it up and I got an email a few hours later saying, sorry, due to [whatever reason] they had to cancel the order but I could try reordering for a different day…and by the way here’s an online coupon for the inconvenience. Nice. So, tomorrow I’m picking up a stash of canned vegetables, coffee, and a few other things and when it’s all done I’ll have saved 50%. Lucky.
Say what you will about WalMart, it is pretty convenient for my preparedness needs. If I want to spend, say, $50 on items that are needed I can just run down my list, add it all to cart, and head down there to pick it up as they carry it out to my vehicle. No muss, no fuss.
What with this endless ‘second wave’ or ‘surge’ of Kung Flu cases (although, I wonder, are they really surging? Because I can very clearly see the definition of ‘new cases’ being manipulated to suit the political needs of whomever dispenses the information) it seems that the panic buying of earler this year may come back in fits and starts. Makes no difference to me, I’ve always tried to keep my house stocked like its the end of the world.
So, a thumbs up for simply opening up an Excel spreadsheet on one monitor, and a browser tab for WalMart grocery on the other monitor. It literally makes stockpiling as easy as ordering a pizza. Which reminds me, frozen pizza was a scarce item during the earlier panic buying…gotta add that to the list.
Bigfoot riding a unicorn
I don’t know about you, but at my local CostCo this is a sight that is rather rare:
A five-pack of Clorox bleach wipes. They are, apparently, some sort of magical talisman that keeps the Kung Flu at bay. Or, at least, thats what one might reasonably suspect from the way these things are snapped up within moments of hitting the floor. Other than their rather convenient disposable nature, they don’t do anything a bucket of water/bleach and a rag won’t do. However, I do track their availability everytime I am at CostCo because I’m curious to see what is and is not flying off the shelves as people get the hoarding bug again. oh, and of course these were marked as one-to-a-customer.
What was I at CostCo for? I needed to pick up another 50# of rice. I have about five or six large gallon pickle jars on the shelf that I keep my rice in. They sit on the shelf in the kitchen and it gets used up in the course of things. When I get down to the last jar, I pull one of the Gamma Seal-ed buckets from storage and refill them all. Then it’s time to refill the bucket. So…a couple bags of rice. Which, by the way, do not appear to have been depredated yet.
And one final thing about COstCo before I drop the subject entirely – it isn’t even Halloween yet and there are freakin’ Christmas items out for purchase. What the hell, man?
FIFO
One of my guilty pleasures is that the local restaurant supply place sells frozen dumplings by the case. I toss em, frozen solid, into my steamer and in 15 minutes I have delicious, hot, Chinese(ish) dumplings. No muss, no fuss. Splash some tamari soy sauce on ’em and eat. About as labor-unintensive a meal as you can get.
Except, when I opened the cupboard I found my bottle of soy sauce with but a few dribbles in it. Solution? Trek to the basement, locate the five other bottles on the shelf, pull out the one with the oldest date, return to the kitchen, make a note to purchase more on my next grocery trip, and then have dinner.
I went to Wallywolrd the other day, picked up another couple bottles, wrote the purchase date on them with a Sharpie, and stuck ’em back in storage.
Thats what food rotation looks like. Nothing magical, mysterious, or tinfoil-hat about it. It’s that easy. And it is bloody convenient to not have to halt your meal plans because you need to run to the grocery for something. And it’s especially convenient to not have to run to the grocery when the streets are littered with bodies of the BLM/Antifa/ProudBoy/redneck battles that, I am told, we are all heading for as the looming second Civil War approaches. (Yeah, thats sarcasm….I’m wrong on a lot of things but I’m willing to bet that this time next year the lights are on, the water is running, the shelves are stocked, and it’s not Bosnia out there.)
In other interesting news, when I was at CostCo the other day I noticed that the limits had been removed from some items (notably the torpedo-shaped “chubs” of ground beef I’ve been purchasing) and reinstituted on others (toilet paper). Doesn’t really matter to me, though…I’ve gotten into the habit of buying certain items every weekend, religiously, so a limit of ‘one per trip’ doesn’t slow my roll. Matter of fact, I may have to dial it back a bit because the freezer is way full. Buying another freezer might make sense but for my household, one freezer full of meat is plenty for a good long while. Also, it seems that freezers are a bit hard to come by in some parts these days. Restless natives…….
Another weekend, another fifty bucks
It’s the weekend, therefore it is time for me to spend another fifty bucks on getting the Preponomicon into the green. And, as more and more things are approaching the 100% level, it’s become greener and greener on that list. Today I rang the bell on dental floss, iced tea mix, spaghetti sauce, cleanser, and toothbrushes. Boring stuff, right? Well, yea, actually…it is. Seems unlikely that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina there were people sitting on the roof of their house saying “Thank science you had all that dental floss!”. But, it’s those mundane and boring things that often add to the quality of life. And, really, if the world has gone downhill badly enough that you need to get into your stockpile of emergency dental floss then it’s also bad enough that the last thing you need is dental problems. Plus, dental floss grows wild out here. That crap is everywhere.
So, the stockpiling continues… It’s worth pointing out that the stuff I’m stockpiling, in terms of foodstuffs, is all short- to -mid-term foods. The long-term stuff, like the #10 cans of freeze drieds, were purchased years ago and have been securely packaged and laid back for the Deep Sleep. Pretty much everything I’m stockpiling now is day-to-day stuff that I want to have a large enough quantity of so that if I’m unable to resupply for any reason I can go a long time before having to explore less attractive options.
The stockpiling has progressed to the point that of the 85 items (thus far) on the list, 60 of them are at 90% or better. There are 18 items below 50%. All in all….progress.
By the by, what goes on and off that list changes over time. Some stuff just doesn’t need to be kept ‘live’ in terms of updates to quantity. Stuff is always changing. One week I might find something and think it definitely needs to be added to the mix, and the next week I might determine that a item is superfluous and remove it. Adaptability.
Cruising through CostCo doesn’t seem to indicate any ‘second wave’ of panic buying yet. Yet. However, some items, like bleach wipes, are still a no-show whereas items that had previously vanished, like TP and rice, are plentiful. I’ve got plenty of both, so I can be a detached observer.
Other than dedicating about fifty bucks a weekend towards preps, I’m being rather tight-fisted with the greenbacks these days. There is just too much uncertainty in the air for me to feel comfortable letting go of the Ultimate Multitool (which is cash). Between a pandemic-ravaged economy and political turmoil, there is less certainty that things will ‘be okay’ fiscally and that naturally makes a fella wanna circle the financial wagons. So…no impulse buying, put the vacation on hold, drive the same car for another year, skip the new iPhone, and make the most of what you’ve got.
No one knows with certainty what the future is going to bring. That’s kinda obvious. But there are times when we’re comfortable with that uncertainty (“might rain, might not”) and there’s times we’re very uncomfortable with it (“Might lose my job today, might not…better hold off on the Harley”). Right now, it’s the latter kind of uncertainty…the kind with big consequences. For me, anyway. But, that’s cool because me is the person I’m most concerned about in all this.
So…progress. More food on the shelves, supplies in the bins, money in the bank, silver in the safe, and peace in the mind.
Shelf Reliance
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.
Incremental progress
A few weeks back, I got a tad more religion in terms of keeping an up-to-date list of what I have and, more importantly, what I needed. It’s settled into a routine now where, every weekend, I print out my most up-to-date version of the Preponomicon and head off to Costco or Wallyworld. I tell myself “I’m not gonna spend more than $XX today” and I try to stick to that. Thus far…meh…I do a fair amount of sticking to the amount I promised myself I’d spend, but, more importantly, I am always better provisioned after each trip.
Food was, of course, the biggest priority. Can’t repel the zombie hordes if youre weak from hunger, right? And while the food isn’t at 100%, it is mostly all in the green levels so I am comfortable moving a little bit into the other categories. Most notable, cleaning and hygiene.
Don’t let The Walking Dead fool you… wear the same sweat-stained shirt for days on end in the summer, while getting coated in dirt, grime, and bodily fluids, and take a hot shower once a week with laundry done even less frequently…. and you’re headed for major problems. Eat from filthy stained tableware, plates, or cookware and you’re gonna have a bad day. Add the threat of pandemic into the mix and now you relly have a reason to try and keep yourself and your environment reasonably clean. You don’t have to be fastidiously OCD clean, but try to keep yourself and your living conditions as clean as if you had a hot date coming over tonight.
So, what’s sitting on the wire shelving in large quantity? Pine Sol, Simple Green, Lysol, Clorox (which needs to be rotated every so often), sponges, bleach wipes, paper towels, brillo, laundry soap, dish soap, disinfectant, shower soap, shampoo, floss, toothpaste, toothbrushes (shouldn’t that really be teethbrushes?), mouthwash, TP, Q-tips, Kleenex, deodorant, lip balm, and a buncha other goodies. After a long day of hanging looters, quelling riots, and rescuing morally-challenged coeds from Aryan blood gangs wouldn’t you want to look and smell nice for the celebratory barbecue later that evening? Truth is, though, decent hygiene and sanitation prevents a whole lot of badness that you would prefer to avoid during a crisis. And it’s a lot easier to stay somewhat clean when you have the necessary resources. Plus, hey, in times of economic uncertainty when your paycheck is unexpectedly cutoff it’s kinda nice to know you don’t have to spend money on any of those things for over a year.
Just one more thing to ‘get into the green’ levels on the list. But, gotta admit, when i run out of something in my day-to-day usage it’s darn convenient to just trot downstairs and pull some extra off the shelf and get back to business.
The shopping continues
Not much change going on here. I’m still working my way down the Preponomicon, bringing up the various levels of items that I want to keep onhand at all times. Most of which are food. Because I’m doing more food shopping these days I am more observant of conditions at various retail food outlets. Local grocery stores, for example, are pretty much back to pre-panic stock levels. Walmart, though, surprises me and seems to continuously look like a going-out-of-business sale in their food departments. Oh, fresh vegetables and meats are there, but the boxed/jarred/canned products are hit-n-miss. I would have thought that with WalMarts tremendous logistics capacity they would have no trouble keeping things on the shelf. But, someone pointed out to me that it is quite possible that WalMart is allocating things to larger, more hard-hit markets. Four of the five pallets of pasta destined for Montana may have been rerouted to Denver…or Sacramento..or Chicago. I can see that…seems reasonable.
So I hit two or three other supermarkets to round out the holes in my list. Honestly, I enjoy walking up and down the aisles. I almost never fail to discover products I didn’t know existed. You know, when I first started getting serious about keeping food on hand there were not a lot of options. Nowadays there are tons of ‘retort pouch’-ed products and shelf-stable foods that were only a dream two decades ago.
The more astute and label-checking of you will notice that virtually all of those foods have something in common: salt and fat. It seems like every online discussion of long-term food gets someone chiming in with “Thats way too much sodium!”. May be. But, in the post-apocalypse world you’re gonna be sweating a lot and replacing that salt will be a big deal. (See the middle third of ‘Alas Babylon’.) But , most importantly, it beats starving. You have high blood pressure and are therefore avoiding salt? Ok. I’ll bet that alot of people who have high blood pressure are going to have lower blood pressure after the weight loss and exercise that comes with living through an apocalypse. Not all, but I bet most.
So, I’ve got an updated version of the Preponomicon sitting in my phone and I wander the aisles, like Diogenes with his lamp, looking for an honest bargain. At the moment, all I’m after is to get everything on my list into the green.
And, as I keep telling you guys, the little TEOTWAWKI events will far outnumber the large ones. Job loss, medical emergency, etc, etc, will occur far more frequently than nuclear wars and asteroid collisions. Heck, some of you guys right now are experiencing job loss or reduced hours due to the Current Situation. Which is proving to be more useful…the money in the back or the M855 in the basement? Obviously, we want both but practically we should probably concentrate on the former harder than the latter.
But, as the kids say, you do you and I’ll do me. For me, I’ve already got gobs of guns, ammo, fuel, and that sort of thing on hand. Right now my focus is on the day-to-day stuff and getting cash (or cash-like instruments) tucked away.
