Is ,or has, anyone used their preps in a full- on way?

[jansman]

Hi folks. As many of you will know, I ain’t a well man. Two months ago I took ill and work has finished. So that was a huge hit on our income. In fairness,at our age,whilst not rich,we dont consider ourselves as poverty stricken either. Anyhow,Mrs J keeps an old fashioned ledger of ALL our outgoings and incomes. She also drew up the Emergency Version! We have always done this when such things as redundancy etc. have kicked in.

Our other move,or should I say,her move , was to hit our preps. Big time. Now one thing I observe,is that us preppers concentrate upon building the preps,and rarely using them. This time we went into usage! For the last 5 weeks of the 8 of my illness we have used the stored foods,cleaning materials,pet foods, hygiene products etc. One of the few things we purchased was milk. It’s something I developed a taste for! Yesterday was a bird - seed purchase too. Not ‘cos they were needed particularly,but so that there’s enough about,as at anytime,I may be stuck in hospital.

So we used our preps,and big time. In fact they NEEDED using,to move them along,and a lot of rice and pasta was moved to our local food bank. It’s been good,but you know what? Never was our current situation the real reason for stocking consumables as we have! Proves that you never know what an emergency can really be.
That storage has really helped during the last two months,and we have used a fair old bit. In fact,it did exactly what I have planned all these years. We won’t worry about replacing the products in our ‘second’ pantry. Our main kitchen pantry will ( does) hold more than enough food. So does one freezer.The second is off now. When the kids were here,it was a different tale! However,sadly, my wife will eventually be on her own,so that organisation is where we are headed now. Fortunately,my benefits have started to kick in, and we are in a very fortunate place. Mind you,I’d sooner be well and grafting! Truth.

So ,does anybody here have experience of their preps helping them when life has taken a turn that was unexpected?

[Vitamin c]

Yes.
When borris told us to .. Steak safe..stay in ... I did a lidl shop and topped up , went home and apart from exercise walking witch I did early in the morning I stayed in id worked out I could get buy for 3/4months without too much effort longer if things got worse.
Within a week or two the panic buying kicked in and I was smug I was sorted and happly eating my food preps with more than plenty of household stuff to last

At that time nobody knew how bad things would get it is the only time iv ever used my preps and was super glad they were there.
Conclusion
They would of run out I don't grow anything or know how to forage except for the obvious, if their was no return to normal I wold of survived longer than most but then who knows.
We can only do our best

[GeeGee]

Me too in the pandemic and more recently with the events happening here
Same as Jansman been using them up and reducing from two pantries to one ..also reducing freezer dont need two now ..slowly emptying the one in summer house and only using the one in the house I think when kids are at home and even when they leave and produce a tribe of grandkids like mine have you buy in ..just in case for them ..the powdered nido came in very useful in pandemic when daughter number 1 was crying with a few month old baby and no baby milk anywhere it wasn't great but it helped .. but won't be buying as much now
Almost used all of preps ..we had about 10 months worth apart from various bags of pasta which will go to food bank
I'm not sure I want to survive a nuclear blast eating my 500 radioactive tins of beans ..and Mr GG is more on ensure so I'm not cooking as much
Will be doing a prep shop when the last dregs are used in around two weeks and get stuff for around 6 months worth ..see how it pans out ...

[Frnc]

Yes, in the pandemic. I already knew a pandemic was the most likely disaster to hit us after economic collapse, which was inevitable with our government (although I didn't anticipate such high inflation) . I already had face masks and disposable gloves. Plus a bit of a food stock. My food stock is bigger now, but I concentrate on stuff I use regularly so I can rotate it and not waste any. Im the past I bought stuff for preps, and some of it got wasted as it wasn't stuff I really liked or could be bothered cooking.

I use odd things out of my preps now and then.

Like you I am using up some of my stock before I end up wasting some due to having too much.

I had to change diet due to kidney stones, so will probably be giving away most of my Sainsbury's instant mash and all of my baked beans.

Hopefully one day I will feel up to going camping by bicycle, so some of my bugout gear will get used/tested. But first I need to try staying in B&Bs on a small bike tour.

I blew all of my available money last year, mostly on getting one side of the roof re-done. Also new boiler, shower, kitchen sink, and a few other repairs. So now I need to build up my available cash. Hopefully there won't be any more big jobs. I want to get some of the house re-painted and maybe a new carpet for the stairs/landing.

[korolev]

Like others, at the start of the pandemic I was dipping in to the food, toiletries and cleaning stocks to avoid supermarkets as much as possible.

More than physical stuff though, is the mindset of going into "prepper mode". From day one I was scouring the web for alternative sources of food/household products; I found a catering supplier who normally delivered to hotels that I could get some larger tins of beans/vegs from and another that I got a couple of packs of toilet rolls and 5l bottles of liquid soap. All the while there were people on Facebook (yeah, I know, nest of vipers) whingeing about Tesco not having any bog roll and asking if anyone knew where they could get it.

Best prep though, when the pubs were shut my local put of FB that he had just tapped a new barrel of best and it would go off in a few days, so he was selling it cheap. I was sure glad I had a 5 litre food-grade bottle which he filled for a tenner. Had to drink it that night though

[rik_uk3]

I've never had to but know others who have when they hit hard times.

One prepper friend has lived in Spain for about ten years and when they went into lockdown he relied heavily on his home stock, the lockdown regulations were far tougher than we had in the UK which made getting out to a supermarket harder.

Lot of stuff happened in Spain during covid that you don't hear about.

[diamond lil]

Yes here too. Not because of health issues this time but more lack of space. Moving from a nice big 1930s house into a rabbit hutch. Nowhere to keep anything so we gave the family what we didn't fancy and ate our way though the rest Then got a shock when I eventually hit the shops and found the price rises..

[GillyBee]

Like others, it was a big help when lockdown first hit - especially as we came out of ten days isolation on the day that lockdown occurred so had not been anywhere near any shops anyway. It simply took the stress away since it was quite a while until S London calmed down enough to be able to keep shops stocked for for than 2 minutes.

[grenfell]

Financial preps definitely , other preps to a much lesser degree. . Having food in the house did help to reduce shop visits during the pandemic although frankly we could have managed without in all probability.
On the financial side having a decent stash certainly helped about 18 years ago when my wife's sister had a marriage breakdown and she was effectively homeless. After a time with us we part funded a house for her. Then again about a decade ago having some money put aside helped when I was made redundant twice in six months and had my parents funerals to pay for too.
On a much smaller scale I had stocked up on diesel when it was around £1.30 a litre and used it during the blip in prices when it reached £2 before dropping back , so I've saved a bit there. I did similar with petrol when it was being sold at 99p during the pandemic. Just having an eye on the future really.

[Medusa]

My Granny was a bit of a prepper, although this was quite some time ago so I am not sure the word existed then. She prepped for Grandad's retirement, food, cleaning stuff, new sheets, towels, tea towels etc so that they would not have to worry about spending much money on such things whilst they adjusted to having less money. My Mum was similar and although it is still only two months since we lost her my Dad has needed very little apart from fresh food. He still keeps opening drawers and cupboards to find things stashed and has he says about enough new socks and underwear to last him another couple of years. I still find it funny that Mum laughed at me when she first saw my store room. Dad is not yet ready to go through her drawers and wardrobe but is still giggling about what "treasures" we might yet find. We know there is a whole bedding box of fabric as she was a keen sewer and provided my children and her grandchildren with school costumes, fancy dress outfits and pram and cot sheets. She also kept a diary and expenditure sheets and knew the date of every single important family event going back years, and how much she spent on shopping and other household expenses every single week for years and years.