Prepping for Emergency Prep

My task today was to clean out the left side pantry cabinet in the computer room & fill it with the water bottles that I have. (Previously I kept the bottles out on the table in front of the TV so that Mom could see that we had them; she would get anxious every time they talked about preparing for hurricanes, seeing that we had the bottles of water calmed her down.) The left side cabinet has always been kind of empty; the right side is the bulk storage. (There is a smaller pantry in the family room where we put just a few cans or bottles of items.) We're set with Nutter Butters; we have a 5-week supply for Dad!


Since I am now planning to keep the bottles filled year round I am going to use only the #1 PETE (juice & soda) bottles for drinking water. Since we don't get soda in 2 liter bottles, I will be using cranberry juice bottles; they're 96 ounces (2.8 liters) so they hold more than soda bottles. They're also rectangular so they are more space efficient. The water in the #2 HDPE (milk) milk bottles will be used for dish washing & toilet flushing; they also need to be inspected more often because they are more prone to leak. It is also difficult to get the milk fats thoroughly cleaned out of the bottles, so they're not so hot for storing water.

There are 12 bottles here. Yes, they're numbered.

For the drinking water the bottles should be disinfected with a chlorine solution. I checked Mom's Clorox. It was so old the manufacturing code is no longer being used. Yes, bleach does expire. When I was working on the amphibian monitoring program we had to disinfect our gear when going between watersheds so we wouldn't spread chytrid fungus. We couldn't use bleach more than 6 months old, that's the same for hospitals and other disinfecting uses. For home laundry use just for bleaching a year old is still okay. Bleach breaks down to salt so if you keep it too long it won't do much. I will be picking up new bleach tomorrow.

According to the info on the Clorox site, this bottle was made in 2011 on the 526th day of the year. Right.

State #13 on my Jetsetter Map is Missouri. We went there for our friends' Paul & Kerry's wedding. We landed in Kansas City, where Paul lived, then drove across the state to St. Louis, where Kerry lived, for the wedding. We also drove to Springfield to visit friends who could not make it to the wedding due to medical issues.


Happy Birthday to Randy!