Prepping vs Hoarding

"Hoarder" my hind leg...... I am a PACKRAT! Got the habit from my parents. What some call junk, often proves of great use eventually......

 

im with you SW, when i get rid of something,
theres nothin of it left to reuse
except as salvage scrap i can sell

 

Witch Doctor, it sounds as if that Prepper needs a touch of OCD to his Prepping!!! A lil organizing with a lil OPSEC would have his Preps stored properly out of sight, & out of visitor's minds. Cuz if you have buckets of stuff lining the walls of your home, then yer Prepping is merely the accumulation of Prep Material an nothing more!!! A Proper Prepper also Stores the materials safely!!!

I have lots of food, several guns, & plenty of ammo, but you'll never see it just visiting my home. Hell you could spend the night & not see most of it. The home canned food is in its shelves in the basement as well as the big Freezer. I built a rather stout dang door & frame to the basement as well. It doubles as a tornado shelter. My guns, well feel free to look in my closet, you won't see any. Very few guns are visible anywheres in my home. The gunrack is built into the wall, unfindable. Ammo however is in multiple ammo cans in my closet, as well as a nice diamond-plate chest truckbox in basement. Basement also has a Dehumidifier. Other preps are where they belong, in closets & other storage. NOT cluttering the home. Not in obvious sight for all to see. If yer gonna put buckets in living room, quit having visitors, ruins ALL opsec that way.

*hops off the soapbox*

 

was thinking the other day about building a gun cabinet inside a wall
so its invisible and hidden from any outsiders
walls are def thick enuff to hold it and lord knows theres lots of dead unused space in there

 

Helped a buddy of mine build a gun safe into a wall. Basically lined a closet with plywood then lined it with steel plating (1/4") and welded the seams. Built wooden shelving and racks inside. Looked like a closet til you opened the steel exterior door.

 

Prepping used to be a way of life for our forefathers/mothers. Our meat room had cured hams, shoulders, and bacon about year round. We dried and canned everything in our garden and fields for the winter's cold. We kept enough seed for the next year's crops and garden and there were no hybrid seeds either. Our chickens, cows, fish and wild game were our protein sources that we canned when ever possible. We still prep that way quite a bit but with a much longer expectancy of storage. The time will come when if you do not have it you cannot get it. Gramps had a saying: the creek never runs so full that it does not run dry. We are getting to a "dry" season it appears and we are prepping accordingly. Wish I had more but the money supply presents a new problem. We have had to adapt our approach to bolstering our supplies.

 

The thing hinges on whether the busybody is right or not. Somepeople think you can child-proof a house. It can't be done, and wrapping them in cotton doesn't help them, it just means they haven't learned not to touch hot stoves.

Good points about having a safe household, and I always stress this to my family whenever I see an unsafe condition, but bottom line the idea that he should get rid of his extra supplies and "live like a normal person" tips me off that the sister is an idiot.

 

Having spent a great deal of time with my Grandmother, I learned a few things about the Great Depression! I learned that if you have things you may not need, someone else may! And they may have things which you need that you don't have!
I learned a lot from her!

 

Both my Mother and Grandmother lived through the Great Depression and WWII. My grandmother had chickens, ducks, geese and rabbits. She also had dirt to grow food. When I grew up; the basement still had shelves where canned food was stored.
When they talked about hoarders it always implied the hoarder was doing something "wrong" as compared to today's implication of a pathological compulsion. Everyone prepped; yet, to them hoarding was "wrong."

 

This is another case of hanging a negative tag on something they disagree with to disparage it. If you have ever been in a hoarders house they keep everything including garbage. You can barley walk around. There is a huge difference between having usable items and the term hoarding in its current common usage meaning.

 

Depends on how much of a busybody she is. These days anyone can report someone to child protective services.

I would advise your family member to find some way to keep the preps out of sight of visitors and away from the child, and make the busybody think they were gotten rid of.

 

If you have dead cats amongst your "preps" chances are you are a hoarder not a prepper.

 

Just relocated the upstairs preps to the basement and found that mice had gotten into two gallon jars of rice. I use plastic milk crates to hold 3-4 gallon jars plus smaller containers. Had 28#s of salt to add and a few other things. Got the old Short Wave, CB base, and some hand helds packed into an EMP box finally. Guess I am bordering on becoming a hoarder as will be adding another 200#s of wheat this week. Whachatink?

 

Dunno, are you saving the mice? LoL

 

Are they glass jars? if so how did the mice get in?

 

Super rats escaped from the lab???

They were probably plastic jars....rodents will chew through plastic but they will not get through glass jars unless the lid is wide enough and the lids are not made of durable metal. Usually the size, shape and lack of purchase of a glass jar will not enable a rodent to bite through or fracture the glass container. There are two possible exceptions....the glass jars are high enough on a shelf that they have accidentally (or deliberately) been pushed a jar off a shelf...and gravity has done the jar opening for them....or the cunning rat has used a hammer!!! ; )

 

My thoughts exactly but wanted to make sure...

 

That,or you really love authentic Chinese cuisine.
Matt

 

"authentic cuisine"--LOL. The jars are glass but the lids were plastic. They also chewed into a few cartons of shelf stable milk. Have everything in containers now that they will not get into. An old chicken farmer gave me about a dozen cases of new gallon glass jars so I have been using them-cannot find the 5" lids needed so have had to improvise. The "office" looks vacant w/o all that stuff stacked around. Even found my spare mask filters that had been looking for the last year--lol. Now if I can find the other six I will be a happy camper. My wife is smiling at me again--picked up a mesh cabbage bag full of containers of all sizes and stacked the cake/popcorn tins on top of the new shelfs. Got all the ammo boxes in one place so she will not stump her toe again--that is when the fight started--lol.