Prepping "MISTAKES".

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Sourdough

"Eleutheromaniac"
Neighbor
HCL Supporter
Joined
Mar 17, 2018
Messages
6,152
Location
In a cabin, on a mountain, in "Wilderness" Alaska.
I went on an instant mashed potato binge, and it was super successful. But I prefer to eat directly out of the pot, which requires plastic spoon. I was unhappy with my existing plastic spoons. So, I ordered a lot of larger "Heavy Duty" soup spoons by two different makers. They are all POOPY.
 
Sourdough said:
I went on an instant mashed potato binge, and it was super successful. But I prefer to eat directly out of the pot, which requires plastic spoon. I was unhappy with my existing plastic spoons. So, I ordered a lot of larger "Heavy Duty" soup spoons by two different makers. They are all POOPY.
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ad more water making them thinner thereby making spoons feel stronger
 
My biggest prepper mistake was a doozy. Most of my Army career focused on being deployed/assigned to Central and South America, the Deep South or on pacific islands where the environment was tropical.

When I retired after 22 years in the military I had grand plans of using my knowledge of jungle survival. I moved into the bayous of the Mississippi delta about 3.5 hours up the river from New Orleans. Lots of elbow room, lots of tasty things to eat like gators, crawfish, deer, fish.

Then Katrina hit. The populations of New Orleans escaped their SHTF, some permanently, some temporary squatters, some passing through to escape their SHTF.

This event showed me the fallacy of living near a population center. I thought I was tucked away secure in the middle of nowhere deep in the bayous. 3.5 hours up river from New Orleans, even if it’s down good forbidding side roads, isn’t far enough away the crowds. Overnight, all that abundant food suddenly had hungry people wanting to harvest it for a meal. I could go on in some detail how this urban flight from SHTF impacted us and the environment, but I think you all can get this.

We re-evaluated what environmental factors best contribute to isolation from the zombie hoards, and figured we would move to the state with the lowest population density in the US, and among the lowest population density of any country on earth. North to Alaska. The good news was that when we sold our swampland, it was more than double what we paid for it a few years earlier. A lot of folks never moved back to New Orleans, and prices stayed high.

That was my biggest prepping mistake, but I am much better off for it. Plus, most things up here taste great with my cajan seasonings. Good thing as I brought a lifetime supply up to Alaska when we moved.
 
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Not paying closer attention to the room where my preps were stored.
A water leak+ varmints wrecked my reloading supplies and at least $300
in food preps, some reading material and my pistol mags.
 
Nice thread- here are my suggestions, based on only a little experience and what I've heard/read

Rotation, rotation, rotation
Don't overdo the stuff that might go off quickly or you don't eat that often normally- it's only a waste of money
Learn how to 'make do' and mend
Think outside the box
Any fool can be cold and uncomfortable
 
Nice thread, have lots of mistakes that I could share, but the one annoyance that we have is in 2 parts.

1) When buying supplies, buy a little and test it before buying a lot of it. We have bought several, long term food items that when we got around to tasting them they were not fit to eat...

2) When you find a prepper tool that after you have tested it, you like it a lot, buy a backup or 2. We have things that we like a lot, and when we try to get replacements they are no longer available (or they have been "improved" by the accountants) it happens to both I and my wife and it seems to be getting worse.
 
Most of my mistakes have been food related. Magpie said it best; rotation, rotation, rotation. There have been some unexpected surprises with foods that didn't last nearly as long as I thought they would.

I have been much more successful with gear. One real lemon I would never buy again is the Zippo combo saw and axe. When I see things that have multiple uses in one piece of gear I am immediately intrigued. The saw is O.K. but I don't think the axe would chop balsa wood. Completely useless.

On another forum we had a recurring thread "Gear you would never buy again". This would be a good place to resurrect that, and include food or other categories of mistakes. Great thread, Sourdough. Thanks for posting.
 
hmmm, this is a hard one for me....as so far....so good. I haven't lost any preps, nothing has expired on me worth more than about $5.

Biggest issue I guess was that I've lost a couple years of construction progress due to high prices. But I'm not sure I can call it a 'mistake', as I was doing things as fast as I could and this is where I was when 2020 caught up with me. If I could have built the other half of my house earlier, I would have.
 
Aerindel said:
hmmm, this is a hard one for me....as so far....so good. I haven't lost any preps, nothing has expired on me worth more than about $5.

Biggest issue I guess was that I've lost a couple years of construction progress due to high prices. But I'm not sure I can call it a 'mistake', as I was doing things as fast as I could and this is where I was when 2020 caught up with me. If I could have built the other half of my house earlier, I would have.
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I had the same pandemic related issues that delay projects and increased cost. Its just a fact that there are only so many projects we can get done each year, particularly with those of us who need to deal with winter. I’ve been on a 6 year “fast track” with my projects, and there was simply no way I could have gotten my impacted projects done earlier.
 
I consider mistakes as an opportunity to learn. I have several mistakes.

I think the biggest one was not properly storing some food items. This happened when I was too busy working and not paying good enough attention. Bugs, rodents, and other things can destroy your preps quickly. Any living thing is looking for something to eat. Ramen noodles will get eaten by some of them! I do have many things in glass jars, sealed buckets and heavy duty plastic bins. The containers can sometimes be more expensive than what is stored in them, so being able to properly store food items can sometimes be a challenge.

I have not been so good always at organization and rotation of foods! Another thing that I have been working on is writing best by dates on with sharpies so that I can better rotate food items. Even when I first purchase some items, it is difficult to know the best by dates, because they are obscured.
 
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Weedygarden said:
Even when I first purchase some items, it is difficult to know the best by dates, because they are obscured.
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This really urinates me off, even with a magnifying glass they are unreadable.
 
Sourdough said:
This really urinates me off, even with a magnifying glass they are unreadable.
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I do use a magnifying glass to see somethings, but the best by date can sometimes be printed on the raised rings around the lid or end of cans. A magnifying glass does not good with that. I end up sometimes making my best guess. If I buy a flat of something, they usually all have the same date. I look and label the ones I can read, and use that date for the ones I cannot read.
 
Sourdough said:
This really urinates me off, even with a magnifying glass they are unreadable.
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Tootsie said:
My eyes struggle with a magnifying glass, too. Kids taught me a handy tip. With my iPad, I take a picture and can enlarge it beautifully. I did that to see fine jewelry engraving and it worked well.
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I had that too when I reordered my preps. I had to use my engraver's glasses on most of it. next time, there will be a fat boy sharpie and a date on both ends of the can involved.
For the record, I just ate four year old fruit cocktail. I feel fine.
 
Magus said:
I had that too when I reordered my preps. I had to use my engraver's glasses on most of it. next time, there will be a fat boy sharpie and a date on both ends of the can involved.
For the record, I just ate four year old fruit cocktail. I feel fine.
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I keep a sharpie right in the pantry. As things go in date gets written on the front.
 
I was playing guitar last night and my 1960s era tube amp blew a fuse. I have back up tubes and speakers for this amp, and a drawer full of fuses that I have collected over the years, but none of those fuses were 1A 250V. Thankfully I have other amps. Amazon has 12 of those fuses on the way.
 
Spending 30 years on a prepper property in the desert only to realize that in the end life would be harder to sustain than was comfortable if the world took a turn. Fortunately the fella that bought it hadn't thought that far ahead. Life in western Oregon is way easier.
 
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