Back to the Basics Archives - A Girl's Prep Guide

If you’re just beginning your journey of preparations for doomsday, emergency survival, or infrastructure collapse, you’ll be shocked to see a year’s supply of freeze dried food or MREs will set you back several thousands of dollars. There has to be a cheaper way. Fortunately, there is: LDS Welfare Home Storage Centers.

About LDS Home Storage Centers

The best single-best resource for stocking your doomsday pantry is your local Latter Day Saints Home Storage Center. (They’re also sometimes called “Welfare Home Storage Centers”).

Here, they sell several canned foods in bulk, most of which have a 30 year shelf life, and for an extremely fair (cheap!) price.

Yes, it’s affiliated with the Mormon Church, but based on my experience shopping at a Home Storage Center, their mission isn’t to convert you. Educating the community on self-sufficiency and emergency preparedness is simply part of their ministry.

My Experience Buying Food in Bulk at a Home Storage Center

I live in a major city that has an LDS Storage Center on the outskirts. Awhile back, I summoned a friend to go with me. I was a little nervous — I didn’t want to get preached to, but what I’d read online made it sound like a fairly straightforward place.

The main entrance to the Home Center here is a casual market of sorts. I walked in, looked around, and didn’t see any #10 cans. I felt the eyes of all of the employees watching me. All I could see was some produce and a few small displays of bread and toothpaste. Confused, I asked the front desk worker where the canned goods were. They were confused for a moment, and finally figured out that I wanted to visit the back room.

A nice man escorted me to a small unassuming back room, gave me a shopping cart and a quick tour – which didn’t take long as it was one room. There were two shelving units with individual cans, and other items were displayed on top of pallets.

It took my friend and I close to an hour to sort through everything, discuss our emergency preparedness strategies, and how to divide our purchases. It would’ve been wise to have a plan ahead of time, but then again, there’s no guarantee of what they will have in stock.

The only other shopper was someone buying goods for a local homeless shelter, explaining it was priced far more reasonably than shopping at Kroger or standard supermarket.

Longevity of LDS Home Storage Canned Goods

The majority of products have a shelf life of 30 years. Others (dried milk, for example) have a shelf life of 10 or 5 years.

doomsday preparations: stocking up on food

Photo Credit: mormonobserver.com

Cost of LDS Home Storage Canned Goods

The prices are VERY reasonable, especially if you’re used to buying cans of Mountain House freeze dried portions at $20 a pop.

The price varies according to the product. When buying in person, you can buy a can at a time or you can buy in bulk and get an entire box (six #10 cans).

Here are a few examples of cost:

Six #10 cans of white rice: $39
Six #10 cans of regular oats: $30
Six #10 cans of dried onions: $50

You’ll be given form to track your purchases that looks like this. It’s a good idea to print and make up a list in advance, but keep in mind your Home Storage Center may not have everything on this list.

(Or click here to view the full order form.)

When to Go

Call before you go, the hours can be tricky! Our LDS Home Storage Center is only open a few days per month — on Tuesdays and the second Saturday. I went on a Tuesday afternoon and it was very quiet. From what the worker told me, Saturdays are a madhouse — that’s the day everyone visits from miles around. Since the order forms are filled out manually, it takes a long while checking out. Plus, they are more likely to run out of some items on Saturdays.

Buying Online

If you don’t live near an LDS Welfare Home Storage Center, you can buy some of their canned goods online. You can only buy in bulk and, in my very limited experience, the selection isn’t as good as in person — but several of these Home Storage Centers are only open a few days per month OR only allow LDS members.

Learn More

The LDS Home Storage Center is a GREAT resource and way to jumpstart emergency preparedness. They also have several additional resources to help guide you into managing long-term food storage, and making sure you have enough, depending on the size of your family. In my experience, they weren’t preachy; they were just kind and very helpful.

Visit the online store or find a Home Storage Welfare Center near you.

Be Prepared: Store Water

It shouldn’t take threat of a hurricane or blizzard for you to run out to the store and stock up, since that’s when the rest of the population will be “preparing”. To truly be prepared, it’s a good idea to have a week’s supply of water in your closets, under sinks, etc- wherever you have the space.

Gallon jugs of water are available at the grocery store for around .80-.95 cents apiece, OR you can clean out your old milk jugs and fill up straight from the faucet.

How Much is a Week’s Worth of Drinking Water?

It depends on the size of your family. FEMA recommends storing 1 gallon of water per person per day. And this is just for drinking — it doesn’t include bathing, brushing teeth, cooking, washing clothes, etc. (Tip: Collect rain water to use for bathing and washing clothes.)

For the BugOut Girls: Where to Find Water in the Wild

Stagnant, murky water is a bad thing – that’s where parasites grow, plus all kinds of gross bacteria that we’d hate to expose our family to.

Find running water – creek, river, etc.
Morning dew collects on leaves and can be salvaged by dripping into a water bottle.
Add a water purifier to your kit.
String a tarp between trees before a storm OR to collect morning dew.
The tops of tents are also a prime place for collecting morning dew.
Boil any water you intend to drink. Consider adding a sterno stove to your kit for this purpose (in the event that building a fire becomes difficult due to the elements).

For the Homebound Survivalists: Collecting Water

Thank goodness for rain, amirite?! A good survivalist tactic is to rig an empty barrel to the spout of their gutter, and any rain collected from the roof will end up in the barrel.

You don’t need a gutter to find a place to collect water. Just as for those who choose to bugout, a tarp strung between a few trees to form a natural basket is a fantastic way to collect a lot of water after a simple rainstorm.

As always, be sure to boil any collected water before drinking.

How to Prepare Water for Drinking

If you’ve stored gallon water jugs for several months/years, adding bleach will purify the water and make it safe for brushing teeth, cooking, or drinking.

To Purify Water Using Bleach:

Per the EPA, adding 6 drops of bleach per each gallon of water.

To Purify Water by Boiling

Water boiled for 15-20 minutes will purify the majority of bacteria (about 99%), but it will not remove solid items or neutralize or chemical pollutants. Consider adding water purification tablets to your survival kit.

Maintaining Cleanliness

According to this handy water usage calculator, the average shower utilizes 2.5 gallons of water per minute. Yikes. For us ladies with long hair, the thought of going more that 2-3 days without a shower is appalling. Check out our post on how to make dry shampoo.

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Prepper Food: Stocking Up at a LDS Home Storage Center