Category Archives: Foundational

The area of self-reliance covering the most basic needs necessary to sustain life, as well as the transition into more secure living.

And I’m back. Almost.

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It’s been a while. I issued a pre-emptive mea culpa a while back in anticipation of some surgery I had coming up and suggested I might not be posting until it was all in the rear-view mirror. Well, it’s all nearly in the rear view mirror now, and I’m trying to gear up to come back.

So, what have I learned over the past couple months? Well, for one, to quote Count Rugen from “The Princess Bride,” “If you haven’t got your health, then you haven’t got anything.” Knowing for the past couple years that this surgery was possible I’ve made a conscious effort to exercise more, eat a little less, and generally be in better health. I’m fortunate in that my health has never been that bad to begin with, but good health with really helps when facing major surgery. The average hospital stay in my state for the type of surgery I had is six days. I was there four. It may be that I was just so ornery they wanted to get rid of me, but I’ll claim a victory for exercise and eating right.

But even then, once out of the hospital I was under significant restrictions on my physical activity. I wasn’t allowed to drive (not a big deal right now, as I seldom go anywhere anyway), lift anything over ten pounds, and had to avoid reaching very far from my body. Just those few restrictions were frustrating. It’s amazing how much of my normal activity violates at least one of those last two restrictions. I’m fortunate enough to have a desk job that I was already doing from home, so I could get back to work only a week after returning home, but so many other things I wanted to do, or felt I should do just weren’t allowed. I’ll admit I’ve felt pretty useless.

So I can only imagine what it’s like to be someone whose health in general places restrictions on their activity. Value what health you have, and do what you can to maintain it, even improve it. It’s difficult to be self-reliant without good health.

On a similar note, I’ve learned that monitoring your health is important, too, for other reasons. Because I’ve known this was coming I was able to be prepared. As a contractor, I’m on a high-deductible insurance plan. But since I knew this surgery was coming I’ve spent the past couple years saving up enough to cover it.

By contrast, during my recovery period my son crashed while mountain biking and ended up in the emergency room. Frankly, that’s something I should have predicted and tried to save up more money for, but I didn’t. I wasn’t quite so prepared for that one. But thanks to this gentle reminder (which could have been much worse), I intend to be next time (knock on wood, spit three times over my shoulder).

Lesson three was the gentle reminder that sometimes we just can’t be self-reliant. I’m grateful for the wonderful medical staff who took such good care of me. I forgive you for waking me up every two hours; it was your job to make sure nothing was going wrong. Aside from than that, you guys totally rocked! Thank you! And thanks to my wife and my two boys at home who picked up the slack for all I couldn’t do. And also for all those who offered their help. As grateful as I am there wasn’t much my family couldn’t handle, I’m glad to have more family and friends gladly standing by to help.

This week I’m scheduled to see my surgeon. If all has gone well, my restrictions will be removed and I can start getting back to normal. I’ll still have to take some things easy and work my way back, but I’ll get there. One of the first things I need to do is get back on track with our self-reliance plans. And hopefully that means more posts in the works.

Unfocused and missing in action

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Speaking of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, I recently received a Need up-side the head. You’d think that fifteen-plus years of monitoring a pending health problem would make it difficult for it to surprise you, but… surprise! It’s time to deal with it in a surgical way.

I guess the one advantage to this being something always hanging out there on the horizon is that we’re financially prepared for this. That part shouldn’t be an issue. It’s just the actual surgery part that I’m struggling with. The risk is low at my age and general health, low enough that most people would gladly take that bet, especially if the stakes were lower.

In any case, I’ve not been thinking self-reliance much lately, and probably won’t be again until this is all in the rear-view mirror. Though much of what I’m currently working on is self-reliance centered, or should be, I’m not interested in talking about it yet. I’m sure that will come. I may post some, I may not, but for the next month at least it’s probably safe to assume there’ll be no more content forthcoming. Unless there’s someone else out there who would like to guest post for a while.

Until then, see you all on the flip-side!

Practice makes prepper?

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I live in a part of the world where self-reliance is almost literally a religion, though few actually follow through on the counsel given. But one couple, who live about 40 minutes from me, have been preaching self-reliance and emergency preparation themselves for a while. Then last year they decided to test their actual preparedness by not going to the store for 90 days.

Needless to say, when COVID-19 hit this year, they were ready:

“In a day, things went from normal life to, ‘Oh my goodness,’” said Kylene, remembering when everything came to a screeching halt in mid-March. “For us it was very surreal, because of what we’d already been through. We had a plan and we knew what to do.”

Read the entire article here, and check out their website here.

Fun with prototyping, Part 2

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I was able to get out and work on my canned goods storage/rotation system this weekend and finished my prototype unit. Here’s how it turned out:

The pictures aren’t the best; my apologies. As you can see, though, it’s still rough, still…a prototype.

What I ended up with holds two types of cans, 28 oz. cans in the lower half, 14.5 oz. cans in the upper half. I did this because it was clear after the first half that I wouldn’t be able to fit four more levels of the 28 oz. cans in my unit, so I decided to try how many levels of the smaller cans would fit.

I realized pretty quickly that I would not be able to fit four levels of smaller cans in the remaining space. At that point I was slanting the shelves at a 2-inch slant front-to-back, so I tried reducing that to a 1-inch slant. I also lowered a few of the bigger can shelves to that slant as well. As it was, I still couldn’t make it all fit. There wasn’t room to put the cans in at the top, as there was still the 2×2″ support beams across the top, even when I tried laying the very top shelf flat instead of the usual slant.

Next I tried taking the 2×2’s out, figuring at that point I had enough shelves screwed in across the sides to stabilize the unit. That worked. I suppose at that point I could/should have added a slant to the top shelf, but I didn’t. I was more concerned about how well the unit would hold up.

My next step was to take the unit down into our basement and see how many cans I could fit in it, if the gravity feed would work correctly, and if it would hold up. Sorry I didn’t get pictures of that. But I can tell you that the bottom half holds 20 of the larger cans. It does have some difficulties feeding, which I will need to work out. It’s not a big deal, but it does involve reaching into the unit to clear the blockages.

As far as the smaller cans, the upper section held twelve of those just in the first two shelves, with room for at least one more. I didn’t add more, as I didn’t want to add a different vegetable at that point. Not having a slant on the top shelf is an annoyance, as you have to manually push the cans to the back before they begin to feed. I’ll definitely have to fix that, as my current plan for the storage room will put that shelf up near the ceiling, making it hard to push.

All in all, the unit was sturdy enough to hold the weight. If anything, loading it with cans made it more sturdy. The feeding is the primary issue. The transition from an upper shelf to a lower shelf is one issue that can likely be addressed in the next iteration.

The other problem is that the cans rub against the sides and the friction slows them down or stops them altogether. For that I blame the materials I’m using, at least for now.

Pegboard has two sides, a white, smooth side and a brown rough side. I went for appearances and put the smooth side out. In reality, when these are lined up next to other units you won’t even see the outside surface. On the next test I’ll put the smooth side inside, which should reduce the friction against the cans. When the slant on the shelves was 2″ the friction wasn’t nearly as big an issue, but reducing that to 1″ lessens the pull of gravity. I don’t think I can get by making the slant steeper, so I’ll have to find other ways to help overcome friction from the sides.

A third issue, related to the second, was that occasionally the shelves were too narrow, and when screwed into the sides they pulled the sides in too much, narrowing the passage enough to catch the cans. I hope to have better tools by the time I try the next prototype and be able to get more uniform cuts to my wood.

I’m still impressed with the versatility of the pegboard. The ability to see through the walls, so to speak, is invaluable, as is the ability to move shelves around without having to drill new holes in the walls. I’m hoping to find a way to position the screw holes in the sides of the shelves more uniformly in the future as well so the shelves will be more level side-to-side.

I also plan to experiment with having less support structure. If I cut the shelves uniformly they should provide lots of stability to keep the tower from leaning. I may be able to get by using 1×2″s along the back instead of 2×2″s without losing any stability, and at this point I’m not sure I even need any support along the bottom and top edges, which may open up more vertical space for shelving. I’m really hoping I can make this work with good efficiency using standard sizes (ie. 2’x4′ pegboard panels) to minimize waste. If I have to make each unit 4.5 to 5 feet tall, for example, I’ll have to cut 4’x8′ sheets to size, which will waste the last three feet of pegboard.

The biggest success I’m seeing so far is the potential efficiency in storage and rotation. While a series of shelf a la Donkey Kong isn’t entirely efficient, it’s more efficient than standard shelves. Being able to line these units up side by side will increase our storage capacity considerably, and make rotation much less work. I’m excited to move on to Phase Two of this project in finalizing the design I’ll then start “mass producing,” as well as getting a final idea of cost. It appears so far that I’m spending about $30-35 per unit, but I’m hoping to pin that down tighter.

Stay tuned!

Securing your base

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By now you all know I rather enjoy the site Art of Manliness, though frankly it could almost as easily be called the Art of Common Sense. There are certainly a lot of articles exploring “manliness” from all angles, but there is also a lot about basic preparedness and self-reliance.Take their recent article, Sunday Fireside: Secure Your Base.

Deriving supposedly from Carl Von Clausewitz’ “On War,” writers Brett and Kate McKay discuss what “securing your base” means in practical, civilian ways:

Securing your base means establishing a self-sustaining, shock-resistant “headquarters” that is well-defended against disruptions from external forces.

They list foundational concepts such as:

  • Good health
  • Financial independence (avoiding debt)
  • Mechanical skills
  • Domestic skills
  • Strong social relationships with family and friends
  • Firmness in beliefs

That last point I found most interesting, as it was the least predictable:

Finally, a secure base requires secure beliefs. While philosophic and political positions can and should evolve over time, they should not be so unexamined, so lacking in well-studied context, that every current of change knocks you into an incapacitating stupor of confusion and cognitive dissonance. You should know why you believe what you believe.

I suspect many of us are experiencing some of that confusion and cognitive dissonance these days amid the political and social turmoil in the United States and around the world. We are being simultaneously told that “Speech is violence,” and “Violence is speech” as valid, peaceful protests transform into destructive mobs inflicting significant property damage, cultural vandalism, and loss of life on the very people they claim to be supporting in their “protests.” The only way out of this mess as a society comes from people firm in their principles insisting on a better way forward than what we’re currently getting.

The purpose behind securing your base is best summarized by the authors, and I’ll close with this:

The purpose of creating this kind of personal garrison isn’t to passively retreat from the theater of life; rather, it is to create a fortification from which to better launch your offensive operations.

Stock-up items

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In many ways the shortages we experienced a few months ago are fully in the review mirror. One might be inclined to think we’re out of the woods, so to speak. And yet every time my wife comes home from a grocery run she tells me about one or more items that she can’t find anymore, has to buy a different brand, or has to buy a different way.

For example, today she came home with a #10 can of diced tomatoes. Normally she gets the 16 oz. or 28 oz. cans, but today there wasn’t a single can in sight, except for the #10 can. Not a problem for her–she usually freezes the remains of the 28 oz. cans anyway. But now I have to wonder: is there about to be a total shortage of diced tomatoes? Should she have picked up another can while there still are some to be had?

Well, probably not, because we already have a several-month supply of the usual cans. But there are other things, like the particular brand of peanut butter we love, that wasn’t in stores for at least a month a while back, was back for a few weeks, and now seems to be gone again.

Daisy Luther, over at The Organic Prepper, suggests we should be looking ahead with the idea that more shortages could happen at any time. And with the recent resurgence of COVID-19 cases nationally, she may not be wrong. The supply chain was interrupted quite a bit the first time around, when infection rates were considerably lower. Another shut-down of the country could have even bigger impact.

With that in mind, she recommends that we prepare now, by picking up regularly the items most likely to disappear quickly if more shortages comes our way. Every time you go to the store, even if you already have some at home, consider adding more of the following:

You may also want to consider any items specific to your situation, such as baby supplies, pet supplies, or for specific dietary or medical needs. You can also stock up more slowly on other items like paper towels and cleaning supplies (especially disinfectant sprays).

She also recommends saving up some emergency funds, stocking up on supplies for various regular projects (both for work activities and for entertainment), beefing up your home office, and picking up any other items you found yourself wishing you had during the last lockdown. Make sure you have what you need to do most basic repairs around the house.

Wouldn’t it be great if the Coronavirus fades away, the riots end, and the rest of 2020 is free of trouble? Nothing would please me more. But in case it doesn’t, it wouldn’t hurt to not get caught off guard next time.

Fun with prototyping

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Storing canned goods is pretty much a given in any long-term food storage program. Storing them so you can rotate them easily, however, is something of a trick. I’ve heard of and seen of can storage racks where you feed them in at the top and they roll down a series of ramps to the bottom so you they’re automatically sorted for rotation. I’ve been thinking for years of how to make some for our storage room, but the thought of trying to figure out all the measurements and angles, rout out perfect grooves, and make sure they actually feed through the system properly has left my head hurting.

Ever since I re-started this blog and got serious about self-reliance again I’ve been devoting a fair amount of mental bandwidth to the problem again. Those gravity-feed can stackers are nice, but they don’t use space as efficiently as they might. But then, neither do most storage shelves. There’s always empty, unused space. And anything I build is going to be a bit pricey. Is there a cheaper way? Is there a way to experiment?

Well, I finally solved the last question. It dawned on me this week that pegboard is amazingly reusable, and sturdy enough to prototyping at the very least. I picked up some materials this weekend and got to work designing a test rack.

After getting the dimensions of several different types of cans I set to work building the frame for a single rack from two 2’x4′ pegboards and some 2″x2″ studs. It didn’t take long before I made my first mistakes. Fortunately they were easily remedied and I was able to move on to the next phase.

Cedar fence boards are my go-to disposable wood. When my wife and I became Cub Scout leaders I was able to design a bird house using 6″ fence boards, and I was able to get two bird houses out of a single $2.00 board (prices have gone up since then). For this project, where I needed shelves exactly 4.75″ wide, which is too wide for most boards, and far too thin for others. But a 6″ cedar board can cut down to size with little waste, and are thick enough to put screws into the side of it.

So after trimming some fence board down to the right width, I started experimenting with properly sizing and positioning the shelves within the frame, starting from the bottom. That shelf would need to slope toward the front. The next shelf above that would need to slope toward the back of the unit, with enough a gap at the back to allow cans to fall down onto the back of the lowest self. Getting the slope right is the main issue. Too shallow and cans don’t roll. Too steep and you take up more space than needed (and could potentially propel cans right out the front of the unit).

Here’s where what I like to think of as the genius of my idea came into play. Using pegboard for the sides I didn’t have to drill a bunch of holes, and could easily see where the shelves were within the frame. I could then use the existing peg holes, and put a screw through the hole into the shelf to hold it in place. If, upon testing, the angle was wrong, I could remove the screw, raise the shelf to a better angle, and put the screw into the board through a different peg hole at the right spot. It’s about as flexible a system as I could contrive with standard materials.

I didn’t quite get as far as I wanted this weekend. My test model only has three shelves, so I have to feed from the back of the top shelf until I get the fourth in place. With a little luck I should be able to get two sets of four shelves in a single unit, but that’s still a ways off. I’m not completely thrilled with how the first run is turning out, and I’m finding some issues with my choice of materials (cedar boards warp REALLY easily) that may account for why the cans don’t roll consistently from top to bottom without getting stuck. The consolation there is that my open design makes it easy to reach in and push the cans when needed.

As I continue to work with my test frame I’ll keep you posted. If I’m pleased enough with the outcome to where I think I’m ready to “mass produce” these I’ll perhaps post some blueprints, or at least more detailed photos.

EDIT: Sneaked out and got a few pics of the test frame:

Just how much DO we need?

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So, let’s talk about toilet paper. It was very much in the news not three months ago, and now we hardly hear about it. How many of us have already slipped back into our old habits of not keeping more than enough to get us through to the next shopping trip?

Ever since we got caught with our pants down (seldom has an expression been more appropriate and inappropriate at the same time!) our household has vowed “Never again!” It’s not that we didn’t have enough on hand, mind you. It’s just that, because of everyone else panicking, we were forced to see just how long our supplies would last, and while it lasted close to a month, we were getting pretty darn close when the wheels of commerce ground to the rescue.

So what have we done since? Well, to start with we had to, like most of America, do be patient. Initially we could get more, but in limited quantites, and not in our usual brand. We were a bit dismayed to find that what we could get, while certainly cushier, was so thick that there was only about a day’s worth on a single roll, perhaps a little more. Just holding the line was a bit dicey.

But now that things are getting back to normal, our usual brand is available again and life is good. We also have about three different brands in our growing TP reserves, which we are building up slowly, so as not to appear panicked. And, sadly, some of that reserve still includes some of the one-day rolls. And with a variety of rolls still in circulation, it’s been difficult to measure just how much we’re using.

Solution? White board marker on the bathroom mirror! Every time we change a roll we record the date on the mirror. After a couple weeks we have enough data to start making estimates. It appears that we average a new roll every four days, +/- a day. Divide that into 365 days, and we need about 91 rolls of our usual brand to stock that bathroom for a year. We still need more data on the other bathrooms in our house, but I suspect that even combined they won’t use more than our main bathroom.

So all told, we probably would need 180 rolls to last us a year. Hopefully we would never need that much, but it’s not like TP is perishable. It’s easy to rotate (’cause it goes round and round on the holder, get it?!), so having too much isn’t really a problem, so long as we take our time building up that much. More likely we would start with half a year and see how that goes. But provided we have the storage space (we do) and are willing to keep track, we should be able to rest easy next time the cr– …. uh, the next time people start going crazy.

Check your smoke detectors

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Our upstairs smoke detector has gone off a couple times in the past week or so, most recently on Father’s Day morning, around 5 am. (Grrrr….) Both times there was no apparent issue, and it soon stopped. The second time I pulled it off the way and dumped a stack of quilts on top of it. That should shut it up. The darn thing was probably just getting low on batteries.

This morning I decided to take another look at it and found some instructions on the back of the unit. The signal it was giving off was supposedly the smoke alarm; the low battery signal should be different. And I bought these smoke detectors because they would last at least 10 years. It’s been nowhere near that yet.

Then I read that you should remove all dust from the unit every so often, with canned air, or whatever. I blew it out, and there had been dust in there all right. I don’t know if that was what was causing it to go off yet–only time will tell there–but it was a good reminder. Even if we have a smoke alarm built to last a decade we should still test–and clean–it regularly. It’s recommended we choose a normally-occurring yearly even to help us remember when to check, like Daylight Saving, or your birthday, or something else fairly regular. However you choose to remember, remember! Though house fires are less common than they used to be, they can still happen. Give yourself and your family as much time to respond as you can.

Home safety: Fire extinguishers

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I was browsing some articles yesterday on a prepper site advocating preparation for the rioting we’ve seen lately to spread even further. They posted a list of suggestions for how to be prepared. One of the items surprised me: fire extinguishers.

What surprised me was that, when brainstorming my emergency preparedness list of things to buy a few months ago, I had completely forgotten about fire extinguishers. We had at least three of them located strategically in our last house, but we only have one here–and it’s located somewhere no one will remember to look!

It’s time I bought some more fire extinguishers. Safety.com recommends an extinguisher for every floor of your home, plus any areas more prone to fires, such as the kitchen, furnace area, workshop or garage. Take time to consider where the fires may start and how to place fire extinguishers where they won’t be on the opposite side of the fire from you.

As for what kind to buy, there are five basic types:

  • Class A – Involve combustibles such as wood, trash or paper
  • Class B – Liquid fires that are spread by gas, oil or other flammable liquids
  • Class C – Spread by electricity or electrical equipment
  • Class D – Metals that are flammable including magnesium, titanium or aluminum
  • Class K – Fires that stem from cooking oils and fats

Multipurpose extinguishers are available that can fight A, B, and C type fires. There are also dry chemical extinguishers that fight B and C fires. There are some that are specifically made for electronics that won’t short out equipment with wet materials, like those using carbon dioxide. Most general purpose fire extinguishers on the market are ABC rated.

One consideration, however, is that for certain types of fires the concentrated blast of chemicals may actually cause the flaming material to splash or scatter, spreading the fire further. For oil fires on your stove, for example, it may be better to keep a container of baking soda or salt on hand to dump on the fire, or simply put a lid on the pan ti deprive the fire of oxygen. In most cases that is all extinguishers do: separate the oxygen from the burning fuel, interrupting the burning process.

Once you have fire extinguishers in place it’s good to check them regularly to ensure they still have sufficient pressure. When starting out business in Boise, Idaho, we learned it was a requirement by the Fire Department to keep a fire extinguisher on the premises, and to keep it charged. We would need to get our extinguisher checked and verified every year.

There may not be any such requirement for domestic spaces, but it’s a good idea anyway. Nothing is worse than a fire extinguisher that doesn’t work when you need it most. And if you’ve ever had to use it, either replace it or get it recharged if you bought a type that is rechargeable.

For recommendations on fire extinguishers, see Safety.com’s page on types of fires and extinguishers, as well as their recommendations for the top 10 extinguishers on the market.

If you’ve never used a fire extinguisher before, or have never had training, go read through this site on fire extinguisher training as soon as possible. When a fire breaks out is not the time to go surfing the web for answers.

My wife and I visited our local fire station a few years back with the cub scouts, and they admitted that with all the safety features included in houses these days house fires are not very common. But they do still happen, and the better you’re prepared and the quicker you can respond the less the damage to your home and belongings.