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Practical Prepping Podcast
Home Preparedness Basics: Water, Food Storage for Emergencies, and the “Poop Plan”
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- [00:01]
A
Today we wrap up a three part series on the basics of prepping. We've covered the planning and protection stages and in this episode we're covering the provision stage. What it takes to keep daily life functional. When the power goes out, the grocery stores are empty, or the winter storm traps you at home for days. This is what it takes to make that happen. Stay with us.
- [00:36]
B
Welcome to Practical prepping. Today is March 2, 2026, and this is episode 544. This is the prepping podcast with no bunkers, no zombies and no alien invasions. Just practical prepping where we teach everyday people how to prepare for life's emergencies, disasters and crises. And we're here to help you get prepared. I'm Krista.
- [01:03]
A
And I'm Mark. If you'd like the expanded notes of this episode, go to practicalprepping.info 544. Provisions are what keep daily life functioning when normal systems are interrupted. They answer some practical questions like how do we eat, how do we drink, how do we maintain hygiene, how do we preserve morale? And how do we function for days or weeks without reliable systems?
- [01:35]
B
Now I'm going to jump in here and tell you, and if you've been listening for enough of a period of time, you'll know what my number one priority for prepping is. You should know this by now. Let's all say it together. Water. Water is the number one priority. You can survive weeks without food, but you can only make it a few days without water. So we're going to talk about storing that water. Now, the government guidelines often recommend 1 gallon per person per day. Now, I believe that's an absolute minimum. In reality, when you consider your drinking amount and then also your hygiene and your cooking. And we're up to more like a gallon and a half to two gallons per day, minimum and more if you can do it.
- [02:18]
A
And that just covers the coffee in your case. It does.
- [02:22]
B
But like I said, you've got to cover what you're consuming directly, but you've also got to cover your basic hygiene. And thinking about washing dishes, thinking about your pets, you know, are they going to have something to drink? And also to be able to prepare all those bags of dried rice and beans you've got in the pantry.
- [02:39]
A
Those do take a lot of water, right?
- [02:41]
B
So you only want to use food grade plastic. You know, some people are able to source food grade buckets from restaurants. A lot of places will sell them to you for really cheap. Or if you're like friends with the manager, they may just give them to you or you maybe need to use glass containers because these are better for long term storage. Now, we want to tell you to avoid reusing the milk jugs that are in most common United States grocery stores. They've got that tiny, thin little cap. The plastic itself is kind of thin. It is not intended to be used
- [03:11]
A
in the long haul or to be reused.
- [03:13]
B
Yeah. Because you can't really 100% sanitize. There's always going to be some bacteria hiding. So we would say discard those and use something for more appropriate storage.
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A
And they're also very prone to leaking.
- [03:26]
B
We actually found that out early on, before we got schooled on how bad milk jugs were. We actually discovered a leak in ours and we said, that's it, no more.
- [03:34]
A
Now, the best source of the water that you're storing comes out of your faucet.
- [03:38]
B
Of course.
- [03:39]
A
It's a great place to get your water to be stored. Or you can buy it in gallon jugs at the grocery store. We sometimes do that, especially when it comes to distilled water. We go through a lot of distilled water and we get the thicker plastic jugs and we refill those from the tap.
- [03:58]
B
Yeah, they perform very well.
- [03:59]
A
They really have. But you want to stay away from reusing milk jugs. And as we're talking about sourcing water now, there's a lot of hidden sources of water inside the house. One, your water heater. Yeah. Most of us are storing 20 to 40 gallons of water right there in the house.
- [04:24]
B
Exactly.
- [04:24]
A
And it's really not hard to get out. There's a faucet down at the bottom. But if the water is not flowing, just open that tap and crack a faucet in the kitchen to allow air to flow in.
- [04:38]
B
Kind of burps it. Burps it out.
- [04:40]
A
Yeah, it allows air. It doesn't set up a suction in there.
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B
Good choice.
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A
How about the back of toilet tanks?
- [04:47]
B
Yeah. No, it's not the most pleasant thought.
- [04:49]
A
Not the most pleasant. But unless you've had chemical treatments in there, you can use that water.
- [04:55]
B
Yeah, you just sanitize it like you would out of any other wild source.
- [04:58]
A
Exactly. Ice bins.
- [05:00]
B
Okay. Yeah. Like pull your ice tray out of your refrigerator and allow some of that to melt.
- [05:05]
A
And a lot of folks use gallon jugs frozen to keep in the freezer in case the power goes out, to help keep it cold longer. And you can even move a couple of those to the refrigerator if the power goes out to help keep that cooler as well.
- [05:22]
B
And just a Quick note, if you're going to be freezing containers of water, make sure you give it some head space between the top and the and then the surface of the water because when water freezes, it expands. You don't want to fill it to the brim because then it'll break your.
- [05:38]
A
It will split. Yeah, it will split some head space. I would say about 80%. Fill it about 80%.
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B
It's a good call.
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A
Another place that you can get water is streams, creeks, rivers and lakes.
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B
You might be close to one. Sure.
- [05:52]
A
And you want to pre filter that and then you want to purify it. And we're going to talk about purification in just a minute. But water is supremely important. But when the lights go out, backup lighting is really nice to have. Storm season is just around the corner. In fact, we've already seen some tornadoes around the country. Prepare like we do with the battery powered LED lanterns. There's a three pack on the Featured Items page that's less than $17 at the time of this recording. So go to practicalprepping.info featured and you'll find them right there. Don't sit in the dark or try to see with a candle. Order a set today. Now let's talk about some water purification methods.
- [06:41]
B
Well, we've often said that you need to have multiple purification methods and that's always a good call. We're talking about your water here. We don't want any disease or virus borne illnesses coming through with your water. So we know that boiling water and we're talking about a rolling boil for those of you that are unaware of what that means, that's when the water is boiling so rapidly that the surface of the water is churning. It is literally rolling. Now you need it to have a rolling boil from one to three minutes to kill most of the biological pathogens. Now I'm going to defer to the latter. I'm going to go three minute boil. Why would I go with one? I'm going to question one.
- [07:23]
A
I'm thinking, well, one is a very minimum, but you also need to increase this time if you're above 6,000ft in elevation.
- [07:30]
B
Oh, that's a good point too. Yeah. The altitude has a tremendous effect on that.
- [07:35]
A
And there's some filtration systems. We like the Sawyer Mini. The Sawyer squeeze is great. They're on the featured page as well. We also have a gravity fed system, the pro one that we have on our counter. And these allow you to source water from lakes or creeks. Now the way we would do this If I had to go down to the creek and get it is, we'd come back, we'd pre filter it and then we would run it through the filter and then we would boil it, or we would boil it, then run it through the filter. But ours is going to get a three stage process, pre filter, filtering, boiling, and then we know that we're safe with that. Now, you can also use chemical treatment. We have these in our bag. We have water purification tablets in our bag. Those can be used, but you can also use unscented household bleach. And you use that at 8 drops per gallon for clear water, not a lot, or 16 drops for cloudy water. Or you can use chlorine dioxide tablets. There's a number of ways to chemically treat the water there. But you want to have redundancy. Redundancy, redundancy.
- [08:56]
B
Agreed. Now, let's talk about food management for a moment. Now, I'm going to tell you right now that storing food is not hoarding, it is budgeting. With foresight. And in a lot of ways I've been able to beat inflation by my prepper pantry being stocked with foods that I purchased at a better price. And now they're extremely high in price and I've got plenty to tide us over.
- [09:18]
A
And buying bulk has helped with that.
- [09:21]
B
Definitely it stretches your dollar and hey, you know, we don't have a lot of dollars, so we're stretching everyone just like you are. Now, we recommend that you build a deep pantry, not necessarily construct an elaborate bunker. Now eat what you store and store what you eat. We've often done this as well. We've had some hard times financially creep up on us and we've jumped into our prepper pantry and we've eaten the stored food that we have out of that pantry just for such a time as this. Because sometimes an emergency is a financial crisis for about three or four months and you've got to eat what you already have. You can always replace it later. So that's what we've done. And we like the toucan or bag item system.
- [10:03]
A
And this is how we started.
- [10:05]
B
Yeah, because we had to start on a shoestring. When we were at the grocery store, we would just pick up an extra couple of cans of whatever we liked and we would put that aside and we would do that every time. And before you know it, we had two weeks worth of food and a good variety of food stored.
- [10:21]
A
We really did. And that came in handy with job losses. We went to one income from two a couple of times Illness when you
- [10:30]
B
can't get out and go to the delivery now.
- [10:33]
A
Well, yes, but I do like that if you're ill and not able to work, the income goes down.
- [10:38]
B
Exactly.
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A
So it's a good time to be eating out of your prepper pantry.
- [10:42]
B
Never be afraid to use your own preps.
- [10:45]
A
Exactly. That's what we have them for.
- [10:47]
B
Exactly.
- [10:48]
A
Now, we're going to talk about layering our supplies in just a second, but are you supporting the program?
- [10:53]
B
Please do.
- [10:54]
A
Have you learned anything? Have you had new ideas that will improve your prepping? Who have you been entertained? Please go to practicalprepping.info support and help us keep the podcast coming to you.
- [11:09]
B
Now you want to layer your supplies and we've got basically a three tier system. We call tier one our perishables that would be in the refrigerator or freezer because in a power outage and particularly a lengthy power outage, the. Those are the foods that are of the high priority because they're perishable and on a very fast pace of time. So you want to go ahead and get those consumed first. I've known of people that after a storm and they have no power, like the little block of neighbors around, they just did a massive cookout. They put every piece of meat, steak, hamburger, hot dogs, whatever the meat was in their freezer and they just started doing massive cookouts of all their perishables because that was smart. Eat them while they're still good. That's tier one.
- [11:58]
A
Now tier two is our shelf stable goods. Those are the things like meat soups, pastas. These are things that are canned or bagged. These are things that last one to three years or longer. But now be cautious storing highly acidic foods such as tomatoes and cans for extended periods. The acid can react with the internal can lighting and it degrades the lining, it affects the flavor, it causes discoloration and it can shorten the shelf life, you know.
- [12:34]
B
And when I learned that, I made a point mentally to use my tomato foods that are canned, to use them within the expiration date. Just because I have seen a can of tomatoes go bad. I've experienced that and it was like within six months of the expiration date. So I learned there's a lot of truth to that and you don't want to risk any kind of foodborne illness. So that is the one that we do make. The exception that we rotate any tomato based canned foods. We just rotate them within the expiration and we have no worries about using that.
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A
And that doesn't apply if you're canning the tomatoes in glass jars.
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B
True. We did need to make that. We needed to make that.
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A
Those are good.
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B
Those are different.
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A
If they're in glass jars, they're can there. You can leave them there as long as grandma did.
- [13:24]
B
Yeah. We're talking about the professional, the Del
- [13:26]
A
Monte value, the canned ones from the store in the metal can. Let's talk about tier three.
- [13:33]
B
Okay.
- [13:34]
A
These are our long term storage foods. These can be the white rice, the dried beans, and we can have them sealed in mylar bags with all oxygen absorbers. It can be commercially packaged freeze dried foods that can last for decades.
- [13:51]
B
Right.
- [13:52]
A
Here's a little tip there. If you're using Mylar bags, you don't have to use food grade buckets.
- [14:00]
B
Right. Because they're protected.
- [14:01]
A
Exactly. We store ours on the shelf, I mean where we can find them. Food grade buckets are very important, in fact critical. If the food itself is going to come in contact with the bucket. If you're, if you're pouring four and a half gallons of rice in there, then it needs to be food grade. If you're pouring four and a half gallons of beans in there and an oxygen absorber, it needs to be food grade. If the food comes in contact with the bucket itself, it must be food grade. If there's something between the food and the bucket, you don't have to have food grade.
- [14:42]
B
Now let's talk about calories, because calories matter. A lot of people are trying to count low calories, but in a time of stress, you know, like cold weather with the snow shoveling, the manual labor, all the increase on your energy, that's a lot of demand on you in a stressful time. So you want to plan around your caloric needs and the protein sources that it's going to store. Well, rather than some just random assortment of cans, you want to use the FIFO method. That means first in, first out. So rotate your stock. The first ones in are going to be your oldest foods. Make sure they're up front. Put your newest purchases to the back so that they'll rotate up as needed. Label these items if you need to, to see it larger. You can make a paper label and tape it on there with the purchase or the best buy date. You can organize by type. Now this is what I've done in our prepper pantry. I have organized my beans all. If it's a bean, it's in a particular spot. If it's a soup, it's in a particular spot. That way I don't have to guess and Wonder where my cans are. I know where to look for soup.
- [15:47]
A
She just leaves that up to me. Since she's just recently reorganized and combined pantries, I knew where things were. Now I go hunt.
- [15:57]
B
Well, it should be easier because once
- [15:59]
A
I learn, once I learned the method, once I learned the code, it will be.
- [16:04]
B
Yeah. So we're minimizing waste by using the older products first and saving the newer ones for later.
- [16:10]
A
Now, what good's having all that food if you can't prepare it right? Let's talk about some tools for preparing that food. I think about a friend of mine that told us that he was getting ready for a storm coming through and he knew that there was likely to be power outages. So he went to the store and purchased a lot of easy to prepare foods. And then after the power went out and he reached in there, he pulled out a frozen pizza and he realized there's no power. There's no power.
- [16:45]
B
Well, fire up the grill.
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A
Fire up the grill. Now there's some non negotiables here. One of our absolute non negotiables is have at least two high quality manual can openers.
- [16:59]
B
Right.
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A
Electric can openers do not work during a grid failure.
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B
That's true.
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A
Too many people find that out. Now, we like to. And we have a number of them on multi tools. We have the P38 can openers. But it's a whole lot easier just to grab that manual can opener and crank it. In fact, we don't even use our electric can opener. No, I just open it. We just open it with a manual can opener. So. But have a couple of those minimum. If you only have one and it breaks, you have none.
- [17:36]
B
Right.
- [17:36]
A
So two is one, one is none. And there's more than two here in this house. We are prepared for that. But plan for cooking without electricity. Now, you can have a propane or butane camp stove. We do that.
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B
Yeah, it's a two burner.
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A
Charcoal grills can be used outdoors. Do not use any type of charcoal grill. Any type of generator inside or gas grill or gas.
- [18:06]
B
If it's an outdoor use grill, yes. Leave it out.
- [18:09]
A
Use it outdoors. Carbon monoxide kills the cast iron cookware. Have some that's suitable for open fire use. If we had to, we could cook over an open fire in the backyard. We could cook in the fireplace. There's several places that we could cook over an open fire with cast iron. And a lot of the stuff that's not cast iron is not suitable for that. It will one ruin it. Just all kinds of things that can happen there. Solar ovens are another option that you can use makeshift grills using clay pots. You can put out concrete blocks, take the grate out of the grill and put that across there and have a wood fire or charcoal fire under that. But have a plan for cooking without electricity. But include some no cook options in your baseline plan, especially for that 72 hour kit. This can be canned meats, nut butters, ready to eat soups, all kinds of chef stable snacks that reduce dependence on fuel. Some grab and go kinds of things, easy to to grab. And there are times that we will have an evening usually of your own, your own. We grab and graze as what I call it. It's finding things that are not cooking a big meal.
- [19:35]
B
Well, I think we also need to stress that you can eat food out of a can that's cold. Now is it pleasant and wonderful and is it great? No, it's not fun. But if I was hungry and I didn't have any other way to cook a can of beans, I'm just going to eat those beans straight out of the can.
- [19:53]
A
Well, pork and beans, they're designed to be eaten straight out.
- [19:56]
B
Any canned food is already cooked.
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A
Yes, yes, But I mean you can eat beef stew, you can eat canned soup, you can eat what?
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B
It may not be fun to eat it cold, but I'd rather have it cold than not at all.
- [20:07]
A
Than not at all.
- [20:08]
B
You know, flavor and morale kind of interesting go togethers. That's a part of your provisioning stage. You've got to think about your salt, your pepper, your spices, condiments, your coffee, your tea, sugar creamer, the comfort things that make the foods and drinks that you enjoy that much more enjoyable. You can store hard candy, you know, Lifesavers, butter, rum is my favorite. They still make it. Yay, peppermints, things like that. Because that can give you a quick boost of energy and kind of make you just feel good. And think about this part of the morale plan. Think about having some card games, some board games. You know, you're not going to be online with your royal kingdom, like they keep advertising all the time. Those devices are going to go dark. So maybe it's time to pull out the old family board game and have game night again and enjoy that because it can pass the time. It's something that's fun to do and it kind of takes your mind off of your stress. Those things are probably more important during a stressful time than during just a regular normal time.
- [21:09]
A
Let's talk about some sanitation and Hygiene okay when the water stops, toilets don't flush, trash accumulates and illnesses spread quickly. So you need to have a waste management plan. We did an episode one time on a poop plan.
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B
A poop plan.
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A
I'll go back and look that up and include that in the show notes as well for some options for handling human waste in a grid down type situation. A simple system uses a five gallon bucket and a pool noodle and it's lined with heavy trash bags and it's covered with kitty litter or or sawdust after each use and this prevents odor and reduces contamination risk.
- [21:56]
B
Now think also about having some storage of some bathroom tissue, some wet wipes which can also double as a stand up bath. When you don't have shower water or bath water, they actually make large size bath wipes that you can pull out of a container. Have some hand sanitizer and some basic cleaning supplies because cleanliness is going to prevent the secondary crisis of having infections and bacteria and viruses starting to spread because you're already going to be in a challenged physical state and that's when illness takes over. So think about that for your waste management and your cleanliness throughout. Let's talk about storage optimization if you have limited space. We've done several episodes on prepping in small spaces like a podcast, apartments, tiny homes, college dorms, that kind of thing. And we're going to post links to three of those in the episode notes@practicalprepping.info 544. We'll cover some of that topic here, but go back and listen to those episodes if you need a little more detail about prepping in small spaces. Now space constraints are very common, so use the under bed storage. You can add risers to your bed. If you need a little extra storage under there, use the back of your closet. You know you can actually hang those command hooks on the back of a closet wall and hang a lot of stuff up there. You can take advantage of some overlooked spaces like behind a couch or underneath a draped table, maybe in an unused corner somewhere and just put it in a storage bin. If you don't want your preps on display, just buy some kind of an inexpensive storage bin.
- [23:34]
A
And it's amazing what you can hide under there. When we first married and we lived in an apartment that this apartment did not allow 20 pound propane tanks, right? Well, we had a grill and we didn't have an adapter to run it off of £1. Our TV sat on a table that had a covering that went all the way to the Floor. So I just raised up that covering and I hid a 20 pound propane tank under there because they could come in, they'd come in once a month for the pest control. They could come in for inspection once a year. And so we kept that hidden so that they didn't find us and throw us out of the apartment. So there's just all kinds of things that you can hide under there. Think about crates of food. These milk crate type.
- [24:24]
B
Yeah, they can, they can actually conceal quite a lot. You can line them with paper if you want to.
- [24:29]
A
You can put canned goods in there and you can stack.
- [24:33]
B
Sure.
- [24:33]
A
So all kinds of things you can do. But go back and look and listen to those. You can group these items by type. Maybe they're in tubs. One thing we found is label those tubs clearly as to what's in it.
- [24:48]
B
Saves a lot of time.
- [24:49]
A
And you can do things like putting canned goods under the bed. You can put water in the back of the closet. We keep water under our bed here. Now we have risers on it. There's water stored under there. We have stored canned goods under the bed. We did that in the apartment.
- [25:08]
B
And I actually use an under bed storage tote. It's kind of shallow, but it's large and it's very easy for me to just reach under and slide the whole thing out and take what I need and put back what I don't need and slide it on back.
- [25:21]
A
But the organization reduces the stress and it prevents over buying. If you don't keep up with what you have and keep it organized, you may may buy a whole lot of the wrong thing. There are things that will make disruptions easier, such as generators, auxiliary heating and cooling options. There's various bags and other gear. But what we've covered in these three episodes will really help you be well on your way to being prepared when the normal systems fail.
- [25:54]
B
Now friends, did you learn something today? Did you get a new idea of something that you need to do or that you have received some value from our podcast or you just love my Southern charm? Would you help us by giving back a little? Today's cup of coffee comes from our buddy Tony. Tony is a longtime supporter podcast. Tony, we really do appreciate your continued support. I think anybody that knows Mark at this point knows that coffee is his love language. Oh yes, for sure.
- [26:24]
A
That's why we store water.
- [26:25]
B
Exactly.
- [26:27]
A
You too can go to practicalprepping.info/support where you'll find ways that you can support the show, including a coffee membership. Now that's only $5 a month, but it really does help us to offset the expenses of the show. So please consider doing that at practicalprepping.info forward/support.
- [26:51]
B
We want to thank you for being here today. We always appreciate it when you tune in. We like having our friends close to us and we like sharing with you. And we hope you'll share with us. You know, you can contact us on the website practical prepping.info you can hit contact us or email and give us some ideas or some feedback. We'd love to hear from you.
- [27:09]
A
And as Krista always says, stuff happens. Stay prepared and we'll see you next time. Sam.