Yep, it's January again, and if you find yourself just beginning to buy preps to set aside for an emergency, now's the time to think about it. At my house, we don't feel comfortable without much less than a year's supply of food. DW is wonderful at canning the local farmstand foods in the fall, but we use up most of that by the end of the year.
This past week, 2 large chain supermarkets have had can sales for CHEAP, and we stocked up for very little. How about 3 cans of veggies (15-16 oz size) for a dollar? For 25 bucks, we got 75 cans of veggies that'll last for about 3 months. Same with the 10 for $10 deals - canned tuna, hash, baked beans, brand-name soups, pasta sauce, stew - you name it, if one of the stores didn't have it, the other one did!
Sam's Club is having it's January stock-up sale and that's where we go for our paper goods, grooming supplies, detergent, and all the rest. Hope you all have been checking the ads in the papers, and deciding whether to get serious about preparing. We recommend that you get one of the cards that the store gives out for further savings. Some folks worry that their purchases could be tracked...but I think that info is used mostly for advertising. Send me coupons? Oh, yah!
After spending some years buying the brand name foods that were not especially sale-priced, we discovered that a green bean is pretty much a green bean, and apple sauce is apple sauce. It was at that point that we made a lot of big strides in our efforts to stock up on whatever we'd need in any type of emergency. We encourage our fellow preparers to check out the deals available at this time of year!