Home Storage or is it "Hoarding?"

[lds2]

Someone on another thread inferred that those who store food are "hoarders", sadly from my experience LDS members with such thoughts are increasing...so here are my thoughts...

A great LDS boy after his mission follows the First Presidency's counsel to have a financial reserve and starts an account where he puts money every week of his life...now he is an old man with a million or more dollars in his account...he is considered wise by the world and held in great esteem.

However, he also follows the counsel of the First Presidency and stores food...a can or a bit of food extra every week for many years until he has 3 months worth of canned/boxed/frozen foods that his now large family eats and enough longer-term storage to keep his family alive for a year (in a concentration camp ration kind of way.) Instead of esteeming him, people walking into his large storage room think "what a hoarder" and think he is some crazy guy on the "fringe" of society who should be on tv.

What if the young man put his million in his mattress or safe in his home instead of trusting it to the bank or 401K? again he is considered unwise or even crazy...

So...now...think of the term "home storage."

It is November 1st and no crops will be harvested until next July. The food you are going to eat between now and then mostly has been harvested and now rests in a silo or warehouse in the Midwest. Many, many millions of tons of excess foods have been sold and exported to other countries throughout the world. Fortunately for you, most of the food you are going to eat during November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June and July is now squirreled safely away for your future needs by others.

Oh no...now instead of letting others store that food for you, you buy it at discounted prices at the "caselot sale" and you store the food you will eat during November, December and January in your basement. Storing it at home instead of having others store it for you now puts you firmly in the crazy, selfish or even "evil" hoarder category.

However, if you let the big conglomerates store your food for you, then process it and sell it to you for ten or more times what it cost them...and you buy it a can at a time each week at full price...then are you a concientous, unselfish, wise and good world citizen.

We have been counseled for the last 70+ years to put away food and it has overall been a time of extreme abundance for us...so much so that most of us have never been hungry accept by choice. Saying that someone is "hoarding" food during this time is like saying someone is "hoarding" money by putting it in a savings account, as there has been no food scarcity and much has been wasted or "waisted."

So this is my concern for my friends here...that food stored for you in the silos and warehouses in other cities or states is likely not going to do you a hill of beans worth of good in the event of a widespread disaster or calamity, plague, inflationary/deflationary event, gas shortage or famine...and the Church has already said that you can't expect to look to them as they won't be able to provide during such a calamity. The government has no reserves and couldn't help one city (New Orleans) ... do you really expect them to come through for you?

I sincerely believe that is why the First Presidency specifically told us of the commandment from Heavenly Father to prepare...“Our Heavenly Father created this beautiful earth, with all its abundance, for our benefit and use. His purpose is to provide for our needs as we walk in faith and obedience. He has lovingly commanded us to ‘prepare every needful thing’ (see D&C 109:8) so that, should adversity come, we may care for ourselves and our neighbors and support bishops as they care for others. https://www.lds.org/family/family-well-being/home-storage?lang=eng

To "hoard" means to put away something for later use...like a squirrel hoards nuts for the winter. All of our food is "hoarded" by either ourselves or by others for us, and all of our money is "hoarded" again by ourselves or by others for us.

So why is "hoarding" bad when you store away your own reserve and "hoarding" good when others store your reserve for you?

Please consider who benefits from such language...

Your friend,

Char

.

Edited March 20, 2012 by lds2

[Maygraceabound]

Being prepared is smart. Having a supply of food, water, medical and even a firearm is just good practice.

[mirkwood]

I call it self reliance.

[NeuroTypical]

It is November 1st and no crops will be harvested until next July.

Factually incorrect - not only for the world, but also for the U.S. We have many regions and types of crops that grow year round, or through the winter months. Not to mention food animals.

I mean yeah, the majority of US food crops (wheat, corn, soy, etc) follow the regular seasonal pattern. But the majority is not the same as all.

[skalenfehl]

Babylon calls it hoarding

Zion calls it storing

[Blackmarch]

... i think my response to "hoarding" would be... "so what? I bought it, i can do with it as I please, now shut up and go manage your own life."

[NeuroTypical]

That answer works when they can get the necessities of life elsewhere.

[Iggy]

To me hoarding is when you stockpile items and then never use them.

When I moved here to the coast 16 months ago- we brought twelve, 12 count of double size rolls of tpaper. I have since then purchased a 24 count double size roll of Home brand. Fred Meyer just started selling it, and I wanted to see if it was comparable to Northern, my preferred brand. It is. So, as the Home brand goes on sale, I will continue to add to my storage.

The same with facial tissues and p.towels. I had no extras of either- now I have. Rite Aid, Bi Mart and WalMart all had wonderful sales on facial tissues at the start of the "Flu Season".

I don't hoard- because I use from everything I store. WalMart and Safeway have the 6, 8 and 10 packs of Bumble Bee tuna on sale for incredible prices. So I have bought as many as I am allowed- with the money I can afford. Saturday got two 10 count Bumble Bee @ Safeway for $6.99 each. I have four 8 packs of Chicken of the Sea in my storage already, and two 8 packs in my kitchen cupboard. The Chicken of the Sea cans are 7.2 ounce cans, and they cost me $0.59 a can!

For me to buy tuna, it must work out to $0.69 a can or less. Next season when the sisters from church can fresh tuna, I think I am going to go in with them and do it too. Can 1/2 pints- do it first with an experienced canner, then if I feel I can do it on my own I will.

I have wanted to can beef for years now. In pint jars, with seasonings added. I don't like the taste of canned beef in tins from the store. No amount of seasonings helps improve the flavor. I have had home canned beef. Canned with gravy seasoned with bay leaf, cracked pepper corn and horseradish. It was just heated up and served with boiled potatoes and fresh from the garden salad.

I also need to replenish the bath soap. I open the packages and put the 'naked' bars into baskets, then put those baskets on the top shelf in my linen closet. The bars dry out and end up lasting nearly twice as long in the shower. They lose a lot of their scent, but we don't care. They don't lose any of their soapy, cleaning ability. I really don't care what brand soap I get. I don't buy Ivory- why pay good money for a bar of fluff? Same for Irish Spring- it is fluff soap. Whipped air- money down the drain.

If I can get it at a decent price I buy Castile soap. No need to dry this one out, as it is hard milled already. Oh, and the soaps that are curved like Dove, place with the hollow part down, so water can't collect and sit in it. Your bar will last longer that way. You also don't want your bar sitting in standing water, or with a wet cloth on or under it. Lever 2000 is hollowed out on both sides, so this one needs to be standing on the long edge. Dial is the same, set it on edge.

When you store bath soap, know this - rodents love to eat it. So if you have rodents in your area, store your soap in plastic totes whose lids seal tight. If the vermin can smell it, they will chew through plastic to get to it. I had mice chew through the bathroom wall (trailer house- from where the hot water heater was through to the bathroom under the sink cupboard) and ate the soap- they left the paper/cardboard wrappers! So I blocked the hole, put the replenished soap into a plastic shoe box size container, and they still got to it- ate a hole in the flimsy plastic. The lids didn't fit tight enough!

I ended up getting a rubbermaid brand container, with a good locking lid. That stopped them. This house that I am in now, we have so many outdoor cats in the neighborhood keeping the mouse/rodent/vermin population nearly at zero. I have my exposed soap in the hall closet.

[Gwen]

I think hording has a technical definition that would put any kind of storage under that term. However, it has a connotation (and possible clinical definition but i've not looked that up) of being very negative.

To me "hording" is when you stockpile things you don't need in a way that it interferes with your life. It may interfere by how you store it (all over the house like on that tv show) or by how you spend your time trying to obtain it or how you spend your money to obtain it. When things get out of hand and you can no longer function/think as a normal person you have crossed lines.

[NeuroTypical]

My kids and I are re-reading The Hobbit (getting ready for the movie). The dragon Smaug hoards the treasure. He's got it all piled up in a big room and he sleeps on top of it, and never enjoys or uses a single bit of it.

Then again, when you've got food and someone else doesn't, they think the same thing of you.

The person looking at you believes they have control over the definition. If they have access to stuff, you're storing. If they don't, you're hoarding. There have been laws passed against hoarding in the past. No reason to assume the past doesn't repeat itself.

[RipplecutBuddha]

Hoarding is when your posessions occupy your home, as with the dragon mentioned earlier. Storage, at least as far as I've seen it practiced, leaves the home fully open to be used and enjoyed by the family.

[HEthePrimate]

To me hoarding is when you stockpile items and then never use them.

+1

It's rather like being a miser. A miser collects all of his/her money, piles it up, and never uses it. It's money for money's sake, rather than the good you can do with it. Think of the parable of the talents.

Storage of food and other goods is sensible preparation for bad times. If you don't rotate it, a lot of stuff could go bad. Even if you don't have an apocalyptic scenario, food storage comes in pretty handy when you have, for example, a blizzard, and people can't get to the store. (This happened to us when I was a teen. One guy in the neighborhood was kind enough to go around to people's homes delivering food on his snowmobile. We didn't need it, though, as we had food storage!)

lds2 makes a good point that sometimes perfectly innocent words gain unsavory reputations or connotations over time, and you end up with it being acceptable to use a word in one situation, but not in another. Language takes some funny turns from time to time, but it is what it is.

Edited March 23, 2012 by HEthePrimate

[NeuroTypical]

Yeah. Iggy, Ripple, and HEP have the correct definition. But folks get hungry enough, or poor and desparate enough, and they'll apply the label to any non-hoarder prepared person. And again, a study of history provides lots of examples of them doing it through legal and governmental channels.

[RescueMom]

My question is this...what happens to all that food storage and money if you have it all in your house and the house burns down due to either an Act of God, Act of War, Act of Terror?

I am not saying it's a bad idea, it's is a great idea to have food storage, to follow the Prophets warnings and be prepared, but what if even after all that the guy in the OP ends up losing it all due to something like a massive bomb or natural disaster that destroys everything.

[IamMe]

I coupon.. buy when things are super cheap (even cheaper with coupons - quite often free) but you'd never see my stock pile. We have it hidden, in closets, behind couches, under beds... you get the idea.

Given my family size, (12) what you consider large, we don't. For me to buy 50 boxes of kraft dinner is nothing in my family where 5 boxes would be needed for lunch. Our stock is rotated and used constantly.

If what I see on those tv shows about hoarders is an accurate picture...we're no way near being hoarders. Prepared yes. But we've been threw it all, hubby's been laid off in the past, or bills are higher than usual.. the prophets counsel is very wise, and I'm grateful for it. It's kept us fed, and away from food banks or turning to the church when had it not been for my stock pile we'd need to.

[IamMe]

My question is this...what happens to all that food storage and money if you have it all in your house and the house burns down due to either an Act of God, Act of War, Act of Terror?

If my house burns down, I start over.

[beefche]

My question is this...what happens to all that food storage and money if you have it all in your house and the house burns down due to either an Act of God, Act of War, Act of Terror?

I am not saying it's a bad idea, it's is a great idea to have food storage, to follow the Prophets warnings and be prepared, but what if even after all that the guy in the OP ends up losing it all due to something like a massive bomb or natural disaster that destroys everything.

Then it gets destroyed as well.

But the likelihood of that scenario is much less likely than a lay off, losing a job, getting disabled, or other some such thing that doesn't ruin your home storage but makes it provident to have one.

[Blackmarch]

I think the story of joseph in the bible when egypt went through 7 years of plenty then 7 of famine, showed a good example on storage and preparation (including what egypt did with its stores once the famine hit).

[Iggy]

One family in our ward in Arizona had a basement that flooded. Basements are very rare where I was living to begin with. The water pipe sprung a leak, and when they came home from work, they could smell dampness coming from the basement as they entered the kitchen.

All of their food storage was in the basement. Fortunately the majority of it was in plastic. The super pails of grain, sugar, flour and honey. The boxed food items were in plastic totes to keep the insects and snakes out. Fortunately the water was only up to within 3" of the top of the pails.

What they lost were the toilet paper, face tissues, paper towels, bath soap, tooth brushes, powdered laundry detergent. They could have salvaged the toothbrushes by soaking in alcohol for a bit, but by the time they got every thing out of the basement, the water pumped out and the wet items spread out on the yard- they just didn't care about toothbrushes.

They had a lot of help that early evening - one call to their HT, HT's wife called the RS Pres and four families showed up with wet vacs, and able bodies to bring everything out of the basement. The Compassionate Service Sister called around and got meals not only for all the workers, but also breakfast, lunch and dinners for the next two days for the family.

All of their cardboard enclosed items are now in plastic totes. "Just In Case".

[lds2]

I have had several friends who have lost their food storage for one reason or another. One lost their food storage because they were scammed in a move, another in last years floods in Vermont, another's food storage was lost in the Idaho dam break, a lot of others have lost theirs because of vermin of one sort or another.

All have been blessed to be able to replace their stores...some in miraculous ways. I think that is the key...if it is a commandment and you have it and lose it due to no fault of your own. you can call down the blessings of heaven because you have been obedient. At least that is my belief.

When my ancestors left their oldest in Europe to serve a mission and came with their many children with the money for wagons and then were asked not to be in the Hunt wagon train, but to pull handcarts across the plains as part of the Willey company (with two adults that were invalids one being the father) they were promised that no one would be lost on the journey. They starved like everyone else but they were blessed with strength. They were often the ones who dug the graves for those who died as they were among the few that had the strength to do it and all made it and none lost limbs like so many others. I believe they had such amazing blessings because of their obedience.

Edited March 24, 2012 by lds2

[Dixielee]

My question is this...what happens to all that food storage and money if you have it all in your house and the house burns down due to either an Act of God, Act of War, Act of Terror?

.

We are counseled to do all that we can do, and then Heavenly Father will take it from there. So if I am doing all I can to prepare for my family so we won't be a burden to others, and then I lose it to an "act of God", then as others said, I start over and try to learn something.

We can't possibly be prepared for every contingency, so I prepare for the most logical problems that I would encounter in my area. I live in the mountains of North Carolina, so I don't prepare for earthquakes. My southern California son and family aren't too concerned about tornadoes. But we are all concerned about serious injuries, job lay offs, global economic problems, etc.

As far as hoarding, I always considered hoarding as taking more than you need so others don't have it available to them. Preparing is when you sacrifice to store extra while in a time of plenty. So when I prep, no one else suffers or is even aware of it. Then I am able to provide for my family and others if the need arises. Hoarding would be if after a hurricane, I bought all the bottled water at the store before anyone else could get there. While not illegal, it may be immoral. But if you planned ahead, you wouldn't be worried about getting water in the first place.

Just my opinion, we welcome yours

[rayhale]

I can’t find any information on lds.org with how to store food, how to protect the food from flood, vermin, what to store, how to prepare it, or really any real world information on what to do with the food when you have it. That being said, I can see how a member can go from storing food in case of an emergency, to hoarding food. To me, hoarding food, is to store food with little, to no, intention of using the food. At church I over-heard someone say that when they move, they will keep the 50 pound bags of wheat that is the basement, where it is. I would consider this as a case of either food hoarding or keeping a food storage just because it’s part of your religion.

[shine7]

The prophets over many years have said 'get food storage'. So what does it matter the worry of calling it by any other name? The prophet said it, we do it, we obey as God has asked of us. God must have his reasons for us to have food storage, so call it stupid, hoarding, silly, etc.....but following the prophet is the right way no matter what.

By the way..........the only way to have food storage that makes sense, is to use it and rotate it. How do we know that God isn't asking us to have food storage so we'll use it and be healthier right NOW??? A lot of mormons were using wheat and grains LONG before it became 'the healthy thing to do'. Most food storage items are also Word of Wisdom items. Our family has saved thousands of dollars on medical bills by using wheat, other whole grains, dry beans, lentils, vegetables, fruits, having a garden. I'm a believer by experience. When we got our first wheat in 1970's, the Spirit said "use it now, do not wait"......that whispering has been some of the very best guidance I've ever received, and I'm soooooo glad I listened/obeyed. Now, using and rotating food storage is a way of life for us.

Edited March 26, 2012 by shine7

[lds2]

I can’t find any information on lds.org with how to store food, how to protect the food from flood, vermin, what to store, how to prepare it, or really any real world information on what to do with the food when you have it.

LDS.org does have a direct link to Providentliving.org (the Church's site for all things related to the family's well-being including food storage) but you will have to look in the "menu" and then under "Family" and then press the "Family Well-Being" link. That will take you to Provident Living.

Providentliving.org

Then on the Menu found on the left side of the page press on "Home Storage." That will take you to links where you can "learn more" and at the bottom of the page it has links for:

Food Lasting 30 Years or More

Product Recommendations

Packaging Recommendations

Storage Conditions

Again I would be happy to answer any questions any of you may have about food storage.

If I were just starting out and were working on "longer-term storage" and I lived near Utah/Idaho/Arizona/So California, I would buy grains/beans at a warehouse such as Honeyville, Walton's, Costco, Sam's, Specialty Store, or a grain elevator location and then I would store the grains in a 6 gallon food grade bucket using the dry ice method.

If I were going to buy it from the Church (their wheat is much more expensive right now) I would just buy it from the "home storage center" (previously known as the dry-pack cannery) already canned and in convenient case boxes and take it home and store it in as cool and dry of a place as possible.

If I lived far away from these areas and would have to pay shipping I might ask friends who are travelling to conference to bring me back as many supplies as they could. Dry packed foods are available at Welfare Square, Walmart and Macey's to name a few...but if they were family I might ask them to go to Honeyville just past the airport to get the grains directly. If that wasn't an option you can always order through the LDS catalog and then the shipping is included in the price. Walton's will also ship using truckers to some areas but you may have to meet the trucks and be ready to haul off the food immediately.

I can see how a member can go from storing food in case of an emergency, to hoarding food. To me, hoarding food, is to store food with little, to no, intention of using the food. At church I over-heard someone say that when they move, they will keep (leave) the 50 pound bags of wheat that is the basement, where it is. I would consider this as a case of either food hoarding or keeping a food storage just because it’s part of your religion.

I know of people when given food storage for Christmas toss it or give it away. Other's because of weight limits must give it away when they move, but some have just taken it and thrown it in dumpsters. Other's when their parents die again just take food storage to the dump rather than find others that would use it. Even it if it is old and no longer "human" grade there are many with animals that would be happy to take it as animal feed (just post it someplace like KSL classifieds or on the free stuff sites.) It makes me sad to hear of people who care so little about obeying Heavenly Father's commandment to "prepare every needful thing" that they would leave food behind like not so nice people do old tires, gasoline, or toxic chemicals for the new owners to deal with. I could probably find someone to pick up "food storage" from those who don't want it...at least in the Intermountain West...

While it is eventually necessary to "rotate" such things as whole grains and beans it isn't necessary if kept in a cool dry place for 25-30+ years...most people have not had their "longer-term home storage" that long. As for me, the oldest of my longer-term supply is still good for at least another 20+ years before it is necessary to start rotating it. Even the government has said that in case of a pandemic we may need to stay in our homes for 3 waves of sickness lasting 6 or more weeks, I have every intention of using my supplies for myself and others if that emergency should arise. But that it is for emergency and to me keeping such stores is not "hoarding" even though I have no idea when the need to use it will arise.

Edited March 26, 2012 by lds2

[rayhale]

Thanks lds2, but the information that I found at providentliving.org wasn’t helpful, as far as I’m concerned, it was information for people that have a basic knowledge of food storage already, not for people like me, who haven’t a clue what to do. I want details, book long, with photos, form of details. A “Food Storage for Dummies” kind of book.