Ok, so we come out of lockdown. After you have breathed a sigh of relief (or whatever) what top ups do you need for No Deal Brexit/Second wave of this shit/Normal stuff you prep for

[bellinisurge]

I'm sure we'd all like to pretend this is all going away. I'm sure we have lists of places we want to go and people we want to hug.
Assuming we're going to do some of that, we also have an opportunity to take a look at our preps.
A second wave of this horribleness is not impossible. Neither is a lurch out of Brexit transition.
What are you going to top up on?

(This thread is for preppers in the Preppers topic so don't waste your time whining at us if you happen upon it. It's our thing, just move on)

I’m in. Should have listened to you lot before. Going to park my arse and learn something

I'm just going to make sure I have a stash of flour, pasta, tinned tomatoes, paracetamol and loo roll - basically all the things we've been unable to get over the past few weeks!

I keep my stash of Brexit box tinned topped up and rotated anyway do that back up will be there.

Make sure all appointments are up todate, hair, medical, opticians.

Get a spare pair of glasses for the spectacle wearers in the family.

Buy bulk loo rolls from Who Gives a Crap, recommended by someone on here.

@throughthickandthin I got an order from who gives a crap and I was really pleased with it. And if there's a problem next time they serve the people on their customer list first so you have more chance of getting some. I had to join a waiting list though.
Flour is still short in the shops round here but I bought a couple of 16kg sacks online. We bake loads so it'll get used no problem.

Can I just say the pandemic preppers thread was absolutely invaluable, I followed it from the beginning and it has helped me get through this shitshow at least not having to worry about food and supplies. So thank you 🙏

Holly, I’m on the waiting list, - I love their website and their ethics.

I also found the original thread so helpful, having never prepped before and meant I missed the horrendous panic buying that went on! Really don't know how to prep for the next phase but am enjoying the feeling of having lots of stuff in so will keep up with that.

However, having bought lots of comfort food, which I wouldn't normally have in the house, I do need to lose a bit of weight...!

White wine - we have plenty of red but I’ve been craving white wine and we can’t get it on the supermarket delivery as I’m shielding and they don’t leave it unless they see ID.

Flour - we managed to find a supplier but it was a struggle. We had a good supply for “normal times” but not enough for unsettled times.

Seeds, compost etc. - I always have some of this stashed away but the country has been stripped bare and we now have some holes in our regular growing schedule.

Dog food - we have about 4 months stash and a new 8kg bag arrives every month (very small dogs and topped up meat) but I did panic at one point that our regular top up might not make it to us as it comes from Germany. I’m going to look to both stashing more but also diversifying what they will eat.

Our stock of frozen, tinned and dry food served us really well, as did our personal hygiene and cleaning stuff. I just remember to stock up on deodorant for DH and more soap making ingredients.

I do want to move away from being so reliant on the stuff in our freezers. I won’t let it run less than full (unless during and emergency) but I want it to be less of a “sure thing” in my mind.

I did some prepping so had loo rolls and kitchen rolls to hand when the panic started.
I bought jars of : indian/ chinese sauces, olives, tomatoes, garlic and ginger etc which I thought might be difficult to get but we haven't really used so won't top up.
Apparently there might be a shortage of British food if we can't get pickers so I suppose tinned veg.
I don't know really, I'm new to prepping.

@bankittenheels the supermarket delivery driver should accept your ID held flat against a closed window, so do order your white wine! They don't have to handle it, just have to see it and you.

We are buying a chest freezer when we can because I want to store bread and milk. They are the main things we have been short of.
Anyone know if you can freeze butter?

Also going to get stocks of paracetamol, Calpol and gaviscon (covid can cause bad acid reflux)

I have just put cat food and litter on repeat order from Amazon.

I will get my dental work finished too as that's not been fun.

Defiantly41
I tried to offer the guy a look at my driving licence this week but I don’t think he heard me. And I didn’t want to beg lest I look a tad desperate for the wine.

I’m installing a Ring this weekend, so I’ll be able to talk to the delivery people more easily going forward.

I’m making ratatouille today and I’m going to attempt to dehydrate it.

Anyone know if you can freeze butter?
I do it all of the time!

I did do some prepping around January/February time. The only things I ran short on were hand sanitiser (two key worker family so went through at a rate of knotts before I was sent home as 3rd trimester) and dettol spray which I use for the baby things. Still cannot get for love nor money online. Contemplating a chest freezer although not sure where we would put it.

BanKittenHeels I've been getting wine deliveries from Virgin Wines and the delivery is contactless. Very nice white wines too!

Morning, I've been a lurker on these threads for ages and thought I'd say hi. I'll be stocking up on flour, lentils, rice, pasta herbs and spices, all the things that were in short supply before. We're a veggie family so these are staple foods for us. Also oat milk as the restrictions in the supermarket of only allowing 2 or 3 to be bought at a time really made it difficult for us, as we normally get through 6 cartons a week! I've tried making my own with little success, so if I could get to grips with that I'd feel much more prepared .
I'm also prepping by planning to grow as much as I can in the garden throughout the year. I'm new to winter gardening so that will be a learning curve!

We use Who Gives a Crap and can really recommend them, we get about 3 or 4 deliveries a year as a family of 5.

Watching this thread with interest to get more ideas! Thank you

I now have a milkman who delivers & even though I can now get milk from the supermarket easily enough I will be deliberately continuing to order a few pints of milk a week from the milkman so that if this happens again or Brexit makes things difficult we can keep our fresh milk supply coming in.
That's the only real change we've made.

We have always used a fair bit of milk & it's the only thing we've come close to having issues with apart from eggs, but as I stocked up on Filtered milk (longer shelf life but tastes much better than UHT) & eggs before the lockdown, even on weeks when we had no milk or eggs delivered we've been able to get past them without having to ration it to make it last.

As for the rest of it, I have been restocking most food/household items we've used up once those items were available again, so I'll just keep maintaining for the future.

We had too many tinned tomatoes & passata so I've given those to the food bank & won't buy as much in the future.

I might add a couple of extra bottles of handwash to my cupboards as my son is going through a lot more of it lately (we do have plenty of bars of soap though) but that's about Covid19 rather than Brexit.

I will also buy more facemasks if they become available again as my stock of those is not as high as I would like.
Same for gloves.

I'm also going to continue to book my delivery slots as far ahead as I can & make sure I'm already registered with every possible delivery service in my area as well as seeking out smaller delivery services (such as fresh fish from local ports, fruit, veg & meat from local farms who did not have delivery services before)

Just a quick post that I didn't start or work the "prepping for/in a pandemic " threads. They were done by amazing posters. And I dipped into and out of those threads when I felt up to it. Yes, this whole thing did my head in quite a lot and I had to take time out.
Thinking about how best to tackle that feeling, particularly if it happens in the winter when I don't need nature's help with dark days.

Think I need to take time to properly defrost the freezer for next time, but it's too full right now!

What are people's recommendations for eggs? We had trouble getting eggs and flour - flour I can do without if I must as I am usually using to bake unhealthy treats but eggs we use a lot of.

Liquid and powdered eggs are good. I believe you can store eggs with a coating of oil or Vaseline but I don’t know much about that. You can freeze them too.

We get our eggs (and butter!) from the milk man once a week and they have been reliable for 6 years and haven’t had a single blip throughout this crisis but a neighbour is buying trays of 30 from the wholesale grocer who is now selling to the public. The street buy 90 a week together.

Physical preps are brilliant but it’s also well worth building up relationships with locals now before it all kicks off again (be that peak two, Brexit or another incident). We’ve bought meals and supplies from local restaurants, shops and wholesalers and have developed a good relationship, I feel like they will try to look after those who supported them through this crisis.

Good relationships with neighbours are priceless too. We don’t get along with our immediate neighbour (utter pillock) but the rest of the street are doing bulk orders together, sharing seeds and picking up things from the shop for one another. I’m so grateful for them picking up my prescription.
Of course I don’t tell them I’m a prepper but I’m happy to join the bulk shops, include them in my supermarket deliveries and share equipment.

Our street now order eggs, flour, meat, veg and cheese from local restaurants and wholesalers once a week.

Ketchup! I had plenty of tinned tomatoes, but vastly under estimated how much ketchup we use.

Flour - I had enough bread mix, pastry mix and pizza mix, but no flour for baking or gravy.

Spaghetti hoops - I bought lots of baked beans for ASD DC with limited diets, but have found that while there’s been plenty of baked beans available, I’ve run out of pasta shapes for ASD DD who won’t eat beans, and there’s been none available anywhere for weeks.

Dog food - despite having priority slots - so a weekly delivery - from Ocado, there was no dog food available for around 5 weeks! I had only stocked up on 1 months worth of dog food, so will stock more next time.

Biggest thing for me though is that I need to teach DCs how to feed themselves if both DH and I are ill, so I want to focus on teaching them to prepare easy meals, instead of relying on them living on sandwiches/cheese dippers/yogurts etc.

As a short term emergency plan during warm weather it was fine, but I want to teach them to safely prepare hot meals before winter.

I've lurked on these threads since January 2019 and had prepped for a no-deal Brexit, so was pretty well covered when it came to lockdown. DP was actually (I think) quite impressed at the scale of my prepping!

More tinned tomatoes and passata - they're a staple for us, and I've read something online about there potentially being a shortage. Similarly, peas (not sure why a shortage, maybe down to lack of people picking?).

We're going to get an extra freezer; we couldn't manage it just before lockdown but that would've made an enormous difference for us.

I'm definitely going to invest in a bread maker.

We live in a tricky spot (town centre location) so haven't wanted to get milk delivered as was worried it would get pinched off the doorstep. But that'll be my next bit of future proofing.

In no particular order -

Two new garden sheds for storage - one will have a potting shed attached. The old ones are currently disintegrating and unusable - all that wasted space

Freezer - still not sure what to get, but we need one.

Racking for the box room, it’s 6ftx6ft frankly it makes a better pantry than a bedroom. No one ever sleeps in there anyway.

Bulk buy flour, rice, beans and cooking oil. Turns out we use a LOT of cooking oil and it completely caught me out.

Get a milkman - fell down on that this tie round.

Dog food for another 6 months at least

Turn over more of the end of the garden to potatoes and carrots

More seeds for over winter crops.

Oh and a dehyrator, but no idea what to buy. All recommendations welcome!