My Prepper News Blog: I just blogged at My Emergency Preparedness Blog - Plastic pop bottles a cheap and effective prepper food storage container

Todayâ€™s non-fiction writing contest entry was written by Dallas S

My wife Jennifer and I have been preppers since 1998, 2 years before the famous Y2K scare! We saved up lots of food, water and various goods and tools back then, in case the bottom dropped out. We also learned something beneficial. Storing food is ALWAYS an investment and helps you financially down the road.

We were really praying that the world would be thrown 100 years back to a more peaceful time. We both think we were born to late in time! Well, we all know that Y2K never materialized, so after the Y2K scare was forgotten, we started using our stored foods.

(M.D. Adds: Y2K was a real threat at the time, but we had prior warning and enough time and an inclination to fix the problem before it caused any damage.)

My wife didnâ€™t buy sugar for 4 years. We bought 5-lb bag for of sugar for storage for only 79 cents each. When she had to finally go buy sugar, it was about $2 a bag and really sticker-shocked her! The same was true for all our storage foods, but look at all the savings we had added up for all that time! So even if there isn’t a future threat, people should invest in foods that they will be good to eat later on.

Something else we learned was to recycle some things, well one thing! We sure are not tree-huggers or â€œsave the planetâ€ types. But plastic pop bottles came in very handy for us. The advantages of pop bottles was that they can easily store everything you can think of. You can see through them to see what it is, in case you forget to label them, and they are air tight.

We save every size bottle that pop (or soda water for your Texans!) came in. When finished with your drink, rinse the bottle out and the cap, and let them dry well. If possible we put them outside in the sun even. Here is just a small sampling of what we do with them:

The 8 oz bottles were great for black pepper and storing all other spices. They are small enough to fit in drawers and can stack many spice varieties in one small area. If you have a dehydrator, this is a great way to store celery, onions, carrots, sage, thyme, anything you can get the moisture out of. If you want to be extra protective, you can add an oxygen absorber to your dehydrated foods.

The 16-20 oz pop bottles are good for tea, coffee, lentils, baking powder and soda, etc. We also thought if SHTF, this would be a good size to barter with for other items. BTW you can dehydrate a big industrial #10 can of corn, beans or anything else and once dried it will all fit easily in a 20-oz. bottle.

The 1-liter pop bottles are great for salt. It will hold between 2-3 of the 1-lb boxes of salt, depending on how much you pack it down. Itâ€™s a good size for rice, elbow mac and other pastas also. (Just a side note here, but when we started this, all the 1 & 2-liters bottles had a large mouth on them. That made it much easier to fill and empty all our products. I keep writing bottling companies to request they bring this feature back, but so far no luck.

Maybe you can join in and help me on this endeavor.) You can also store single serving of water in these. Just add a drop of bleach to each bottle. You can link to http://www.csgnetwork.com/h2oemergencypurifycalc.html for a calculator so youâ€™ll know how many drops of bleach to add for the amount of water you want to purify and store. This works even for 55-gallon food-grade drums. The 1-liter bottles are also good for cookie mix, dry milk, instant potatoes, etc. Use your imagination. If it comes in a box or a bag, you can use a funnel and store it forever in a pop bottle!

The 2-liter pop bottles are great for sugar, corn meal, rice, and flour, if you must use this size. But we found that the 3-liter is best for holding a 5-pouind bag of flour easier. That is all we use 3-liter bottles for. Another trick, a just-in-case measure, is to add one Bay Leaf at the top of each flour bottle. Weevils canâ€™t stand it in the flour container in the house, so we figured weâ€™d do it in the bottles also. The 3-liter also have the wide mouth and makes it easier to fill and empty flour. You can use 2-liter but it takes longer to fill since the opening is small.

We use our pop bottles for everything, and you can use them over and over. If you use a Sharpie or marker to label your bottles, you can use a scratcher pad to remove old writing, or use hairspray or WD-40 to rub the dates and labels off. This idea has no limits and you can use any plastic bottles for just about everything! I store my tow chains in a milk jug after cutting a small hole opposite the handle. I wouldn’t recommend using milk jugs for food storage though.

The plastic may absorb and transfer the smell and taste of the milk, plus it canâ€™t be sealed tightly as with a screw cap. Along these lines, I would also say do not use the bottles that single-serving water comes in. The plastic is far to thin to do any good and the bottles crush or get punctured very easily. The 1-liter Aquafina bottles are the same grade as pop bottles.

There you have it – our small notch in saving the world environment! Weâ€™re always learning new tricks every time we do this, so explore and do your part. In all these years that we have been using pop bottles, we have never had any problems with mice chewing on the bottles.

It is impossible for weevils to get into the tightened cap flour bottles, or any other bug, moisture, air or germ infestations. At least since 1998 we have had no problems. I canâ€™t recall using anything we’ve bottled that tasted old or rancid. So save those bottles from the landfill and invest in your future. You know that food will never go down in price, only up!

Prizes for this round (ends April 23 2015 ) in our non fiction writing contest includeâ€¦ Please send your articles now!

First place winner will receiveÂ â€“Â Â A Â case of six (6) #10 cans of Freeze Dried Military Pork ChopsÂ a $300 value courtesy of MRE Depot,Â and aÂ Â WonderMix Bread Mixer courtesy of FoodPrepper.com a $300 valueÂ and five bottles of the newÂ Berkey BioFilm Drops a $150 valueÂ courtesy of LPC SurvivalÂ â€“ total prize value of over $750.

Second place winner will receiveÂ â€“ Â A gift a gift certificateÂ for $150 off of Â Federal AmmunitionÂ courtesy of LuckyGunner Ammo.

Third Place winner will receiveÂ â€“ Â A copy of my book â€31 Days to Survival: A Complete Plan for Emergency Preparednessâ€œ and â€œDirt Cheap Survival Retreatâ€ courtesy of Â TheSurvivalistBlog.netÂ and copy of â€œThe Survival Medicine Handbookâ€ courtesy ofÂ www.doomandbloom.net.