Prepping for extended family.

[Knob Creek]

My father who lived through the depression ingrained in me the necessity to prepare and embrace food storage. It is now just my wife and I and we have a well stocked pantry.
But I have three children and their spouses and five grandchildren. Being the Patriach I fell as though I need to prepare for them as well but feeling overwealmed. Anyone else running into this?

 

[briz]

My children aren't old enough for me to be in the same position, but I would likely feel the same way as you. Hopefully you will have been able to instill the same preparedness mindset in them too, though.

Generally, in my own preparedness plan, my wife and I factor in the possibility that a couple of family members would need our help. Hopefully only the ones we like though.

 

[Cowgirlup]

That's a lot of family to take on. Good for you but you need to have a little chat with them and get them to do some prepping on their own too. It doesn't have to be end of the world all out prepping if they aren't up for it. But, food prep is super helpful in storms or an unemployed/underemployed situation. Always good to have extra JIC.

We don't have kids but have put aside extra in case we need to help some friends.

 

[JayMcB]

Are you ready to multiply your pantry by a factor of 6? Are any of them on board? Can you get them on board?

Start them slow, even having a few weeks' worth of food is a huge leg up on 95% of the population.

Simply stated, buying an extra box/bag/container/case of something you buy when grocery shopping just isn't that hard.

Store what you eat, and eat what you store....but ONE 25# bag of rice and a few cases of various beans will go a long, long way.

 

[cockpitbob]

Tough decision. If you continue to maintain a safety net for them, most people won't rig one of their own. OTOH, I understand the desire to protect the family members. I guess if I maintained enough for them, I wouldn't tell them It was there.

 

[Christian]

No kids here just siblings and a parent who I've been trying to get on board, I've had some success with my mother but my siblings can't seem to be bothered.

 

[cb1]

I would never tell extended family that my preparations were made with them in mind. Instead, I would only encourage them to prepare for themselves but also expand my own storage for the inevitable "family on the doorstep" scenario. I see two benefits to this. First, you avoid family just assuming that their safety net has been put in place for them if the SHTF. That type of thinking makes people complacent and less self reliant. Second, there's no guarantee that it won't be your home and supplies that are lost/destroyed/stolen and then the whole family is screwed. If your adult kids can build their own food storage you now have 4 self-reliant, separate households that can share the burden if necessary.