The Biggest Threat To A Prepper

The biggest threat to a prepper is not the zombies charging down the street to pillage your stash. It is not your so called neighbors and friends while you are away. It is not the government making tougher restrictions on how you live. It is not even a natural disaster. Why, it is because we are prepared for all those sorts of things. The biggest threat and most devastating thing to a prepper is simply a little ole mouse.

    This little creature can ruin just about everything you have worked for before you even realize it.
Food storage's are a mouses Walmart. Once they find it, it's over. They tell all their friends and family and before long you are overrun.  Traps, Cats and Poisons are fine where applicable, but it will not keep them all away all the time. You might even think you are rid of them and then the next time you reach in and grab that fresh loaf of homemade bread, you find a hole eaten all the way through it. 
What's that old saying, "If you build it they will come." Well I say, "If you store it they will come." Now with cooler temperatures, the mice are looking for a warmer environment. They are coming out of the fields to your storage room full of all those goodies.   
There is nothing worse then having to throw away good food because it was not stored correctly. If you find bags or boxes that have been chewed open and some of it's contents are gone, I would not chance it unless I was starving and just throw the whole thing away. I am not going to risk getting sick eating from where a mouse was or happen to peed on.

If you are already going through the effort of storing food, then why not protect your investment with a little more effort. The best way I have found is plastic buckets. You can get them free from the grocery store if you ask, I get mine from the bakery department. They are the small buckets that the icing came in. Leaving the food in the packages, I can put almost six months supply of elbow macaroni in one of those.  This goes the same with everything else that comes in a package. It does make rotation a little harder, but it's worth it. Just label the bucket and your set. They also stack easy so you can have more room for other things.

These little buckets are also great for making up a survival cache. By placing the essentials in it for a weeks worth of meals they are great to take on road trips just in case. Plus if "It" did happen and your friends come knocking, you can give them a bucket of food so you are not taking away from your storage and your family. Just a thought.   

The box foods don't fit too well in a bucket so I use totes. It is more of a pain to do this with the box foods because you can only see the tops of the box, but it's better then throwing them away because of a hungry critter. Date the box tops so with a quick glace you can see what's for dinner that night.
This is the same for all the breads. A tote with small holes drilled into it holds all the bread and keeps it fresh and everything else away.

If you never had a problem like this then that's great. It will happen though and unless you want to waste food, money and time then I suggest taking the extra time to protect your investment.