9 Reasons a Coffee Can Should be in Your Survival Kit

Daily Survival ^ | 11/25/12 | Bax

[Kartographer]

The Many Uses of a Coffee Can

That’s how a 1-pound coffee can can earn its way into your 72-hour pack. Consider the following uses for this light-weight and versatile survival instrument.

[outofsalt]

Burlap suits are great survival gear!

[Mich Patriot]

Speaking of coffee, I want to share this with my coffee drinking FRiends. If you have a Costco membership, I recommend you try this:

It's like $10 or $11 for three pounds, dark roast only (available in decaf), very very good for the money. We were buying specialty coffees for $7 - $9 per pound, but not any more. Also, the can is still metal. Oh, and the dates go out a couple years, so I always have 4-6 cans in the basement.

[DoodleDawg]

OK, try finding a one pound can of coffee these days. It’s all Keurig cups and soft-sided packaging.

[bgill]

My granny made flour sack dresses for me, too. Those pretty patterned flour sacks make the best dish towels ever. I think I’m down to my last one and it’s more holes than towel but I just can’t part with it. One year, I got old flour sack dish towels for Christmas. Best Christmas present ever!

[piroque]

Remember my mother and grand-mothers going in the back of the feed store , so they could pick out the print that they wanted. Wore many a shirt when I was younger made from a feed sack.

The flour sacks were made into sock dripers for the coffee pot and handkerchiefs .

[M Kehoe]

Good morning.

A thread from Nov 2012 is still kickin'.

I thought it was sop to keep toilet paper in a coffee can.

When you are out in the middle of nowhere, and the weather is nasty, you can still take a dum...never mind.

5.56mm

[bgill]

Same here. I wasn't allowed to have jeans so my aunt bought me 4 pair when I went off to college so I remember every ready made outfit I bought in college. I was sewing all my clothes by junior high and still don't understand what was so bad about real jeans because I was allowed to make denim pants. I'd have the wildest fabric for pantsuits - stripes, strawberries, flowers and giant plaid. The best was a short cropped work type jacket and high waisted bell bottoms in a red, white and blue stripe, lol. Yeah, visions of Hillary in striped pants and pantsuits. I did the laundry, too, and somehow (cough) one pair of pants got bleach on them so there was no way to save them but to tie dye them! And peasant skirts. What was that skirt called that was just a huge piece of fabric that had an elastic waistband and you'd throw the bottom half of the fabric between your legs to make the pants part and then pull it up and tie around your waist to create a skirt?

[bgill]

I grew up with all the modern conveniences at home but all summer, the holidays and most weekends were spent at the grandparents’ farm which wasn’t so modern. It had indoor plumbing but the tub was used for everything but bathing. It was the first in that area with indoor plumbing. A lot of the time we had to haul water because ants were in the water or there was oil scum. Unfortunately, not enough oil to drill. They had a water heater but it used too much gas so bath and dish water was heated on the stove in big metal bowls. The pots and pans were dried on a screened in shelf on the outside of the kitchen window. At night, with the windows open (no A/C), you could hear sounds from miles and miles away.

I took the kids out to see it once and there were illegals living in it. It hadn’t changed any except they had a modern stove and put down some old carpeting that we’d stored in a shed. It’s since been torn down, or fell down, and there’s a big new house there.

[bgill]

It’s 2014 a time when NSA spies on us on using that coffee can to pee in when on a long trip and calls the EPA out to jail us for dumping it.

[cornelis]

you could hear sounds from miles and miles away.

Did you answer the call? "Tapping on the bottom of the can with a rock or the spine of your knife will produce a noise that can help signal would-be rescues."

[bgill]

Not as big a diameter target but a nut can plastic lid (Blue Diamond nuts) will fit the larger cans that beans and soup come in. Those lids also fit cat food cans. I think that’s also the same lid that comes on bean dip.

[TheThirdRuffian]

Coffee cans are in my survival stash because life is not worth living without coffee.

[greeneyes]

I still have plenty of metal coffee cans. I buy Always Save Coffee from Country Mart or Alps. They are cheaper than the name brands, taste ok, and give me the cans which I use to store lots of stuff.

[greeneyes]

I buy some dish towels at Walmart that are reminiscent of the flour sack fabric, and gave them one year to my kids for Christmas.

They were so happy to get them, and I think they use them in recipes calling for cheesecloth straining.

[greeneyes]

I haven’t been back to the farm, or the house in town. All the roads and land marks are missing, so I am not sure I could find them.

However, I did visit my Great Grandma’s house, a block off the main street. It was still there, and didn’t appear to be changed.

She did eventually have an indoor bath added off the kitchen area when she was older. She was in a wheel chair during her final years, and her doctor said it was a necessity.

Grandpa never had indoor bath on the farm, but we did use Great Grandma’s bathroom a couple of times when we happened to be at her house doing laundry on the old wringer type washing machines.