Inventory Check: Can Openers

Picture this:

The bird flu has broken out, so you've been confined to your house, just like everyone else. You've eaten everything in your fridge and freezer, and now, you've got to start dipping into your canned foods. It's been a week, and after using your can opener 9-10 times a day, it's finally broken. Uh oh. Do you have a spare? Maybe. Somewhere. Uh, maybe your neighbor might have one, but the health police are stationed outside, watching for curfew breakers. You try a knife but it cuts your hand. You die because you don't have an extra (decent) can opener.

Not a pretty picture.

So get some. But not just any. We had found some really cheap at the dollar store, with red handles. Bought 3 that day. Tried one out the next week, and it wouldn't work. Neither would the other two.

Find one you really like, that you can afford. Then, get lots of them. Stash one with every box filled with canned foods. In every drawer of the kitchen. In your car. In your bug-out-bag. Everywhere.

7 comments:

Barb said...

Being prepared & stimulating the economy at the same time!
Seriously, that is a great idea. I wonder how many people only have a electric opener in their homes. Yo have really great tips, thank you for sharing them.
Barb

Anonymous said...

Read a true-ish story about people opening cans by flat lapping them on a large, flat rock. Set the can bottom down on the rock and push down as you slide in a figure-8; when it starts to leak, pry the end off with something. Slate would be a good surface to do this on. Don't know about cement sidewalks.

This might've been in Slavomir Rawicz's "The Long Walk."

Anonymous said...

Oh! And a church key is indestructable and will open a can in time, albeit making a jagged mess of it.

Juli said...

I think a church key is what i was going to add as well. The little folding army can openers. They are a pain but take up no room, fit on your keychain and when you're very hungry and have nothing else to open a can with, they seem like gold.

Tho I indeed a agree with have several of the others as well.

Anonymous said...

I didn't mean the folding army can openers; they *aren't* indestructible.

I meant the kind that makes triangular holes in liquid-filled cans that don't have poptops. Make the holes all of the way around; jagged and ugly but it will open the sucker.

ThrtnWmsFam said...

When a "regular" can opener has stopped working, I've used the liquid-triangle-thingy to make holes across to get the food out. Good idea, anonymous 11:34 2/11/09 - not pretty but absolutely effective. Vikki

ThrtnWmsFam said...

OH, and Hubby said he had a P38 (can opener) given to him with his canned rations in the military. Vikki