Reddit reviews Big Berkey BK4X2 Countertop Water Filter System with 2 Black Berkey Elements and 2 Fluoride Filters

I wrote this up earlier today for someone who wanted to start getting prepped on ~$75/Month but also wanted to not have to cook the foods. I did include some long term storage as the first step anyway because it's so cheap and easy, but so far as consumables go, this is a good start for you.

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A lot of this is a shelf life and storage space issue. If you have plenty of room for storage, I'd start like this:

• Month 1: This doesn't meet your doesn't-need-to-be-cooked guideline, but it's a really solid start to bulk up on available calories and requires minimal cash and effort, so it's going in anyway. Ignore it if it's not for you.
  
  Buy two 50lb bags of white rice from a place like Costco or Sam's Club. Find 3 food safe 5 gallon buckets with lids. Get Mylar Bags and O2 Absorbers. Then hit Youtube for instructions on what to do with them. If the Mylar bags bit will hold you back from doing this, then skip them and just clean the buckets then dump rice in them straight. Seal, date, set aside. That's 160,000 calories in month 1. Given normal pantry supplies that stretches things out quite a ways. Plan on rotating out at 7ish years if put straight into the bucket and 20 years if you use the Mylar. Realistically, with Mylar, white rice may be good for much longer than 20 years (most people say 30, but for the minimal investment I'd rotate earlier to be safe).
  
  
• Month 2:
  
  Grab a Water Bob (not right now though, hurricane season has prices high and stocks low for them). Also, a Sawyer Water Filter or two. That gives you an opportunity to grab an extra hundred gallons of water in your bathtub initially given enough warning, and some water purification options later on.
  
  
• Month 3:
  
  Assuming you have storage capacity, start looking at #10 cans of food. Those are the cans that are around a foot tall and very wide. Look for things that you would eat and would be usuable in your daily lives, but also ones that would be calorie dense. For example, refried beans, nacho cheese, baked beans, white potatoes, chick peas, chili with beans, etc. Those are things you can use in recipes at home, but can pick them up and store them for a couple of years first. Getting them in the larger can is a better return on investment/dollar than buying smaller ones.
  
  
• Month 4: This is probably more what you were looking for.
  
  If your pantry isn't topped up with the things your family normally eats, drop that money to get a little deeper on those things. Velveeta cheese, crackers, cans of soup, noodles, peanut butter/jelly, canned vegetables/fruit, pasta/sauce, salsa, dried/canned beans, seasonings, canned meat, canned chili, etc. Date them and make sure to work through the oldest first. Having the normal foods you eat in bulk will likely end up being what gets you through most things (like the current hurricane season, job loss, winter blizzard, etc). Spending on these things can be used to fill out whatever is left of your budget when it gets partially used up on other things. I'd also maybe consider having some flats of bottled water at home as well. I usually keep 4-7 Costco sized ones on hand for my SO and I.
  
  
• Month 5:
  
  Start looking at longer term bulk water storage. I like 5 gallon stackable water cubes as they're easier to move and use and you buy them as you have a little extra cash here and there, but if you want to bump the budget up a bit for a month and your wife won't look at you like you're crazy, a 55 gallon barrel is a better price per gallon than the individual cubes. Sometimes there's just no replacing having your own clean water source ready to go. Barring all of that, if your family will use them just grab a bunch of flats of bottled water and rotate them. Stacked high they don't take up a ton of floor space.
  
  
• Month 6 and Beyond:
  
  At this point you're pretty well set initially for both water and food. Keep the pantry stocked and rotating. Add on for long term stored water as you see fit and maybe invest in something like a Big Berkey if you really want to drop some money into it. At that point I'd probably begin considering longer term food storage. More rice, add in some dry beans (roughly 5 year shelf life in Mylar/Buckets), and if you're feeling really into it you can get unground wheat and that will last 30 years or better in Mylar/Buckets. You'll just need to have a hand crank grinder or two to use it.
  
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  I get wanting ready to eat foods, and that's pretty easy to do and a great place to start, but as one last recommendation... grab yourself a Propane Burner and a high pressure hose for it so that you can use regular propane tanks. You may be able to eat cold soup out of the can, but it's a lot more comforting when it's warm, and you can pretty easily have the ability to add more of your foods into your diet (like spaghetti or mac and cheese) when you can still have a burner to work with.

We bought gallons of nursery water for our son 7 years ago and used it at room temp. Now we have a big berkey and we will just use the filtered water from that.

We would pre-fill bottles with correct amount of water and pre-measure the correct amount of formula into a formula dispenser. When we needed a bottle just pour the formula into the bottle and mix. If we wanted to warm the bottle (which was hardly ever), we would just fill a cup with hot water and put the bottle into it to take the chill off.

We use a Berkey water filter for all our drinking and cooking water.
It improved the taste and cleared up some stomach issues that we hadn't realized was water related.

Got married in 2015 and we was in the same boat as you... Both of us are from large ethnic families who wanted to give physical gifts (because they're well intentioned and wanted to pay it forward - a lot of them were newly arrived in the US without a lot of money, and sometimes not a lot of family and married pretty young - so gifts they got for their marriage were actually very much needed). Both my partner and I already had functioning apartments (separately), then when we moved in while we were engaged, realized we had about 2 of everything and had to narrow that down. Thankfully, we are pretty minimal people - him by nature, me by intention. But especially after having to sort through both of our belonging to weed out duplicates, we really felt like we did not need anything else.

We ended up taking a two pronged appraoch: 1) Upgrading things we had, and used, but that were not all that nice to begin with and 2) Items that would help us achieve the goals that we had laid out for our relationship as a married couple.

A few things we asked for that have seen a lot of use:

1. Vitamix - I thought this was going to be a huge waste of money, but my partner really wanted it and my aunt really wanted to give it to us (because she loves hers). This thing has gotten used daily (and sometimes multiple times a day). We have been low-carb-ish for the last two years and the Vitamix has been awesome for this kind of cooking. Can't say enough great things about it and I have no doubt this thing is going to last decades.
   
   
2. Really great Japanese knives - my cousin is a chef recommended this pearing knife and this 8.5" knife. Not only are they super easy to handle (as opposed to German Wostoff knives - a commonly requested wedding gift, which IMHO are way too large to efficently or precisely manuver), but they are gorgeous knives that are nicely balanced and really feel great in your hand. We replaced an entire block of cheap-o knives with these two knives alone.
   
   
3. Religious & ethnic items for holidays - There are a few holidays we celebrate where specific items are part of the tradition. For example, for Christmas, our families always have nativity sets, so we registered for that. For Easter, there are special cultural items that are used - and someone made us that. You can ask your ethnic families to get you these things (which were actually some of the most touching gifts because they were either made by hand or purchased overseas).
   
   
4. Plates, silverware, glasses and servingware to host 40 people - This is NOT "minimalist" for pretty much anyone, but it made sense for us. We both have large families. The elders of the families have been strongly hinting at having us take over the "big holidays" that they have been hosting. Additionally, we live in a neighborhood that is the spot for 4th of July parties, and we host an annual blowout day-before-Thanksgiving party. When we were making our registry, we made a list of everyone who would be on the invite for these parties and were hitting the 35-40 person range. So we have 40 place settings - we keep 32 of them in a separate set of cabinets in the basement, and 5-6 times a year, bring them out so that everyone can eat together using real plates and silverware. It's not minimalist, but it's intentional in that we specifically have choosen to stay in the same city as our families so we can do these types of things.
   
   I guess my overall advice would be to make a list of goals you want to achieve for your life together, and then try to ask for items that either help you achieve those goals, or enhance those experiences.
   
   A few examples:
   
   

• If a goal for your married life together is to be environmentally sustainable, think about registering for a compost bin, a fancy SimpleHuman garbage/recyling can or a Berkey Water Filter
  
  
• If you want to pursue a healthy lifestyle together and cook homemade meals - you can upgrade your pots and pans (love my All Clad pots and my Le Creuset pan).
  
  Does anyone NEED this stuff? No, of course not. But when you're lucky enough to already have all your basic needs met in life, wedding registries provide are a nice opportunity to upgrade things that were aquired at an earlier time in your time in your life, not for their enduring quality, but rather their low cost/ ease of procurement. Good luck!

Thanks. FYI to anyone trying to filter water please don't use Brita filters they are crap. Take some time and save up a little cash and invest in a filter system that has a ceramic filter in it, way better and last alot longer. here is what my family use

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005A3WM6C/

https://www.amazon.com/Berkey-Countertop-Elements-Fluoride-Filters/dp/B00BWIX1EQ

Okay there are a couple good ones I know of, but I do NOT support ordering anything from amazon. Try to find these elsewhere if anyone has time, post the links.

We have purchased this whole-house water filter which is rated for lead, amongst several other contaminants: http://www.wavehomesolutions.com/product/citysupreme-city-water-system/

Here are the third party lab results: http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0214/9282/files/DPAmTest_11-2012.pdf?2202

How to read the results:

• The first page of results ("Client Identification: Source ") shows baseline (unfiltered). Look at the "results" column to see the levels.
  
• The following three pages show results after filtration. They sampled 3 times, that's why there are 3 pages.
  
• The last two pages demonstrate their equipment is accurate.
  
  A cheaper option would be to get a Berkey Water filter like this: https://www.amazon.com/Berkey-Countertop-Elements-Fluoride-Filters/dp/B00BWIX1EQ

Once you give it up you don't want it anymore. Definitely worth giving up. Processed sugar is not good for you, and a can of soda has like 55 grams of it. Not to mention all of the other stuff that is in there.

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I like drinking lemon lime water-- just squeeze half a lemon and half a lime in 16oz of water. I recommend using a gravity filter like this one to get rid of most of the impurities found in tap water.

> Drink clean filtered water

Like, from a [Berkey?](https://www.amazon.ca/Berkey-Water-Filter-2-Filters-Fluoride/dp/B00BWIX1EQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492923704&sr=8-
1&keywords=berkey+big+water+filter)

>Neanderthal reptilian freemason demon

Definitely a Berkey.

My dad bought me this water filter system the day he found out I was pregnant. It's pretty pricey but it was important to him. It makes our water taste amazing and it does filter out lead/

I was introduced to the Berkey water filter a few years ago, picked one up and haven’t used anything else since. It is a gravity fed filter system, and comes in various size models to fit your needs. The water tastes incredible from a Berkey. There are a bunch of videos on YouTube of folks even filtering lake and pond water to show its effectiveness. They are a bit pricey though, and need to have their filters replaced every 10,000 gallons or so. They also offer a fluoride filter add on if that is something that interests you.

Big Berkey BK4X2 Countertop Water Filter System with 2 Black Berkey Elements and 2 Fluoride Filters https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BWIX1EQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_mcUvCbPFWRMBH

I dunno about just for coffee, but I use a big berkey for my drinking/cooking water. It's awesome, filters last forever, water tastes great.

I have a berkey which is great because it's big enough to use for everything. I find when I use any other water source I don't feel 100%

Berkey.

They are not cheap and you won't find them at Wal-Mart, but they're absolutely worth it.