The Laundry Room, Eating & Groceries in rural Alaska

The kitchen

People are probably most fascinated by this aspect of rural Alaska. Maybe that's because many of my readers are moms who can't imagine feeding their picky eaters without a grocery store or drive through!  I will say it had me thoroughly freaked out at the beginning, but has only gotten easier with time.

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Gluten Free

One person asked if you could live gluten free in rural Alaska and I say that with enough planning, you absolutely could. In fact one adult and one child here now are currently gluten free.  Anchorage has this great place call Natural Pantry and you can shop there and ship it, or even order online from them.

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The Co op

Our co op carries snack items and canned goods regularly.  Eggs, dairy (ice cream, sour cream, cream cheese), chips as well as fruits & veggies are harder to come by.  The fruits are often hard or frozen, or bruised & rotting by the time they reach us.

I have paid $5 for a single avacado, and I don't know what Josh pays, but every time there are tomatoes, or lettuce, he brings them home to me.  Same with apples.

Earlier in the year our neighbor Cyndy called me from the store in Bethel asking if she could bring anything.  Boy did she deliver! An entire bag full of fruit (apples & oranges) plus some Dave's Killer Bread as a surprise!

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Growing Veggies

Someone asked if we could grow some of those things in a green house or something. I am NOT a gardener, so my answer is an ammateur's answer.  But I think the problem mainly is sunlight. In the dead of winter we get less than four hours/day of sunlight.  A fellow teacher is trying to grow some things, but as of yet, I'm not sure how it's going.

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The Laundry Room

I love having a separate space for laundry.  In there you can see our stackable washer & dryer, as well as my favorite octopus hangers from Ikea.  They were awesome for cloth diapers when I did them with Wyatt.  Speaking of which, I am thinking of selling my collection of 24 BumGenius diapers along with the wet bags if anyone is interested.  Those hangers are also awesome for drying bibs & other clothes that need to hang dry.

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The VHF

The VHF radio lives in our laundry room.  This is how the community stays in touch and it's how pilots reach us when a flight is coming in.

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In Case of Emergency

I learned the first year to keep "illness" groceries on hand at all times.

Broth

Sprite

Soup

Gatorade

Crackers

Pedialyte

You never know when you're going to get sick, and chances are, it won't be at an opportune time to visit the co op.

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Cleaning House

Out here, we make do with what we can.  That means I am using our $70 vacuum from Amazon until it dies.  It's not fabulous, but it gets the job done.  I mostly use the broom, and occasionally our mop.  Other than that, I use Windex, Clorox wipes & Soft Scrub, all ordered from Amazon.

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Totes

Our lives stop and start with Rubbermaid totes.  We have this stack in the laundry room, and they are in use all over the house (under beds & in closets).  I don't even want to think about the day we decide to leave this place, but someday we will, and we'll be glad we held on to all these totes for shipping!  At $9 apiece, we probably have a couple hundred dollars worth of these hanging around our house.

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Moving Sales

When people do leave, most people have a "fire sale" before they go. They announce it on the VHF and people come to look at what's for sale.  Because shipping is so expensive, it's often cheaper to just sell what you have and start fresh when you get where you're going.

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Walmart Bush Order

We do at least one Walmart bush order a year.  The process is quite simple.  You go to Walmart in Anchorage, fill however many grocery carts you desire with goods, and write your address on a COD (Cash on Delivery) order form and wheel it back to the Bush Department.  When the goods arrive (boxed) from Walmart at your village post office, you write a check.

You can also email, call in or fax a grocery order and a personal shopper will get everything you need and ship it to you.  You can opt out of substitutes (ie different brands or sizes) if you don't want your order differing at all.

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Laundry

For laundry I have developed a system.  Upstairs I have a triple laundry separator like this one for Josh and myself, and down here I have one for the twins, Logan & towels.  It's nice to be able to just throw a load in as needed.

Those laundry baskets we zip tied together, wrote our address on, and shipped via the post office sans box.  I was pleasantly surprised they made it in once piece!

For Tide & Downy I use Amazon, and for dryer sheets, I just throw a box in my Walmart bush order.

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Organization

I find that we must be super organized to keep track of all that we keep on hand.  Cleaning supplies, shipping supplies, tools and food as well as medicines and technological supplies could easily overwhelm us if we aren't careful.  I am constantly paring down what we have and trying to find better storage solutions. 

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Sense of Community

The lovely thing about living in a small village is being part of the community.  Chances are if I don't have it and the store doesn't have it, my neighbor does.  And vice versa.  We trade milk for batteries, and tomatoes for pickles.  It's an awesome system, really.  Kind of old school and really moving.

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Span Alaska Orders

We order groceries from Span Alaska twice a year, ordering as a group with fellow teachers and the school.  This makes the shipping remarkably cheaper.

{Span Alaska Order}

{Span Alaska Order}

We generally order:

chicken nuggets

corn dogs

frozen vegetables

pork chops

hamburger

lasagna

cheese

butter

ham

cheese sticks

chicken

lunchmeat

whip cream

Our orders are usually $1500, give or take.

{Post Span Alaska Order arrival}

We store said orders in this large standing freezer that came with our housing.  It makes feeding a family of our size doable out here.

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Family Help

Also, family sends us things we need. During winter months they can send us cheese & butter, as well as other things, like pizza pockets & chicken nuggets for the kids.  Being able to call on them when there's a specific item we need but can't get is a godsend!

{Thank you Samuel!}

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Co op Prices & Availability

We wish we had an AC store in Marshall simply because we would have more regular stock, but prices out here, whatever kind of store you have, are spendy!

$14.99 12 pack of soda

$16 for one pound of grapes

$9.05 for coffee creamer

At the co op, we often treat ourselves no matter the price.  If a bag of Doritos we want is on the shelf, we pay $10 for it.  If there's Lucerne Mint Ice Cream and it's $16? We buy it.  It's the little things that bring us joy!

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Groceries from Amazon

For those things we can't get from Walmart, Span or at the co op, we order from Amazon.  Most of our canned goods, cereals and snack items come from there.

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Amazon Prime Account

The most important part of ordering on Amazon is having an Amazon Prime account, which makes shipping free on nearly everything!  A sweet blog friend of mine added me to her account, so I get my free shipping for free!  I think it's normally $70 per year.  I'm so lucky!

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Target Debit Card

In addition to having an Amazon Prime membership, I also have a Target debit card, which offers me 5% off all purchases (in store and online) plus free shipping, which has saved me tons!  I ordered rugs for our house on Target.com, as well as shelves for homeschool and other household items.

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Original Shipping Costs

Our first year we spent $5000 in shipping alone via the United States Post Office.  

Additional Shipping Costs

We have probably spent another $1000 each summer shipping stuff to ourselves as we wrap up vacation.

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What They Eat

Our boys eat the homemade bread now,  which means they will eat sandwiches. Hooray!  Making a PB&J is so easy.  It makes lunch so simple.

They also love chicken and cheese quesedillas on homemade tortillas,

Mac & Cheese,

Alfredo noodles,

Cheese hot dogs,

& corn dogs

For dinner we often have lasagna, chili, spaghetti, chicken, porkchops, meatloaf, tacos, enchiladas or golden mushroom soup patties.

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Dishes

We have no dishwasher here, so we love paper plates.  I think doing dishes has gotten easier as the kids have gotten older, and listening to music helps, but I swear that some days all we do is rotate dishes from the cupboards, to the table to the sink and back again.

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Water

As I said, we are sure to stock up on everything, even water.  In the bathroom we have two totes full of water for washing dishes, drinking or flushing toilets.  We also keep the fridge stocked and have water bottles on hand as well.

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Keep Everything

We keep a plethora of batteries, Josh keeps all screws, nails, etc. because you just never know what you might need and whether the store will have it or not.  I can't tell you how many times we have needed something months later and been grateful we held on to whatever it was.

We miss having a Walmart or Home Depot down the road, that's for sure!

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Vitamins 

Vitamins are really important for Vitamin D and for replacing the missing fruits & vegetables in the kids' diet.  Back in January my doctor ran some blood tests for me and found me to be vitamin D deficient.  I recently finished my twelve week treatment and am feeling so much better now!

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Meal planning

Living out here requires some planning ahead, obviously.  Weather can delay planes with ingredients, so I always have a back up plan in place.  But generally speaking, as long as I stay organized and keep ahead of my grocery needs, it's manageable.  Every Sunday I try to map out the week's meal plan, checking for ingredients.  Then each morning I pull out anything that needs to thaw.  Having that menu on the fridge is so nice.  I hate doing it, but I'm always glad to have it done.

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Upon Our Return
For coming back in the fall, I am making sure I have plenty of canned goods, powdered milk and ingredients to make tortillas and bread.  We also recently placed a Span order, so our freezer should be pretty well stocked when we come back as well, which will be a welcome change.  Normally we are living on ramen until our bush order arrives in late August from Walmart.

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Stay tuned for the rest of the Rural Alaska Living Series:
Tomorrow is Hunting & Health in rural Alaska
Thursday is Life with Small Children in rural Alaska
Friday is The BEST and the WORST of life in rural Alaska
& Saturday wraps up with Weather in rural Alaska