Phased Purchasing: Which Compounds to Buy First, and in What Order

The most-used compound in the book: 33 recipes touch it. Buy the big bag.

Keeps forever, costs almost nothing, and every preserving method runs on it. Non-iodized, no anti-caking agents.

The one pound that replaces a shelf of bleach. Plain pool shock, no algaecide, no clarifier, no stabilizer.

Nineteen recipes on the site use it. Five percent distilled white; the cleaning strength is for the shop, not the kitchen.

Brown bottles, kept dark. It loses strength once opened, which is why four small bottles beat one big one.

Food grade, powdered or granular. The binder for a poisoning and the heart of a field water filter.

Hydrated lime, food grade for the eggs. A bag at the farm store; the pickling-lime jar at the grocery is the same thing, smaller.

The laundry aisle box. Eight recipes, from the bait that ends an ant problem to flux for soldering.

Seventy percent kills more than ninety-one, because the water keeps it on the surface long enough to work.

Magnesium sulfate. The soak after a hard day and the fix for yellowing tomato leaves, from one bag.

Food grade, in the canning aisle or online by the pound. Acid for the canner and the descaler that does not smell like vinegar.

Two ounces goes a long way. The dosing is on its page and in the book; do not guess it.

Sodium hydroxide, 100 percent, no aluminum flakes. The one compound on this page that earns gloves and goggles every time.

Food grade only; pool-filter DE is a different product and a lung hazard. A dusting in the wheat bucket keeps it clean for years.

Purple crystals that do three unrelated jobs. Stored dry and apart from the glycerin it starts fires with.

Vegetable glycerin, USP. The alcohol-free way to make a tincture for kids, and half of the fire trick above.

Pellets melt evenly and measure by the spoon. A local beekeeper beats the internet on price and smell.

The smell of an old tool chest, for a reason: a block in the drawer keeps the rust and the moths off.

Cotton balls and a thumb of jelly: the most reliable fire starter there is, and it never goes bad.

Sodium carbonate, baking soda's stronger cousin. Bake baking soda on a sheet pan for an hour and you have made it yourself.

Garden sulfur from the farm store is fine for the dust; the ointment wants a finer, cleaner grade.

Sold as stump remover at the hardware store; read the label for 100 percent potassium nitrate. Stored apart from everything that burns.

The curing salt for long cures. Measured by the gram, never by the handful; the page has the ratios.

USP grade if it is going near an eye; the roach powder can be the cheaper one.

Pure olive-oil soap, unscented. Four bars grate into gallons of liquid soap, shampoo and wound wash.

Already in the kitchen. Here because it is the base for a chafe powder, a dry shampoo and a sauce from thin soup.

The canning-aisle block. Five pounds is a winter of fire starters and every jar sealed.

Vitamin C powder, food grade. A pinch takes the chlorine out of treated water and the brown off cut apples.

Five grams a day. The cheapest supplement that does anything, and it keeps for a decade sealed.

Sodium, potassium and magnesium for sweat and hard work; water alone is not enough. I make my own; it is on the food shopping list too.

Grain alcohol from the liquor store where it is legal to sell; the tincture solvent that is also drinkable, which denatured alcohol never is.

Food grade, sodium bentonite. A spoon settles a bucket of muddy water; a paste draws a sting.