The tap water in my town is excellent.

I started with a little bottled water in order to keep some easily consumed, stored and rotated water in each vehicle. It's also handy, I've discovered, to have several containers instead of just one, if you want to give some away.

Next, my wife and kids actually started drinking the stuff. I realized that before I started storing water in our cars they were largely becoming dehydrated while we were traveling. So I kept a stock to keep replenishing the cars.

After that, I realized that my water storage at home was inadequate. So I bought more; my ten case minimum stock cost me less than $50 to put together and costs me nothing to maintain other than some garage space and the chore of putting the new cases at the bottom of the stacks.

I'd rather get some food-quality 50-gallon drums and have a spot to put them in, but I'll need to move to a bigger house for that to happen.