I figure that the best place to start is introducing who I am and why in the world I feel like I can share anything about emergency preparedness with others.
The phrase "emergency preparedness" sounds alarming and makes me think of the people with bunkers full of supplies. It doesn't need to be that way. I have a family of 4 living in a small house in a normal suburban town. We have designated a place in our house to store 3-6 months of supplies - food, water, hygiene items, etc - in case of an emergency. An emergency for us could be a mountain of unexpected bills or job loss so we have to cut our budget for a short amount of time, a global pandemic and our local store is out of toilet paper, chicken nuggets, and pasta, or the power in our area goes out for a week due to a natural disaster (tornado, straight line winds, ice, etc.). In our 14 years of marriage, my husband and I have experienced all of those things together and relied on our small storage to help us get through.
We are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Our church leaders have been encouraging us to prepare for a "rainy day" since before I was born. My parents and my in-laws have a small storage. Our grandparents had amazing pantries - my husband and I tell our kids about our grandmother's pantries almost as much as we do about the amazing women we get to call grandma.
One of my most favorite places is my grandma's pantry. The simple shelves - made of planks of wood and cinderblocks - held hundreds of jars of canned goods. Grandpa was a fruit farmer, so there was a ton of peaches and cherries. Grandma also grew a large garden and canned tomatoes, tomato juice, several kinds of pickles, apples, and a variety of other vegetables and meats. Metal trash cans in the middle of the room held boxed goods (crackers, rice, cereal, etc.) and served to protect the packaging from mice.
Shortly after we got married, the Church had another big push, encouraging us to establish good financial habits (reduce debt and have money set aside in case of lean times) and build a food storage. We were so broke at the time, but we both felt like we needed to make sure that we had a few months of food and some cash set aside. At the time, we really didn't know what we were doing, but we slowly started a small storage of food and a tiny cash reserve. When we'd see something we liked to eat on sale, we'd pick up an extra. For example, if macaroni and cheese was on sale, we'd buy 2 or 3 boxes instead of 1 box. Slowly we started building up our storage.
The financial reserve was a lot harder for us to build. We started by saving our change. At the end of the week, we'd clean all of the spare change out of our wallets and put it in a jar. Some weeks we only saved $0.50 and other weeks we'd save $3. We also started making an effort to put money into our savings account. At first it was only $50 a month, but it was something. There were several times when we needed that money and would drain the account to pay off medical bills or an automobile repair. As soon as we were able, we'd start again to build that reserve. We still keep a small amount of cash at home too, because you never know when you need to do a cash only payment at the store (because the credit card system goes down) or your kids need $5 for a thing at school.
When the COVID-19 pandemic made it to the U.S. my kids were terrified. My youngest was convinced that we were all going to die; it took us awhile to talk the kid down and help him feel more at peace. We watched as store shelves emptied. It was so strange going to Kroger or Walmart and seeing bare shelves. It was alarming, not because we didn't have food, but because there was so much panic buying. It took us a month to find chicken nuggets - we wanted to have some comfort foods for the kids and they love their nuggets. We had food in our freezer and in the pantry, so we were fine. Once a week my husband and I would go out and buy fresh fruits, vegetables, and dairy products. We could have lived without it (we had frozen and canned produce), but it was nice to be able to get them when we could. After 6 months, we have some bare spots on our shelves, but we have a better idea of what we use and what we need to do better.
I have been taught my whole life that if we are prepared we don't need to fear. That applies to tests at school and preparing for unthinkable disasters. Never did I think that I would see empty shelves at the grocery store. That drove home the importance of food storage. I never thought it would take me a month to find toilet paper...I had a 4 month supply at the beginning of the pandemic so we were good. It was trying to get another pack at Sam's Club when we started running low that took a month (you have to go at the right time).
Now that it's time to restock the shelves, I feel like I need to share my knowledge with others. I have been thinking and pondering for awhile on how best to do this. Once of my friends started texting me this morning suggesting that we work together and plan how we can help our friends and neighbors. This friend is so amazing! She has a better system set up than what I have and she's so full of knowledge!
My plan for now...until it gets refined and becomes better...is to do weekly blog posts with some tips on a subject of preparedness. There may be extra posts here and there sharing recipes and other little tips, but plan on one post from me each Sunday.
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