The Return of the Other Blogger to Talk About Household Preparedness

If there’s one question I’ve asked myself a lot lately it’s, “Am I prepared?”  No seems to be the answer, more often than not.  So recently I’ve been reading a lot about preparedness (you know beans, bullets, and band-aids, as some folks say) to learn just how to begin preparation.  What do I need?  Where do I store it and how long will it keep?  What skills should I have?  Should I have plans for emergency situations and what would they be?

I couldn’t tell you where this new found obsession interest came from really, probably from becoming a parent.  First it was the zombies attack!, then it was the desire to not have an energy bill, then it became pretty much random, but the more I read the more I realize we are unprepared for just about any bad happening.  There is not enough stored food in the house if there were a flu pandemic, not enough winter clothes in the car if it were to break down, no way to heat the house if the power went out, we’re just straight-up not prepared.

So with our blog face-lift and quasi-change in life style, I’ve been setting out to be more prepared.  This ranges from having a good set of tools around the house for casual repairs (e.g. partially remodeling the basement just for something to do when we’re under siege by less prepared marauders) or enough .308 rounds to keep the next civil war (or little fluffy bunnies) off my soon to be well maintained garden.  In short, I’ll be around adding some content from time-to-time about my preparedness experiments.  While I can’t stage a “28 Days Later”-esqe zombie attack to test my theories, I’ll explain my rational, give some good references (totally non-scientific of course), and offer my opinions on how it all went.  Most of the experiments will be in keeping with our new household theme of not buying new, making our own for things that make sense and overall being a little more self reliable.  So I leave you with a preparedness nugget from a book I recently read:

For many guys buying “survival” stuff is the equivalent of buying shoes and purses for women:  They never seem to have enough and there’s always just one more thing they just have to get.   –Fernando Aguirre

So in a nutshell, easy on the debit card, heavy on the learning, and I’ll see if I can find (and share) a smart way of getting prepared.