Monday, April 28, 2008

Do one thing.


Hitting close to home, or disasters that occur miles away- they can and will make our own lives and comforts displaced. In order for our family to feel secure, safe, and self reliant we need to become prepared.

We began a 12 week program that can helped us begin to store and build a 72 hour emergency kit for each member of our family. Thor and I were able to gather all these supplies (and even more!) with little or no money, just squirreling away items we were able to find in the house already and setting them aside.

Twelve weeks to a full kit:

Week 1: BACKPACK - a duffel bag, rolling suitcase, bucket, whatever! Some form of storage for each member of the family. (It doesn't need to be new, just sturdy)

That's it! That's your assignment this week. I'll be back next week with another item to put in your kit.

Tomorrow, a great web site to explore!

add to sk*rt

7 comments:

Robyn said...

hmmmm. time to be resourceful.

S'mee said...

yup! Thanks sis.

Maren said...

I was inspired by your preparedness posts and we decided to use our tax refunds to get a good start on this. We went to Emergency Essentials and bought some ready made kits--72 hours and year supply. All of the food items are on backorder, but only for about 3 weeks, so not too bad. This is going to ease my mind considerably. Not being prepared has been one of the biggest energy drains in my life.

We've also decided to continue on with the slow and steady approach. We're going to take 5% (to start) and work up to 10% of our grocery money each week to add to our storage. We have been doing that with saving money and it is amazing how quickly it adds up to quite a bit. Getting started is the important (and sometimes the hardest) thing.

Maren said...

In regards to this post--for the 72 hour kits, we are still going to need to get our clothes together. It is harder for Reilly because I don't like taking any of his limited clothes out of commission (we may need to get some el cheapo clothing for him somewhere for that). I had my mom make us bags for our 72 hour kits last year, so we will use those for the clothing portion. (the ready made kits we just bought come with backpacks already). So, check, this weeks assignment is done.

S'mee said...

Wow! Maren you really jumped on this! So great! I remember back in the day when the kids were little we just bought a pair of sweats for each of the kids, a size larger than they would wear, and packed that in the kit. We figured they could wear what they had on at the time of the event, then the sweats could go over that for layering if they needed it. Every year the kit would change out a new larger size and the kids would get the "kit sweats" to wear. (Does that make sense?) We also packed a larger size of undies and tube socks so no matter the growth, they would "do" in a pinch. Hope that helps.

Maren said...

I had a similar thought this morning about the issue of clothes for Reilly. I decided that I would buy the next size up for him. Sweats is a good idea.

My lack of preparedness and seemingly lack of working towards becoming prepared has bothered me greatly for ages. I have tried to get my act together over and over again, but never seemingly succeeding. I got to thinking after your posts and realized that we actually had the money at the moment, thanks to tax refunds. We were going to use it for other much needed things like a new garage door. If we had to live on our food storage NOW, it would be much more important to us than having a fixed garage door. I already feel better having gotten started on this.

S'mee said...

10 pts for Maren!