prepared

Years ago, the propaganda surrounding being a “prepper” got a lot of people scared of actually being prepared. For a long time, being called a prepper was this horrible thing that made a lot of people scared to talk about things like storing food, medicine, and other essentials in the face of an emergency. But over the last couple of years, we have realized that maybe being prepared isn’t such a bad thing.

Don’t Be Afraid Of Being Prepared

I could write a huge blog post on all the ways you can start preparing your household for the worst case situations. And I have. You can see how I cook during power outages, handle our food security, and even emergency gardens.

In this post, though, I want to talk about the fears surrounding being prepared. It’s not just the fear about being called a prepper. It’s also realizing that you don’t have to prepare for emergencies from a place of fear. So many people fear the unknown and it causes them to do nothing. Instead, let’s talk about what emergencies are and why being prepared for them is important.

What Is Prepping?

Simply put, prepping is just preparing for situations that may arise. This could be anything from meal prepping to disaster planning and everything in between. Today, I am talking about preparing in a home sense, and yes, this includes disaster planning.

When we got hit by hurricane Helene, we realized that while we were okay, there were things that we could do better. That lead to a list of things that we needed to start working on before the next big thing hit.

Our preparations don’t come out of a place of fear, but comfort and thriving versus just surviving.

Prepping Out Of Fear

Prepping out of fear is the biggest issue I have seen so many people struggle with when it comes to prepping. Most of the “bad preppers” (and I use that term very loosely) are so into prepping for Armageddon that it scares the hell out of those that are just trying to figure out how to put up food for the winter. What a lot of people don’t understand is that there is a middle ground where most of us live.

I’m not preparing for Armageddon. I am preparing for another Helene. I’m preparing for the probability of power failure when we get another winter storm.

While you shouldn’t prep out of fear, you should be aware of the inherent dangers of not being prepared. It’s not fun trying to cook dinner when you have no power to work your stove and no other way to heat food. A job loss can come out of nowhere and you don’t have rice and beans stored. Or you have no idea how to start and care for a garden, and you have no ability to buy food.

These are all situations that are probabilities, not just possibilities. Having a way to thrive during hard times can make or break you mentally or emotionally. So have the hard conversations now, not during an emergency.

Preparing Where You Can

I said I wasn’t going to get into the weeds on how to prepare, because I’ve already covered it. But I wanted to touch on a couple things.

I know that a lot of us grew up in an age were it is normal to only purchase enough groceries to last until the next paycheck. Also, I know that some of us are not able to stockpile huge amounts of food. Financially, it can be really hard to get a good food storage system in place. But there are some things that you can do.

Instead of buying a couple cans of beans, purchase a bag of dried beans. Purchase a 20# bag of jasmine rice instead of the boxes of ready to eat rice. Then learn how to cook those things. Just buying a bag of dried black beans is about $2/# instead of 4 cans of beans saves you about $2. A 20# bag of jasmine rice is about $16 instead of 7 3# boxes of instant rice, and saves you about $26.

Another thing to consider is how you are going to get water. This could be filtering rain water, or a manual pump for your well. If you can figure out your food and water, everything else is pretty easy…. ish.

Having Hard Conversations With Your Significant Other

I think this might actually be the hardest part of emergency preparedness and being prepared. It’s easy to convince ourselves that we need to pick up an extra bag of rice or flour at the store. Sometimes, it’s incredibly difficult to bring it home and explain to your spouse why you bought it. Now, I’m blessed beyond measure because Jared is like, ok whatever about a lot of things.

The biggest thing to remember is grace, kindness and patience when it comes to having these conversations, at least with your significant other. Because if they don’t live with you, they don’t matter. I’ll get to that nugget in a minute.

When you are having the conversations with your SO, you need to really look at where they are coming from. Are they anxious about this kind of thing? Because I get very anxious when talking about these types of situations. Not scared anxious, more of a there’s so much to do anxious.

Are they more of an optimist and struggle to see the merit in spending money on things that probably won’t happen? Maybe they get scared by the possibility and just avoid the conversation.

I can’t tell you how to have this conversation with them. You know them better than I do. But if you come to them with kindness, grace and patience, you will get a lot further.

What To Do With The People That Don’t Matter

You may get a lot of push back from relatives or friends, or you may not. This is something that you get to choose to tell them. Obviously, if you are storing 100# of rice in the coat closet, they may get curious if they come over. But over all, and one of the hardest things I have learned as an adult, is that if they don’t live with me, they don’t matter.

And I’m sure they do matter to you. But if they aren’t spending their money on your food, medicine, shelter, or anything else, their opinions don’t matter.

And yes, it’s still hard not to worry about the reactions of others. Especially, if you are a recovering people pleaser. But at the end of the day, what matters most is you, your family, and your home. Everything else should be secondary… or not matter at all.

Don’t Be Afraid Of Being Prepared

If the last 8 years has shown us anything, it’s that the world is one crazy place. We are all struggling with something. It could be food, health, finances, or something else. But there is a certain level of comfort in knowing that I have enough food to last us a year. And in that year, we won’t just be surviving. We won’t be stuck eating rice and beans to try and survive.

This level or resiliency was created with hard work, dedication and a lot of blood, sweat and tears. But you can absolutely do this too!

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