I always find it helpful to begin at the beginning whenever possible. Since there have basically been people preparing for the end of time since the very beginning of time, I can not exactly start our new series with a complete history on the practice of prepping. What I can do is explain when and how the idea of being more prepared became a real concern for me.
There has probably not been a more momentous year in my life than 2008. I can look back now Doomsday Procrastinator. Over the course of those twelve months, I became a father for the first time, we relocated our family to a new state where we did not know a single person, the national economy went in the tank, and my fellow citizens elected a President that spends money like a novice Monopoly player. If there were ever a perfect storm to make a man pay more attention to the future well-being of his family, this was it.
and say that was the year that I became the
Even without all the other factors, becoming a father certainly had an immediate impact on my outlook on everything in life.
Looking into the face on my son for the first time awakened a new level of accountability and responsibility within me. I now had a defenseless and totally dependent individual relying on me for survival. Where my wife and I could have ridden out power outages and other tough situations for several days in the past, we now had a baby that needed warm bottles and refrigerated medicines and all sorts of other odds and ends.
I accepted a new job shortly after the baby was born, and we moved about two hundred miles north to Lexington, Kentucky. We did not know a soul in the commonwealth at that point, and we left behind a support network of family and friends in Tennessee. Suddenly, in a time of crisis, we would be hours away from the nearest people we could call on for help with no questions asked. Certainly, this fact led me to believe that we needed some level of preparedness and contingency plans in case of emergency.
The final factor was the financial state of the nation and the 2008 Presidential election results. Regardless of who won between Obama and McCain following on the heels of the Bush administration, we were in trouble. The fact that it was Obama only made the pace toward economic disaster faster. Seeing the unemployment levels skyrocket and personally knowing so many folks that lost their jobs or struggled to find work throughout that year made me thankful for the income that I had and motivated me. I decided we needed to be prepared in case my own job should fall victim to the economic downturn.
I would ask that you keep in mind that we were still trying to figure out the whole “parenting and raising a baby” deal for the first time while also trying our hand at prepping with no experience or remote idea what we were doing. We did a few things right – especially on the financial side. We paid off a car loan and canceled several credit card accounts. We set up multiple retirement savings accounts, insurance policies, and college funds. The trouble came when we had accomplished all the common sense financial maneuvers and shifted our focus to food storage.
I like to eat food. I like to write about food. I like to talk about food. I know that having food around is about the most important thing I could focus on for my future and my family’s sake. Unfortunately, I know next to nothing about food storage techniques and best practices. What should we buy? How much of it? How often did we need to rotate the stock? I was clueless, so I did what any man in my position would automatically do. I delegated the task to my wife with vague instructions meant to sound intelligent and informed.
We were living on a loosely-defined budget like most households, so we could not afford to just order six months of MREs (throwing terminology around makes me look smarter, no?) on the internet. I gave my wife the instructions to seek out any non-perishable items that we used that were on sale each week when she went grocery shopping and add a few extra to her cart. I thought that over time, this could amount to enough food to keep us going for weeks or months in an emergency. We had a perfect house for food storage in Kentucky as our basement had enormous storage room and a second kitchen complete with refrigerator and freezer. Food storage was going to be a breeze for us!
After a month or two, I was down in our basement writing one night when I decided to check in on the progress of my wife’s grocery stockpiling efforts. When I opened our storage cabinets, I immediately knew we were in deep doomsday trouble. What I discovered were dozens of boxes of saltines, countless bags of sugar, a crate of black beans, and enough cream of mushroom soup to fill a Jacuzzi. My poor wife clearly knew even less about food storage than I did. Our only hope for survival was a societal shift toward using black beans as currency. The lesson I learned is that storing food without a defined plan or system is virtually hopeless. Our failed experiment caused us both to give up entirely and shift back into procrastination mode.
Now, the Doomsday Procrastinator is ready to give food storage another try, but I clearly need as much help as I can get. Send me your best tips, tricks, experiences, and advice on this topic or leave your comments below, if you like. I know from the feedback I received last week that there are many others like me on this website hoping to learn how to be better prepared in the weeks and months to come. I could sweeten the deal and possibly offer a lifetime supply of black beans in exchange for the best response, but it will have to be a good one. Until next week, here is our tip of the week sent in by a reader…
#DoomsDelay Tip of the Week:
When prepping on a family budget, do not forget to take advantage of budget stores like Big Lots, Family Dollar, Dollar General, and Dollar Tree. You can often find name brand medications, first aid supplies, and non-perishable food items from trusted manufacturers at extremely low prices – sometimes even in bulk quantities.
When prepping on a family budget, do not forget to take advantage of budget stores like Big Lots, Family Dollar, Dollar General, and Dollar Tree. You can often find name brand medications, first aid supplies, and non-perishable food items from trusted manufacturers at extremely low prices – sometimes even in bulk quantities.
