2021 - Week 1 Challenge

Happy New Year. We hope you had a fun and peaceful holiday season with family. Now it’s time to begin again, further preparing our homes and families in 2021. In October 2019 when I wrote about a pandemic everyone, well most people, thought that was a pretty far out idea and of course there were those who said it was fear mongering. The point, we really have no idea what may be coming our way. If we look to history we see pandemics, power outages that have lasted months, crop failures, wars and dangerous leaders in the world, earthquakes in areas where it has now been 200 or more years since the ground shook, stock market crashes, the list goes on. My point is if it has happened once it can and will happen again.

As we begin this new year we want to understand your goals and needs so we can help meet those needs. I‘ll begin.

My goals this year include doing a more complete home inventory. I have done a hit and miss job but as I meet with disaster survivors and they are overwhelmed with insurance claims I know I have not done enough. A friend who lost his home to a wildfire shared with me that he did not need to make lists because he had good photos and he just got paid the maximum his coverage allowed because they could see he was not exaggerating his claim. I also want to live more frugally and eliminate expenses to free up cash for emergencies, savings, and to purchasing a few more preparedness items.

Now it’s your turn. What are your goals for 2021? Share your goals and we will add those to our education plan for this year. We have lots of new things planned already in addition to our weekly challenge posted on Mondays, and will be announcing and introducing them in the next week or two.

You're it! Time to share. Please include which part of the country, or world you live in.

WEEK 1 DUAL PREPAREDNESS CHALLENGES:

Food Storage: Desserts

This week is fun! No food storage plan is complete without comfort foods. This week we are storing Desserts. Purchase the ingredients to make 8 desserts your family loves. You may purchase boxes of brownie mix, puddings, or the ingredients to make several batches of your favorite cookies or birthday cake. Even when the power is out, you have lost a job or there has been a natural disaster you will want to be prepared to celebrate birthdays or graduations or to just encourage kids to eat the dinner you have prepared.

General Store: All-Purpose Cleaner

Non-food items are as essential to a great storage plan as food. Often our reason for living off our storage has more to do with a financial emergency than with a natural disaster. To begin our year of storing non-food items we will be purchasing all-purpose cleaner this week. We are storing a three month supply, but add an extra bottle or two in case your emergency requires clean up after a natural disaster. If you have a favorite purchase it or try something new. My favorite I purchase at a dollar store.

* It's been a while since we've covered the basics of food storage and what we call our "general store" aka - basic items to have supplied at home. This year we will highlight both of the weekly challenges so at the end of 2021 you should have a 3 month supply of food and of supplies for your family. If you cannot afford to focus on both - we recommend you focus on the food storage first.