Does preparing your emergency stockpile give you stress?
“I don’t want to think about emergencies and disasters all the time…”
“I have been eating expired emergency food… I am tired of it…”
“I have a lot of emergency food in my garage… will I have to throw it away, someday?”
If you can maintain mental separation between your normal, daily food and the food for your emergency stockpile, without getting stressed out, then you will be fine. I could not. There are several ways preparing your emergency stockpile might cause stress or anxiety. It might seem like a waste, and it may actually be a waste. You might get bored eating the same emergency food (sometimes past its exipiry date), time and again. My tendency, building and maintaining my stockpile, was to think, “That looks good! I want it,” and then impulsively buy it. This tendency made my emergency stockpile an absolute mess. I had food that was all over the place — disorganized in terms of the variety of foods I had selected, as well as its physical placement. It became very difficult to manage my food and to use the food that was nearing the end of its shelf-life. This impulsive thought: “That looks good” is actually quite dangerous. “That looks good” will make the management of your emergency stockpile very difficult. You might worry about having inadequate food supplies in an emergency, but you don’t necessarily have to buy absolutely everything you think of or see on the shelf. I know you want to buy the whole kit and caboodle. I do too. But we must resist that urge.
Once you incorporate your emergency stockpile into your daily life, like we used to do every winter, it will be much more manageable. You’ll get used to it.
Now that I have my emergency stockpile up and running, what I find myself saying more and more often is “I am lucky I have it!! I don’t need to go shopping now.” What I mean by this is, often when I need an ingredient for a meal, instead of going to the store for it, I simply pick it up from my emergency stockpile and use it. If I think “lucky!” a lot, for a specific item, it means I use that item enough to justify stocking up on more of it for my emergency stockpile. When you find yourself saying the same thing, “lucky!,” I recommend prioritizing those specific, lucky food items. The amount of your lucky items in your stockpile will increase. Eventually, you will be able to manage your emergency food and the food for your daily life, harmoniously, without waste. Preparing for an emergency is not a one-time thing, it’s an ongoing process. You don’t just prepare it and then you’re done, you live with the stockpile for a lifetime. It becomes part of your lifestyle and your routine.
Some creatures need to eat a lot of food before they hibernate. How about humans? It used to be a way of life: our ancestors had prepare for the long, cold winter, every year. Nowadays however, we are not at all afraid of the frigid winter season. In fact, we can eat watermelons all year round! Do you think that’s normal? I feel like I’m losing touch with my real, human skills, not to mention my basic animal sense. This may seem like off-topic crazy talk, but the point I’m trying to make is that you don’t want to treat your stockpile like a separate thing that’s only for emergencies. Once you incorporate your emergency stockpile into your daily life, like we used to do every winter, it will be much more manageable. You’ll get used to it.
If you spend a lot of money, a lot of time, or a lot of effort building and maintaining your emergency stockpile, you might not last very long. Expensive slogs are a real drag. Nobody would want to keep that up. So, I want you to move forward with your emergency stockpile smoothly, easily, and without difficulty. I want you to find lots of lucky food (“I am lucky, I have it!”) in your daily life.
Less, “That looks good!” and more, “I am lucky, I have it now.”
See you next time!
Before it’s too late, I am going to talk about family emergency communication plans, in my next post. It’s very important!!