Prepping isn’t hard

Prepping isn’t really that hard. You look at what you need to do and you buy what you require to meet that need or you buy the components and build it or you simply build it from what you have available. Easy really.

The difficult part of it though is prioritising. None of us have the finances to just go out and buy what we need and store it away and get someone to prepare a plan for activation. We have to list all our items and decide what is the most important out of hundreds of like items we need and get that. We know that if anything happens while we are building our preps we need to make do with what we have. We also know that many items are perishable and we need to ensure that we keep an eye on that. We don’t have a store system to keep track of our perishables nor can we simply afford to just discard items we have bought that are out of date. To make matters worse when we start out we don’t really know what we need. We have to learn, and this is where sites like this come in.

It is a pickle alright but in reality it is self inflicted. It’s because we start off by looking at prepping as a separate task to living. It isn’t and when you look at it in a different way it becomes easier, whoa there, I said easier, because we still are not rich. Many from foreign climates look at living as having enough food and supplies to keep them going for six months. Trappers in Alaska and Canada buy six months worth of food and go away for that period. That is living to them. Here despite the situation we still have things easy and we waste so much. We need to reconsider what we are doing and make changes. Simple ones we can afford and that we can do.

For example we can simply buy some extra groceries. I’m not a lover of the extra tin but if that is what you have to do. I’m more inclined to buy as much as I can from a weeks shopping. Thus if the shopping is £15 and you have £20 spend the extra £5 buying a third of what you have in the trolley. Rounding down of course and making a note of what you have missed. Catching up next week. If you see non perishables in car boot sales or in the market or shops on sale buy what you can afford. If you see perishables on sale try and buy a limited amount even if it is not their turn but don’t go overboard. That way you slowly build up what you use and in a way that is usable. Plus because we are not buying anything specifically for prepping we are not wasting anything. At the very worse we could just stop buying and consume our stores with no waste.

It’s not even prepping it is just shopping and putting aside a little. Even non preppers do this and many households who do not prepare have several weeks worth of food in their pantry. Your grandparents did this automatically because they were used to shortages and didn’t want to repeat the situation because they didn’t like it. We haven’t hit that learning experience.

Don’t forget though, things that are for prepping and we take for granted because of utilities. Water, few of us buy any of that. As a prepper we must so we must remember we need to buy things exclusively for prepping. We can’t avoid this so we must ensure it goes on our shopping list. Items like gas, camping stoves, torches, etc. must be bought for when power is out and we need to plan those.

Perhaps the easiest way is to split up your spare money and spend 80% of it on repeat shopping and daily items while 20% goes towards prepper only items. That way it is a minimal impact and prioritisation can be by need.

Then as we move on and learn we refine what we need as our knowledge increases. For example; Pedal bikes for transport rather than thinking the car will always be available.

The area that you will need to concentrate on and the area you will have difficulty hiding is mental. You will need to plan, organise and monitor your stores while at the same time you need to learn how to start fires, make soup from snails and a million and one other things. Ideally, involving your family in the process, including making and consumption. If you are living that way it is much easier.

Many are living like this, particularly the rural poor and I want to be one of those. Well not poor of course.

So don’t over think prepping and worry about it. Just do it. As you build your basic stores you can reprioritise and buy other items but you need the basic first and those basics are no more than the trapper having six months worth of food for living.

It’s never too late to start and we can all do it. Start small, start smart and don’t give your family pain. They will make it not worth your while and you will falter.