How to Prep Without a Tin Foil Hat

 

"Tin Foil Hat" by James Provost is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Texas just went through a significant natural disaster. 

Though not as physically destructive to property as a hurricane or tornado (the usual natural disasters for this area) the big freeze of 2021 led to infrastructure failure,  and the deaths of several individuals because of hypothermia or complications of trying to stay warm without heat (turns out there is some skill involved with running a propane appliance indoors or safely having a fire in the fireplace- skills a lot of Texans have never had to practice before). 

Now that the freeze is over, we are still struggling with the effects. Food is scarce in many parts of the state, including in my community. Driving into town today, I passed by a line of cars at least a mile long waiting to get emergency food packages from the local food bank. People are still hurting. The grocery stores currently look like they did during the dawning days of the pandemic, when people rushed out to buy food, unsure of when they would be able to again. Lots of empty and item limited shelves. 

After what our country, and my state, has suffered in the past year or so, I think the idea of adopting a few long term preparations for disaster is now fairly evident common sense. There are a few things that most people can do that will allow them to weather extreme events without finding themselves having to wait for several hours in line for basic staples or suffer significant deprivation for an extended period of time. 

I don't recommend doing what I've done in the past and going on a deep solo dive into prepping websites unless you've already developed a strong BS filter and are willing to wade into a fair amount of crazy. Some (though not all) of these sites tend to be insanely right wing political, predominantly super conservative Calvinist Christian (complete with a predestination superiority complex), and tend to be crazy heavy on promoting expensive tools, gadgets, survival courses, and/or significant lifestyle overhauls involving routinely grinding your own flour out of bulk purchased grain (which you will store in huge 5 gallon food safe plastic buckets, preferably with a sealed bag liner) and installing a half acre garden and livestock pen in your back lot. 

This type of prepping I honestly consider a hobby, the same way other people are obsessed with fishing or re-building classic cars or quilting, but with a weird paranoid self-righteous obsession mixed in. It can be entertaining to browse these sites to rubberneck, as one might with a car wreck, and maybe pick up a few actually usable skills, but I recognize that few people share my oddly warped sense of fun in that regard. 

The type of prepping that I think is most useful is fairly easy to adopt and frugal. A lot of this is stuff that will save you money in the long run as well as make your family more secure, even if you don't have a long term power outage, job loss, or other catastrophe occur in the next couple years. It's worth noting also that a  healthy bank account is also a good prep. 

Here's some examples of what I consider to be worthwhile preps. They're (mostly) stuff that you can do and tell your neighbors about without them thinking you're crazy. Food, water, and fuel are the biggies that people wait hours in line for when this stuff happens, so that's what I'll be focusing on. 

I've divided these into "easy", "medium" and "hard". 

Easy

- Pick up a few extra basic canned or boxed goods next time you grocery shop, stuff that won't spoil. Don't buy pallets of stuff, or stuff that your family doesn't already eat-- just buy a couple boxes or cans more than you usually do and stick it on the shelf. Try to aim for having two weeks' worth of food in the house. 

- Refill empty (rinsed) vinegar and water bottles with water and store them under a sink or other cool dry place out of direct sunlight. Some people use milk, soda, or juice jugs as well, but opinions vary on if these are safe for long term storage due to previously having held a sugary liquid (bacteria likes sugar). We re-use milk jugs that we wash out with soap, but use your own best judgement on this. The totally safe thing would be not to use them. Never re-use a container that has held a poisonous chemical. Change out the water (dump and refill) every couple months. 

- Buy things in the sizes that are cheapest per ounce, not per container (you can either use a calculator to divide the price by the ounces listed on the package, or you can check the price on the shelf to see if it lists a per ounce price). These items are usually the larger containers (though not always). Your grocery bill will be more expensive than usual the first time or two you do this, but you'll spend less per month and over the course of the year AND have more food on hand in the house (use your best judgement if it's a perishable item you won't use up quickly).

- Make it a policy to always keep at least half a tank of fuel in your car. Fill up when you're near halfway, not empty. 

-Keep your propane grill canister full, and/or buy an extra one. 
 

Medium 

- Learn to cook without canned soup or sauce, and use simpler ingredients instead. Both of these things are significantly more expensive than the sum of their ingredients, and both can usually be subbed out pretty easily. This also frees up space in your pantry for ingredients that are more universally usable and cheaper, thus lowering your food bill and allowing you to purchase and store more food. Plain canned tomato sauce that has only tomatoes (as opposed to a jar of Prego) can be heated up, mixed with a few spices and some sauted onion and garlic, and served over pasta-- or the same ingredients could go towards an entirely different meal (chili or tomato soup or bean soup). Canned cream-of-whatever soup can usually be subbed out pretty well by making a simple bechamel sauce with some celery and onion sauted in the butter before you add the flour-- and it's also all made with ingredients you can use for other things. 
   This will make cooking slightly more time consuming the first couple of times you do it, but any time loss vanishes once you get a little more in practice. 

- Learn to cook with dried beans and rice. This is a cheap protein source that keeps without refrigeration, and can turn some leftover chopped up pork chops or some bits of ham into enough meat for another meal. 

- If you have an electric stove, or one that won't work if the power shuts off, purchase a camp stove and a few extra fuel canisters. One like this. This will allow you to cook even if the power shuts off, and is easier to deal with than a grill.  

- Buy a tent that will fit in your living room (This one is purely for surviving a blackout during extremely cold weather- it's a little on my mind lately). If the power goes out and you're without heat, a tent insulated with blankets on the top of it  (though not all the way down the sides- leave a way for air to get in) and crowded with your family and bedding will keep you warm enough to get through the night thanks to everyone's body heat (I got this tip from my brother-in-law from Wisconsin. I assume he knows what he's doing when it comes to cold weather). NEVER EVER EVER (EVER) put a heater or flame of any sort in a tent. Just don't do it. More people have died of carbon monoxide poisoning that way than you or I would care to know about. 

- Invest in a chest freezer. This is an expensive initial cost, but a full chest freezer will keep food frozen for at least a couple days without power (so long as you don't open it). This also allows you to take advantage of sales on meat and produce by freezing it for use at a later date, which in turn can help lower your food bill. We bought ours used: look into new ones to form a baseline for a good bargain would be, and then check out the used item market in your area (Facebook Marketplace has made this much easier than it used to be).

- Learn how to hand wash clothes.  During this past blackout, I washed ours with a small trashcan and a plunger, others have told me they've used their bathtub and walked on the clothes to agitate them.  Wring them out as best you can, and then line dry. If you're ever in a blackout situation for more than a couple days, clean clothes can be a major morale booster. 

- Use YouTube or library books to learn some basic home upkeep skills. Simple plumbing, wood working repairs, etc. Knowing these skills helps you know how to respond when and if something breaks (like water lines in a freeze), and gives you a bank of knowledge to draw on that can help you creatively problem solve when and if the need arises. 

Hard

These are almost all skills that necessitate a significant investment and/or a lifestyle change of some sort. They're also all things that you need to already know how to do well in advance of a disaster. This is where you start to get into "hardcore" prepping. I do them because I enjoy them and because they seem to be a good fit for providing for my family-- use your own discretion on whether or not they would be a good investment for you.  

- Learn how to can with a pressure canner. This will allow you to put up food in a way that is non-perishable and cheaper (after the initial investment) than buying the same products from the store. This is one of those things that is intimidating until you've done it a couple times, then it seems easy. We save bones from meals in the freezer, then make a batch of broth with them once we have a full gallon bag- about once every two months. It allows us to make the most of the cheap bone-in cuts of meat we buy, and is much cheaper and healthier than buying broth or bullion from the store. We've also canned produce from the garden or sudden gluts of bruised apples or pears on clearance from the supermarket (mmm....apple butter). 

- Start a garden. This one can start small with a container garden on a porch or balcony, you don't have to jump right into digging up your yard. If you can manage to learn to do it well though, it can substantially supplement and enhance your food supply (I recommend an organic gardening program-- it's much easier to find free manure and straw than free chemical fertilizer and pesticides). 

- Keep chickens. It turns out that chicken feed is much easier to store than fresh eggs are and that they'll eat your food scraps. Over the course of the past year or so as the grocery stores have been unreliable, I've breathed a sigh of relief that we at least still had eggs. There's a bit of a learning curve on learning how to keep them, and if you buy them as chicks than you'll have them several months before they start to return on your investment, but it's been largely worth it for us. If you live in the city or in a town, check and see if they'll let you keep hens. In the city closest to me, the law is seven hens, no roosters allowed (no roosters needed for eggs, and unless you plan to breed, they're more trouble than they're worth anyway). 

- Diversify your power sources. If you're all electric (stove, heater, etc), then invest in a gas stove or propane heater or water heater. There's a reason "don't put all your eggs in one basket" is a popular saying-- it's true. This is also something that can be done secondhand if you're open to it. Our stove is one we found on the side of the road with a "free" sign on it that my husband fixed up, and our large propane tank was one our neighbor didn't want any more that we refurbished ourselves. 


Even the "easy" things on this list can help you be more prepared if and when life throws you a curve ball. Living your life in a way that allows leeway for minor (or not so minor) disasters can lend you a bit more peace of mind, and we've found living our life this way to be very much worth it. 

It's not about living in fear, or being forever certain that the boogyman is about to jump out. It's about allowing ourselves a little more wiggle room, so that we don't have to fear as much.