Be Prepared...

The prophets have told us for a long time to be prepared.  We should get out of debt.  We need a 3 month supply of food and then work on a years supply.  We should have a good amount of savings.  etc. 

Well, I've been trying for many years to work on that and haven't really gotten anywhere.  The closest I got was when we were in St. George and I was at the height of my couponing.  But now we're in tornado country.  I've heard too many horror stories about losing everything because people weren't prepared.  Just last year when tornadoes hit Joplin, MO some of the people who were hit were prepared and therefore didn't suffer quite as much.  A few families had a year's supply and were actually able to share with neighbors and friends to help everyone get through.  Granted, if your home is destroyed by a tornado, your food storage is just as likely to go up with your house, but you never know.  Simple things like having your water lines damaged so you have no access to water would be devestating if you didn't have water stored.  So my basic efforts lately have been to start with water.  I've been gathering 2 liter bottles since Christmas.  They were harder to gather than I thought - especially as we don't just go buy 2 liters every day.  But each week as the garbage went out I'd drive around our neighborhood and glance in each recycling bin to spot bottles that would work.  Then one day I hit the jackpot.

 Someone had filled two garbage bags full of squished 2 liter bottles.  I happily grabbed them and took them home for repairs.  Michael just laughed.  I don't think he knew what to do with me at that point.  I washed each out, let them sit in bleach water, filled them up and labeled them.  Now I don't have enough room in the basement to put all of them!  But we have quadrupled the amount of water storage that we used to have.  We might have a two week supply for the family now????

I'll continue to work on this, but I was very excited.