Disjointed Thoughts

Not actually Erin.

Picture by KJ Photography.

Used with permission.

Two very random thoughts whose only connection is "they pertain to prepping" as I try to get my brain to cooperate. 

The Simplest and Best Prepping Tip Ever

Yes, that's a bold claim, but I'm prepared to defend my position. I say this because this idea is so simple that I just assumed everyone did things this way, but apparently some folks don't and when I mention it I'm looked like I just invented something brilliant.  Ready? 

Always have a second, unopened container of whatever non-perishable items you frequently use, so that when you empty the old container you have a new one ready to go.

It's wordy, yes. I couldn't think of a pithier way to say it, although I imagine there's such a way of saying it. And it would likely work on perishable items, too, if you're going through them quickly enough and you have the storage room for them. 

Let's use coffee as an example, since it stores well and people who drink coffee (like me) are going to be grouchy if they wake up one morning and their supply is gone because they forgot to put "coffee" on the grocery list. What you do is you buy TWO packages of coffee the next time you go grocery shopping, and the second package goes into your pantry. When you deplete the first package, you have a second package right there ready to be used without interruption. Then, before you throw that first package away, add "coffee" to your grocery list that week. This ensures that you will always have a secondary coffee supply because you are replacing the backup, not the primary. 

This tip will obviously not work in every case. Sometimes an item is used so rarely that it doesn't need an immediate backup. Sometimes (like with some food items) the backup will expire before you finish consuming the primary. Perhaps the item is bulky enough (such as a gallon jug of milk) that there's no room to store a backup. 

Despite all this, I've found this practice to be exceptionally helpful to me, especially in the case of hygiene and over the counter medicine: antihistamine tablets (this may require a family member to buy the second package if they contain decongestant ingredients), distilled water for my CPAP, and shampoo are just a few supplies that I have stashed to prevent interruption. If I menstruated, I'd treat tampons and sanitary pads exactly the same way. 

This is quite naturally the basis for the Prepper's Deep Pantry where you stock up well in advance and use those items on a first in, first out basis. However, some people lack the money or the storage space to lay in months' worth of supplies at a time, and this is an excellent interim step towards that goal. 

Doom Fixation

I was on a "Bug In or Bug Out?" panel last month, and after every single panelist declared "It's almost always better to bug in than out", the questions quickly turned to preparing for the big, "sexy" catastrophes like grid failure, total anarchy from loss of rule of law, growing all your food because the economy has collapsed, etc. and yet nothing about smaller and more likelier disasters such as hurricanes, wildfires, electrical failure during the winter, etc.

This is very common in prepping circles but I'm convinced that it applies to more than prepping. The human mind seems obsessed with the spectacular-yet-unlikely over the probable-but-mundane. I call this doom fixation, and I haven't yet fully figured out the "why" of it all. It's at least partly the allure of novelty, and there's probably some "the mundane is boring" as well, but I think there's also just something in the human brain that is wired to be obsessed with the huge and powerful, no matter how unlikely. This fascination explains a lot about our love of religion, celebrities, and big government.

If I had to guess, I'd say it's a holdover from our paleolithic ancestors who hunted megafauna during the last ice age, but I have no real supporting evidence for it other than "lots of other human weirdness can be explained by prehistoric conditions, so this is probably the result of that as well. 

My point of this is that if you are aware of your brain's "caveman tendencies", you can take them into account and compensate for them. If you're reading this blog then you're already on that path, because Blue Collar Prepping is about preparing for the small, personal tragedies that affect individuals and families over doomsday prepping. 

As always, stay prepped or get wrecked.