preparations

MAY 25 2012

I'm not the most prepared, with-it, or organized person. I'd say I pretty much tie for the least. But I did move 40,000 times in the last 10 years. Most of this post comes from moving and needing to be ready to move with little notice and figure out how to divide up our stuff.


June 1st marks the first day of hurricane season.
Houstonians are lucky to not have many tornadoes but we do have to be prepared for the chance hurricane.

This is my hurricane preparedness plan.

First things First
At the beginning of June I buy our case of water, check our batteries, and get a few extra cans of beans and peanut butter.
Done. I'm prepared and don't have to freak out in late August when there is a storm and the stores are swarmed with people.

Backup Backup Backup
People. All you people out there! You have to back up your files. We don't live in the age of photo albums and file cabinets anymore.

Get an external hard drive. You only need about 50-150 GB, unless you are a professional photographer, and if you are what are you doing reading my sad little blog?! When I download pictures from my memory card I put them on my computer and also my external, right away. Then once I've amassed a large amount of photos I burn them onto cds.

You can look into a cloud storage service. I find them a little creepy, I can't release my stuff into the world like that. Cloud storage for me is back up disks at my parents house. But I am just paranoid. If you aren't, they are pretty handy. They back up every night, and delete duplicate files so you aren't wasting space and you never have to think about an external hard drive or back up disks. Easy Peasy.
Just remember Big Brother is watching....

Emergency Bin!
I have three Emergency Bins.
One has our water, canned food, and batteries ect. It's also known as our camping bin.

Second is my keepsake bin.
Stuff is just stuff. But anything that I can't replace I keep in that bin.
Letters from David
Valentines from MeeMaw
Special photos & negatives
Various memories from childhood
Old journals
Back up disks!

It always stays in a bin, ready to go. This is a bin I've had for a while, it was my "It always travels with me" Bin. No matter what crazy move or how many trips or storage units, this bin rides with me in the car across country.

Third is our travel file cabinet.
This was our file cabinet for many years because I never got around to unpacking it.
It is just a file storage container with a handle. I can grab our files and drop them in very quickly. I have our super important stuff like birth certificates, social security, passports somewhere safe but I'm not going to say where. Big Brother reads my blog. But I'd suggest that you put it all together in a place you can grab and go super fast. However, it is replaceable so don't lose any sleep over it.

Remember EVERYONE
Lastly I keep our kitty carriers super easily accessible, I could find them in the pitch dark. We have back up meds & food for the cats in our hurricane bin since Rigby is on Rx everything! If your puppies or kitties need anything special, have it ready so you can scoop them up and run.

A friend of my mom's had to get out of her house in a split second cause flood waters were rising and the rescue boat was ready to go. So she stuffed her cat in a pillow case and ran. I'll admit I keep two extra pillow cases by the bed in case of a tornado or fire.


So that is it!
I'm paranoid.
And you are probably understanding my anxiety issues now. But really I don't have to worry about any of these things because we are prepared, and it doesn't take much time to get ready.  This is as far as my disaster preparedness goes.

And I feel like a smarty pants blogger cause I'm prepared for one thing really well and don't you all look up to me now? I'm beaming with pride!