Since September is National Preparedness Month it is the perfect time to focus on the safety of your family.  If you have not started preparing yet or you are new to preparing your family from most of the fifty disaster types, this post will describe how to get started and how to grow or expand your family’s preparedness level.

So, what are the ‘Big Three?  They are (in order of importance) water, food, and comfort supplies.  According to preparedness experts and government agencies, having enough water, food and comfort items for three days makes up the ‘big three.’  If you are short of time and/or money, we suggest that you start small.  Your first objective should be to identify missing items in the big three categories that will last your family for three days.  Take 10-15 minutes to write down an inventory of what you already have in your pantry or home.  Then write down the items that are missing from the recommended list of items.  Our website (https://family-preparedness.com/tiny-courses-main-menu/) has a free tiny course that describes the items you should have on hand and includes a worksheet to help you take your inventory.

The second objective is to gather or purchase the missing items from the water and food sections of your inventory worksheet.  They will be listed in the ‘To be Purchased’ column.  Go to your local store and purchase those missing items.  Our assumption is that this objective should take an hour or less.

The third and last objective would be to gather the comfort items you have on hand and then purchase those comfort items you do not have on hand from your local stores.  These comfort items categories involve backup supplies for power, heat, and medical items.  Here is a snapshot of those items from the comfort section of the same worksheet:

Gathering these comfort items may take you a day or if you have to purchase some of the items from Amazon or another source, may be an extra day or two.  Bottom line is that completing these three objectives within a week will take little of your time and a small amount of your finances.  If you cannot afford all of the recommended items within that time frame, we suggest you add a few missing items in the following weeks or two to complete your preparedness goal.  Once you have gathered these items, you will be one of those families that are prepared for most disasters that require you to shelter in your home.  We urge you to become one of those 30% of families that are prepared for disasters and not one of the 70% of families that have not even started preparing for a disaster.

The webpages on our website at https://family-preparedness.com has a number of free resources to help you gather the knowledge and advice to prepare your family for disasters.  We also have inexpensive Tiny Courses for only $27 that provide your family with detailed information on a number of disaster subjects in two categories: Preparedness courses and specific Disaster courses.  You can find those courses on our tiny course’s webpage here.  Most of the tiny courses take 10 minutes or less to complete a course.

It is never too late to start preparing for disasters.  Disasters are coming more often and they are becoming more intense.   This is an opportunity as a beginning prepper to move from unprepared to a safer and more protected family, so take our recommendation and slowly build your safety resources.  You will be glad you did and have a better feeling of safety!