Category Archives: Foundational

The area of self-reliance covering the most basic needs necessary to sustain life, as well as the transition into more secure living.

Emergency preparedness for your pet

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Many people know about 72-hour kits and have them for themselves and their family in case of an emergency evacuation. But what about your pet? Are you prepared to take care of your pet if you are forced to leave your home for several days? They need an emergency evacuation kit as well. Some things to consider:

– Food: This is most obvious, and easily arranged. Ziploc bags with enough food for several days can be prepared quite easily.
– Bathroom: This can be a little more difficult to manage, but there are a few options.
– Dogs: Keep a good supply of plastic bags (grocery bags or smaller-size garbage bags) handy to serve as “pooper scoopers”. Additionally or alternately, a stack of old newspapers can also come in handy.
– Cats: A low box with the top removed, or a plastic paint roller tray, filled with an inch or two of litter can work in a pinch. Keep the litter in a ziplock bag right along with the container and you’re ready to go.
– Medicine: If you pet takes any regular medicine or other treatments, keep a small supply set aside for emergencies.
– Comfort items: Retired toys or blankets that they are familiar with can help them feel more at home in unfamiliar surroundings and give them something to do.
– Shelter: Keep a pet carrier of the appropriate (or larger) size handy to grab if you need to evacuate. Most pets deal better with unfamiliar situations or places when confined in a familiar carrier. Other people where you evacuate will also appreciate you keeping your pet controlled.
– Spare leash: Keep a leash handy for taking your pet for walks when permitted.

Your pet is like one of your family, yet can far too often be overlooked when making emergency preparedness plans. Take some time to make sure their needs are accounted for as well, and everyone will be much happier.

Survival gardening

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Our local garden columnist recently recommended a new book by writer, gardener, and scientist Carol Deppe, entitled “The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times”. I have not had a chance to read this book yet (its a bit more than I can afford both money- and time-wise right now), but the review raises some rather interesting points.

The book makes mention of five specific crops needed for health and survival: potatoes, corn, beans, squash, and eggs. These foods are not included in the current “super-food” craze, but there is a reason they are considered staples. You can eat quite well for quite a long time on just these foods.

More importantly, the book discusses how to collect and use seeds, as it won’t be easy to obtain new seeds during a long-term period of economic instability. Most seeds used today are hybrids, and will not likely continue to breed true under uncontrolled garden conditions. Any experienced gardener knows that seeds will only keep reliably for a few years, so new sources of seeds are necessary for long-term sustainability. The book covers other survival contingencies as well, such as what foods store well in the absence of refrigeration.

I plan to get a copy of this book someday, as it sounds like a good source of information and should give one lots to think about. In the mean time, has anyone else out there read this book? Would you be willing to do a guest post book review on it? Contact me in the comments or by email at thom@thomstratton.com.

Practical Christmas gifts

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When I moved out on my own my parents gave me a going-away present; a basic tool kit, with a small hammer, tape measure, pliers, box knife, and a adjustable screwdriver. Those simple tools saw a lot of use. Though in the years since then my tool collection has grown considerably and I’ve gone through several larger toolboxes (and still don’t have one big enough), I still have some of those original tools. They were a godsend on many occasions.

I also picked up for myself a basic car safety kit. It’s contents have long since been scattered to the four winds, but I believe it included jumper cables, a tire pressure gauge, a small first aid kit, and some reflective hazard markers. I know the jumper cables at least came in handy–until I loaned them to someone and never saw them again.

I believe parents should consider giving one or both of these simple kits to their grown or near-grown kids. More importantly, they should make sure they know how to use each item in them.

I remember a time in college (stop me if I’ve told this story before) when our church group was heading from one activity to another. Along the way I noticed my tire had gone flat, so I pulled off into a nearby parking lot to change it. Pretty soon a fair number of girls from the group had stopped–initially to see if I was okay, and before long to watch me work. None of them had ever seen someone change a tire before and wanted to see how it was done.

As ego-boosting as that was for me, I can’t help but think that some fathers had been negligent in their duty. Possibly even more important than teaching their sons to change a tire would be teaching their daughters. The last thing I’ve ever want for my daughter, at any age, is for her to be stuck on the side of the road somewhere, all alone, unable to change a flat tire. As soon as she’s old enough to drive I intend to teach her that and a few other basic car repair/maintenance tasks.

And yes, I’ll teach my sons, too. If they’re anything like their dad, the automotive tinkering gene is recessive, and such things won’t just come naturally. They’ll need to know how to check the oil, jump the battery, check air pressure, etc. And they’ll need to know where the tool and emergency kits are in each vehicle. And when they do leave home, it’ll be with tool kits of their own.

Emergency dental care

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Does your dentist always send you home with a free toothbrush, a sample tube of toothpaste, and a sample spool of dental floss after each checkup like mine? What do you do with them? If you’re just throwing them away, make I recommend you put them into your emergency evacuation (72-hour) kit? If you ever need to evacuate for a time you’ll have brand new items, usually with more than enough of each to get you through the crisis. And it’s free (sort of)!

The lure of "bulk"

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As a general rule, buying bulk is a good way to save money. But one has to be careful. Take for example my recent toilet paper shopping for my business. We have a regular catalog for a business supplies, so I first looked there. We could buy TP by the case, getting a case of 96 rolls for about $50. Sounds good.

But then I compared it with our household brand. We get that stuff in packs of 24 rolls for about $4.80. That’s about 20 cents compared to about 50 cents in the bulk case. Not so great. But then I remembered that there are different sizes of rolls. I quickly checked the stuff we use at home, and it worked out to 88 square feet per roll. Armed with that information I checked the bulk stuff again. They didn’t give any figures on square footage.

Comparing apples and oranges–the bane of bargain shopping.

Fortunately they did list sheets per roll, and so did our household brand. It turns out the bulk stuff has about 500 sheets per roll, whereas the household stuff only has about 175. Simple math reveals that with the bulk stuff you’re paying about .112 cents per sheet, where the household TP comes in at .114 cents per sheet. Woo. Big difference. You’re not really saving much going bulk in this case.

Now the supply catalog gives even bigger discounts the more cases you buy, but we’re a small business. It’ll probably take us a year to use up the entire case. It’s worth it to always have some on hand–we can’t exactly close the shop while we run to the store for more TP–but really, it’s not that much of a savings.

Far too often that’s how it is buying bulk. Rather than really providing savings, they will mask information to make it only look like you’re getting more for your money. They make it as hard to compare with the “regular” quantities as they can. You may save some money, but you have to buy a lot before you really start to see any significant savings.

Do your homework and your math. There are real deals out there. But now that bulk is big business, it’s still very much “Let the buyer beware.”

Online task lists

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I end up carrying around several notebooks with me at any given time, mainly because I grab whatever is near when I plan, and end up with task lists spread between several notebooks. I’ve been thinking that it’s time to consolidate somehow, and have been wondering if there isn’t some free tool out there to help me.

Today I did some checking (I finally looked at one of my task lists) online and ended up trying out two task list services. The first was Keeyoo. It’s okay, but not very feature-rich. For example, I didn’t see any obvious way to reorder my task categories, so they would always be in the same order I thought of them. Not necessarily a big problem, but I could see it making it harder for me to use the system down the road.

It also didn’t anticipate how I think. For example, if I created a task for which there was no appropriate category I’d have to leave the task uncategorized while I go create a category for it. I’d then have to go back and assign that category to that task. A lot of trouble, really, at least in the setting-up phase.

Pretty soon I found myself wanting to go try something else before I put too much more work into getting my task list on Keeyoo, just in case there was something better. There was. Its’ called Toodledo. This one is also free, but includes some premium features that you have to pay for. But right away I could see this one was much better thought through. Their task entry window has a “enter multiple tasks” setting where you can create multiple tasks in one go, so long as they are uncategorized or in a single category. Just enter a new task on each line in the window. Very slick.

Even better, I quickly found that when creating a task, if the category (they call them folders) you need doesn’t exist you can create one right then and there before you complete creating the task. Perfect. And whereas Keeyoo lumped all tasks into a single list, or required you to click a tab off to the side, Toodledoo can group tasks in the main list, and order them any way you want. You can also change the order of your folders to either a custom order or simply alphabetical.

Another biggie is the ability to create “contexts”. A context is just that–the context in which you will do that task. Is it something you can only do in front of your computer, or is it something outside in the yard? Do you need to be near a phone, or is it an errand that needs to be done while you’re away from home? You decide, and you can group your lists by context to help you remember more easily to do things when you’re in that context.

Hands down, Toodledoo is the better system. It does a lot, and yet I can already see myself using the paid features, like the ability to create chains of tasks in a common goal or project. The remaining question is whether or not I’ll use it any more or more effectively than I do my paper system. I find myself frequently at a computer, so the ability to have my list anywhere I am is great. But it may not be so great if I forget to add items that come up while I’m somewhere else, say in the car, out in the garden, or at church–or my personal font of inspiration, the shower.

Yes, it appears to sync to mobile devices quite easily. No, I don’t have one, and don’t really want one yet.

So anyway, wish me luck. I’m going to try Toodledoo for awhile and see how well it works for me. If I remember I’ll report back in a month or so.

Roughing it – or not

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Last year our kids developed an interest in camping, so we thought we’d try it–in the back yard. They had a blast. We vowed never again. Of course time heals all wounds, or soothes all stiff muscles, and we tried it again last week. My conclusion? We are not ready to rough it. Or rather, we’re not prepared to make roughing it less rough.

For one thing, all we really have is a tent. The kids, who are young and flexible, sleep on blankets. We tried using an air mattress this last time, but it leaked, so by morning we were sleeping on the ground and in a banana shape. And, to be honest, sleeping isn’t entirely accurate for the waking-up-every-half-an-hour I did all night.

We need decent sleeping bags at the least. We had quilts, and it didn’t colder than the 60’s, but we were all chilled in the morning. Sleeping bags would likely have provided more padding than our blankets and quilts, too.

We need the means to cook outside. We ate all our meals in the house and only slept outside. We need a cook stove or something at the very least.

We had a couple flashlights, but nothing more than that. And that was rough enough, as our dog loves to chase flashlight beams. The mere presence of flashlights made her crazy and try to jump all over sleeping people. I’m hoping a good lantern would provide much better light without making the dog nuts. That may be too much to hope for.

There are, of course, lots of other little items and amenities that we would need were we to try camping completely independently of our home. Even if we never try camping in the wilderness, even if we had to live in an evacuation camp we’d be in pretty bad shape. The fact that we can’t even camp comfortably in our own back yard is probably a good sign we’re not quite prepared in that area.

 

Long term storage: Non-food items

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Could this be the end?! Joan Crain’s Self Reliance Exchange series on long term storage seems to wrap up with a discussion of what non-food items to store.

I’m a big fan of this one. Whenever the prices are low on facial tissue we stock up. We’ve noticed in the past how every single box of kleenex in the house tends to run out about the same time. If we didn’t have our stockpile we’d be wiped out by the first cold to hit the family. Nothing is worse than having a runny nose and no kleenex around. Toilet paper just doesn’t cut it for long. And speaking of toilet paper, that’s another one you don’t want to run out of.

Cleaning products, on the other hand, is one we haven’t really considered. We get door-to-door salesmen through our neighborhood regularly, so we have a couple years supply of the latest and greatest all-purpose cleaner concentrates, but some of the others we really should keep a supply of on hand. Same goes for laundry detergent.

Of course all of this is great, but it all comes down to space. We don’t all have the space to store all the things we know we need to store. Finding a place to put it all where you can get at it easily and can rotate it conveniently–well, I can see why a lot of self reliance advocates want to build their own houses. It’s the only way to ensure you have the storage space you need.

 

The case for DIY

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And speaking of Self Reliance Exchange, there’s another excellent article there about gaining the knowledge to do many things yourself. The writer (DDFD) uses the example of his car, and how you can learn a lot about your car and how it works just doing some of the basic maintenance. He still leaves some of the more specialized tasks to professionals for safety reasons, but there are many maintenance tasks that can be done yourself.

This article hit home a bit for me, as this is one area I’ve given myself a pass on. While I know I could learn car maintenance, I’ve avoided it by promising that I’ll just learn some skills that mechanics need so I can barter. But DDFD’s argument that you can learn a lot about your car by working on it makes sense. I really should do more of that.

It’s not easy. I like my mechanic. I want to make sure he’s still around when I need him. But would it kill me (or him) if I did a few of things things myself at least a time or two? Probably not.