Japan, Preparedness

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So my younger sister, her hubby and 4 kids live in Japan. When I first heard about the earthquake, I was pretty worried. But for some reason, I thought they would be ok. What stressed me out a lot, was thinking about my sister's kids. My four little nephews, without warmth, light, normalcy and I couldn't imagine how stressed and scared they must be. I assumed they were being affected in some way but of course couldn't get through to them to find out to what extent. I prayed, I worried and I basically sat at my computer the entire day reading news reports, checking my email for word from them, listening to more news reports, checking my email, facebook, blogs etc. for word that they were ok.  That was just kind of the repeated pattern all day.


We eventually got a short email saying that they were safe, but as expected, without power, under a lot of stress and dealing with this crisis the best they could. I felt kind of helpless. As I found out they were short on batteries and candles, I wished I could get some of mine to them. It was really hard only getting occasional short messages and not being able to communicate regularly or help in any way.


By Saturday, I turned my stress into action. While I couldn't do anything more for the people of Japan than donate money for relief, I could work on getting my own affairs in order. (On a side note, any money donated to the L.D.S. church humanitarian aid fund goes directly to help those in need. 100% of it. I always donate this way because I know every penny of my money will go to helping the people and not paying administrator's salaries.)
Click: Donations for Humanitarian Aid for more info.


I'm grateful to have church leaders who have encouraged us for as long as I can remember to BE PREPARED. We are encouraged to have food, supplies and money saved in case of emergencies. Whether that emergency be the loss of employment, an earthquake, tsunami, wild fires, floods or whatever other craziness may come.


So by Saturday, I channeled my stress into organizing and inventorying our supplies. It felt SO good. I now have a much better idea of what we have and additional things we could use. My sister's blog posts from Japan have been great at showing what they have used, needed or wished they had more of.


Here are some pics of my newly organized food storage. Yes, I see I have an expired box of Corn Flakes on the shelf. What can I say, the kids didn't dig Corn Flakes as much as I had hoped. My family eats A LOT of cereal. Last week there was an amazing sale on cereal (between $1-$2 a box). I bought close to 100 boxes. With a shelf life of over a year, we will easily eat it all. Probably in the next 6 months. Like I said, we love cold cereal. You need to store what you will eat.

I found these magnet boards on clearance at Home Goods for $5 each. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them until Saturday. Hooray! I hung them on the wall in my food storage room. I don't know Excel well enough to make fancy spread sheets so I just made some rough ones on Microsoft Word. They helped me figure out how much I have and keep track of things I use so we can replace those items.

I hung a pen so we can mark things off as we use them. That way, when I go to the store, I can just look and see the items I need to stock back up on.

After all, any disaster would REALLY turn into a disaster if I was out of chocolate chips.

The hubby built me these food storage shelves. Pretty sweet eh?

The items in the white boxes are #10 cans of foods I canned at the local L.D.S. food cannery. Did you know that you don't have to be a member of the Mormon church to go can food there? They told me half of their patrons are not members of the church. Pretty cool. So, take your friends and neighbors and help them get prepared too!! Many of the items canned in this way will store for up to 30 years. We use and rotate ours but it's nice to know they'll last a long time.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to be without toilet paper either. I store lots of that along with soap, detergent, toothpaste and even deoderent.

At the top of the 'coat closet turned food storage closet' are our 72 hour kits.

There's one for each family member. They have things like: food, water, soap, t.p., blankets, a change of clothes, comfort items for my kids, CHOCOLATE, first aid stuff, medicine, hand warmers, etc.

When there were wild fires here and we were evacuated, we grabbed our 72 hour kits and threw them in the car. We didn't end up needing them but it was comforting to know they were ready.

Hearing about my sister's situation in Japan, I have such a testimony of our Prophet's council to be prepared. It's so interesting to me that while my sister's family is seemingly not going to need to live on their food storage for an extended period of time, they've been able to bless the lives of others BECAUSE THEY HAD FOOD STORAGE. Because they had food storage, they (and others) were able to donate three car loads of food and supplies to those in a neighboring town who have next to nothing right now. Pretty cool. My prayers continue to go out to the people of Japan.

So, my 6 faithful readers, do something today to get prepared!

xoxo

P.S.,  One more compelling reason to have emergency food and supplies before the emergency happens...
Click here for the story: Panic Buying Adds to Shortages After Japan Quake
My heart goes out to these people.