I am new but at the same time, not new to prepping. By that I mean that even before I came across the prepper community, I was often thinking about how to be prepared for times when society didn't function as well as it does now. Maybe it was all the science fiction I read as a teenager.
But most of the preparations I did were mental though, as in acquiring skills and increasing my knowledge. I didn't start doing any physical preparations until I bought my first house however. That was a few years ago, and so I've gotten a few things ready and performed many tests to see what worked and what didn't work for me and my family.
So in this first post about my preps, there are a number of items that I can cover but I decided to start with two basic things that should be the starting point of any prepper. One will be a physical preparation, and the other a mental preparation.
Physical Prep #1 - Water Storage
One of the most important and easiest things to acquire is extra water. And that's exactly what I did. I went out and bought a whole bunch of water jugs from the grocery store. Enough to last a few days for me and my family for drinking and to do basic tasks like washing dishes and hands. If you need help figuring out how much that might be for your household, you can take a look at my water storage post.
Now, I am somewhat more ready than that at this point, but that is the first thing that I did. Whether you are in a large house or even in an apartment, having stored water on hand is very important an easy to do, at least a short term emergency supply.
Skill Prep #1 - Growing Food
Choosing this wasn't really a deliberate decision when I started. My mother had a garden when I was growing up and when I got into my first house, it was something that felt natural for me to do as well. Part of it was to save on food costs, part of it was to be able to have access to fresh vegetables, and partly because I think I like playing with dirt.
And so I choose to recommend this skill prep as one of the first to learn for a few different reasons. As mentioned before, growing food has many positive qualities associated with it, fresh vegetables, lower grocery bills, but also getting outside in the fresh air, and doing some light physical work is healthy for the body and reduces stress. So even if you never need to use farming or gardening for survival food, it's just something that has so many other great benefits as well.
Another reason why I mention growing food is because it's something that seems quite easy, but can be quite difficult when you start getting into the details. That's because you don't have control of all the factors that nature throws at you. And it seems that every season teaches you something new.
It's been about 6 years now that I've had a garden and I've learned plenty about dealing with weather and animals (those squirrels!!), but also how to collect, preserve, and germinate seeds, how to best support tomato plants, cucumbers and beans, and also getting the supplies you need to do those things.
By getting the practice now, you'll be that much more experienced when or if you really need to rely on this skill for more than just a practical hobby.
So that's about it for my first prep post. Not much detail, I know, but I am just going over some of the first things that I did when I started, that I think are good first steps that any new prepper should be doing. In the future I'll get into some more specific projects that I am working on.
