Hi friends! Julie here! It’s been awhile. As you know a couple of years ago I stepped away from running Food Storage Made Easy with Jodi to have more time with my growing boys and to work on some other projects with my husband’s business. Jodi took over and has been keeping me posted on your preps and I have missed you. Even though I stepped away from the website I never stepped away from preparedness and sure feel grateful about that right now. Here’s a little pic of my family now. My oldest was 18 months old in our first water blog posts and now he’s in middle school!

I asked Jodi how things were going and she’s so busy right now with the website, managing her crazy active preparedness facebook group, getting ENGAGED, and keeping up with her family as a single mom now trying to homeschool four kids! I told her I had some thoughts I would be happy to share as a guest post! So here I am. The cobwebs have been dusted off my keyboard and I’m ready to get back at it for a short little while with you.

First off, congratulations for having taken preparedness seriously. I’m sure none of us could have imagined what is happening right now or what may happen in the near future. Stay calm and carry-on. Here are some coronavirus tips and tricks I have been thinking about that I wanted to share.

MEAL PLAN

Maybe you’ve always been a meal planner, maybe you haven’t. While most of the world is limiting their trips out of their house it would be a good idea to limit the times you need to go to a grocery store. There are also grocery pick-up options that are scheduling many days in advance so you need to plan ahead regardless. You’ll also need back-up plans for out of stock inventory.

I would recommend planning at least two weeks out at a time. Look at all the food you already have and decide to make meals from there. If there are items you need make sure you get as many of them in as few trips to the store as possible. Here is a simple meal planning weekly sheet you can use, along with an inventory sheet of what you have in your storage and what you might need from a store.

KEEP THE “I TOLD YOU SO’S” TO YOURSELF

Ok, you can all secretly and silently have a little “I told you so” party if you want. We know a lot of people who prepare have been cast as crazy, doomsday nut jobs! While it may feel nice to know that you weren’t crazy all this time, no one really needs to hear it. People are stressed, overwhelmed, and downright overloaded with information. What people really need is to know that when this is over their “prepper” friends are there to help. If they’ve been told I TOLD YOU SO, they won’t want to come to you for help in the future. Part of the beauty of the preparedness world is that we all actually want everyone else to take these things seriously. They’ll listen to you a little bit more. Just don’t overwhelm them right now.

LEARN FROM THIS

If you’ve been around for awhile you know every fall we do a 7 Day Challenge where we practice certain emergencies and role play them in our homes. Learning from these mock-emergencies is super helpful. Learning from a real crisis will be even more helpful. While you think you might remember everything, you’ll probably forget a lot. So here is a sheet you can print out and put on your fridge to help you keep track of things you may want to remember in the future. Maybe you can’t buy all the things now, but what do you wish you would have had? (Toilet Paper?). What things do you think you might want to do? (Like filling water barrels? Even if we still have water for now). What skills do you want to learn? (How to home school without losing your mind?)

YOU DO YOU!

Many of you have families at home, kids to deal with, stress to manage. If you’re looking around on social media there are 100 different ways people are managing their new schedules and life. Some like routine, others don’t. Just take a deep breath each day and decide what your family needs and take advantage of the opportunity you have to be more present and intentional without all the outside distractions.

In my family we did this little game plan. It allows for flexibility, but structure. I have one kid asking me to tell him what the schedule is for the next day each night, and another kid who thinks this is the best and is completely capable of going with the flow. If you’re looking for a way to make a custom game plan I have ideas here:

PREPAREDNESS FOR KIDS

If you’re looking for ideas of things to do with your kids we wanted to remind you of a workbook we put together a while back. It’s full of skills that would be good to have when they are all grown up. We actually asked you our readers to contribute your ideas, so this is a great resource! Pick an item or two for them to work on each day to supplement their school work and your kids just may be a little MORE prepared by the end of this adventure.

Fell free to add to this workbook and make it your own. Items to learn include things your kids may learn at school, scouts, church, and most importantly, the home! The workbook contains the following sections:

• Money/budgeting
• Cooking
• Gardening/preservation
• Cleaning
• Tools
• Sewing/clothes
• Mechanics/car safety
• Plumbing
• Communication
• Frugality
• Eprep/camping
• First aid
• Hunting/fishing
• Physical health
• Computer/electronics
• Physical health
• Spirituality

So there are some of my thoughts for now. I was telling Jodi today that I miss you guys. We worked together to become prepared for 10 years and now that a lot of us are really using some of our preparedness skills and items I was feeling like I was missing you. I hope you are well and keep calm. All the best to you and your family,

Love,

Julie

-Jodi Weiss Schroeder
http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net