Mike Marlow's Family Survival & Preparedness Blog

We’re all familiar with the story of “The Tortoise and the Hare.” I think it’s a perfect illustration of how to look at our preparedness plans and goals. The tortoise didn’t look like he was getting much done at first, but slowly & methodically he was able to keep working his plan until he got to his goal. If we have a plan in place, and keep working that plan, we can achieve our goals as well.

Whether you are brand new to preparedness, or if you’ve been at it awhile, you should ask yourself a few questions. First – what is your goal? What is it that you are trying to achieve? If your goal is to make a fully stocked “bug out bag” for each member of your family, and you’d like to have that done in a month, then make a plan on how you are going to get that done. If you have a much larger goal, like perhaps obtaining enough food storage to feed your family for 3 months, and you’d like to have it all done by the end of the year. Make a plan. Figure out how much extra food you will need to buy each week, or each month to get to your goal.

The goal has to come first. You need to know where you’re going before you head out. If you don’t, you might end up someplace that you don’t want to be. Your goals are your business. Your plan is your business. Once you have them in place, do a little bit each week, or each month toward that goal. If you consistently work your plan, you can achieve big things. I’m not an expert on goals. I’m not a personal development coach. If you need help in that area, there are a lot of books, & articles on the web that’ll help you more than I can.

What I can try to help you with are some ideas on small things you can do to work toward your preparedness goals.  Today I’m beginning a series of posts on  just getting five dollars worth of preps at a time. Every Friday, I’ll put up a new post on what I found for five bucks that you could get to help you work toward being more prepared. Maybe something for your bug-out bag, your car, your pantry – who knows? We’ll see what I can come up with. These will all be things to put back for preparedness, not for everyday use. You certainly wouldn’t need to buy the same things I buy. Hopefully it will give you some ideas, and inspire you to set some goals of your own, & work toward them.

For the first installment, I stopped the “Dollar Tree” store. If you’ve never been in one before, everything in the store is $1. I saw all kinds of things in there that would be good for inexpensive preps, but I limited this purchase to $5.

I got:

• 2- 25 oz. aluminum water bottles – besides the obvious use of carrying water, you can use the bottles to heat water in, or check out this video on how to make a cool alcohol stove that’s a lot more heavy duty than the ones made from pop cans. STOVE …
• A box of 15 – 1 gallon size zipper seal freezer bags – these can be used to carry water, to keep other items dry (phone, maps, etc), put them on your feet under your shoes to keep your feet dry…
• A box of 8 – 113L drawstring-type garbage bags – an emergency poncho, keep your pack or  bed roll dry, keep firewood dry, hang up high in a tree to keep animals out of food/trash…
• A box of heavy duty aluminum foil (27 sq. ft) – you can cook in it, I use it when camping for scrubbing my cast iron cookware, you can use it to make a container to hold water for drinking or cooking…

For more great ideas of how these items (& a lot more) can be useful to you, check out this post on the Survivalist Boards: HERE

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to check out the new recipe I added yesterday for Marisa’s Ham and Potato Soup! Subscribe to the site to get all the latest updates via email, as well as being able to participate in the community forums & groups. ^MM