(Continued from part 1. This concludes the article.)
As I wandered through my house trying to find the best place to create a second pantry I realized “I have way too much stuff.”
I have been astounded at how much my life has improved by starting to declutter my house. I still have a way to go to get to where I want to be, but even the first step of acknowledging “Yes, there is such a thing as too many spare computers and spare monitors and spare cables” lifts a burden off of me. Opening up space in my home office by ditching stuff that I have a near zero likelihood of ever using again and not filling it up with any other stuff is such a relief.
And decluttering other rooms gave me space to rearrange some things and now I have my emergency pantry where it is not difficult to get to (can’t be hard to get to or that violates the rule of making it part of a holistic routine) and also doesn’t cause stress on my wife.
I had so many phrases in my head like “But I might need it!” It’s been in a box unopened for the past twelve years. You can order it off of your favorite online retailer and get it delivered in two days if you really need it.
“But it might be worth something!” If you think it’s worth something, try Craigslist, NextDoor, or Facebook Marketplace. If someone will give you money for it, it’s worth something. Heck, even if they won’t give you money for it, they might just come and take it out of your house so you don’t even have to drive to your local thrift store to drop it off. And when else is your wife going to give you permission to post pictures of your junk online for the world to see? LIke, never… right?
Part of the process is making sure we’re making refinements for the scenarios that are truly important. Thinking through that, what kind of storage am I actually using for my emergency pantry?
The most important part about the physical makeup of the emergency pantry is that it is easily moveable. When preparing for an incoming hurricane (thankfully we get lots of warning these days) I need to pick it up and get it upstairs by myself easily. If I can’t do that, I haven’t made it flood-proof.
Note that I’m not going to buy something that can survive immersion. If I ever need that, it means that there is at least ten feet of water in my house and my emergency pantry is not something I’m going to be worried about any time soon. That’s when my two inexpensive inflatable kayaks and handful of life vests come into play with many prayers that either the Cajun Navy or the Coast Guard will be there to rescue me.
So I just ran to Home Depot and grabbed two plastic bins that I can comfortably carry up my stairwell by myself. I could get one really long bin that would take two people to get up the stairs and have my wife help me, but she has her own jobs in the imminent hurricane landfall” plan. If both of our kids end up at our house during a hurricane and we have to rely solely on the emergency pantry, we can eat comfortably for at least a week. Mostly comfortably, for two weeks.
Let’s Get Out of Here!
Everything I’ve mentioned so far indicates that I’m staying at home during a hurricane. That won’t always be true.
Hurricane Rita, Tropical Storm Allison, and Hurricane Harvey all ended up being relatively mild from a wind perspective when they came through Houston. Allison and Harvey were both incredibly severe not because of their strength, but because they both decided to sit for a spell and share all of the water they had picked up from the Gulf. I have no issues staying through another one of those. Hurricane Ike hit Galveston at about Cat 4 and blew through Houston, about 90 miles north, as a Cat 2 Hurricane. I don’t ever want to stay through one of those again. It was terrifying.
The final “big thing” in our First Most Important Thing before we move on to the next most important thing is being able to leave. Not bug out in a massive hurry, but leave in an orderly fashion that allows us to minimize the burden on whoever we end up staying with. What do we need to do today to make that happen seamlessly when we need it to?
I will be taking at least one of the two emergency pantries with me. Not because I think I’ll need it, but because it makes me less of a burden. Or at least feel like I’m less of a burden.
Cash is important as well. There’s the obvious need for cash if electricity and/or cell phone towers are down because credit cards cannot be processed. But less obvious because there are premiums that goods and services command during disasters that may demand cash. For example, during Hurricane Harvey the US Army Corps of Engineers released water from the Addics and Barker reservoirs9 leading to the flooding of thousands of homes that would otherwise not have been impacted. One of my best friends was included and instead of no water, he had six feet of water in his house. He quickly found a home that he could rent, but the owner of the home demanded a $5,000 cash deposit. That was an eye opener for him and for me as well.
I personally do not have the liquidity to maintain such a large stash of cash. But I can keep an amount in line with my lifestyle. And that has to go with me if I’m evacuating.
In the same storage and transport as the cash are the important personal documents that my family would need to prove identity – Social Security cards, passports, birth certificates, etc. If I have to rent an apartment somewhere because my home is unlivable for even a short period of time, I have to have those documents.
I carry a copy of my will with the original stored in a safe deposit box. I carry the title to any vehicles I have managed to pay off in case I need to sell one or to prove ownership if something goes sideways.
Are We There Yet?
I don’t think I’ll ever be “there” when it comes to prepping. Too much can change too quickly for me to ever feel truly prepared for anything.
But I am comfortable enough with my hurricane preparedness that I can stop fiddling with making it “better” and move on to The Second Most Important Thing.
Epilogue – You Just Have to Laugh
Hurricane Ike was terrifying. If we had known how terrifying it was going to be, we would have evacuated. But we didn’t, so we didn’t. And then we were sad.
After the first three days without power and with no realistic estimate of when power would be restored, I called my father-in-law. Six hours later, I met him in a parking lot and I traded my Saturn four-door sedan, my wife, and my two kids for a pickup truck, a generator, and 20 gallons of gas. To this day I still say it was one of the best deals that I have ever made. It took about a year for my wife to get over the whole thing, but now she agrees that it is a truly funny story.
After two weeks by myself without power, I finally drove up to my in-law’s place to wait for power to be restored which took another week. On the way back we stopped at a gas station and convenience store and we started talking with a disheveled-looking couple who we discovered were also driving back to Houston.
Unlike us, they had decided to leave Houston before the storm hit and went on a camping trip in Arkansas. Whatever you decide to do, it always seems like a great idea at the time.
The night after Ike hit Houston, it made its way northeast to Arkansas where it found the couple as they were camping. This was a monster of a storm that carried 60+ mph winds all that way and used them to rip away the tents of the lovely, and now disheveled, couple. They were terrified at the time. But in that convenience store, they were so very excited to get back to Houston to tell everyone they worked with how Ike managed to chase them down.
Throughout the storms and their after-effects, there are many moments that you have to take the opportunity to laugh. Yes, losing power sucks. Yes, having multiple feet of water in your home sucks. But if all you hang onto is what sucks, that’s all you’ll ever have. Look for the moments you can laugh at yourself and the whole ridiculous situation.
When you can do that, you know you’re ready for whatever comes next. Even if you don’t have an emergency pantry.
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