Introduction
When thinking of what a “prepper” might look like, I am quite far from your expectations.
I am an avid indoorsman who enjoys watching television and having stuff delivered. I am not a gardener, a camper, a hunter, or an adventurer. I don’t have anything against those things, it’s just not who I am.
But a collection of life events and experiences have convinced me that learning those skills and adopting an attitude of preparedness is important for myself and my family.
Once I made the decision, I had to ask the question of how I get there. I’m definitely not an expert, but I’m smart enough to know that it is not simply a matter of just getting onto my favorite online platform and placing an order and putting the delivery in my garage. And I know enough about myself to know that if I don’t make being prepped a holistic part of my life then it just won’t happen.
The Process
I’m a software developer. My professional process is to figure out what the most important first thing is, get a prototype out for testing, and then refine the implementation by repeatedly testing and making changing changes until the most important first thing is finished enough that the next most important thing is now more important than more changes to the first thing.
The hard part is figuring out what that first thing is. In my professional world, I have a customer that knows (or at least thinks they know) what the first thing ought to be. In looking at prepping my customer is… my customer is… my wife! My wife is a great customer here. She’s super bright and has some very specific concerns that she wants addressed as part of our first thing.
So… What is our first thing?
Hurricane prep.
The First Most Important Thing
Why hurricane prep? Because I live in Houston, Texas. Since my wife and I moved here, we have gone through Tropical Storm Allison where our house was flooded, Hurricane Rita which was the same year as Katrina in New Orleans (2005), Hurricane Ike, Memorial Day 2015 floods, Tax Day 2016 floods, Hurricane Harvey in 2017, and Hurricane Beryl in 2024. So, storms and storm damage are not uncommon in our neck of the woods!
And every time there has been one or more of… loss of power (the worst instance was losing electricity for three weeks during Ike; we had friends that were without for power for six), loss of mobility due to flooding, loss of water, boil notices (i.e. unsafe water supply), house flooding, and supply shortages before and after as people are either prepping right before or replacing ruined right after.
As I said in the introduction, I want my preparedness to be holistic. Meaning it is a part of my overall life, not just a big plastic box sitting out in my garage for the “just in case” times. What does holistic look like when trying to prepare for my first most important scenario?
Batteries… Really Big Batteries
In my effort to try and achieve a holistic preparedness I’m asking the question of what today’s me can do to minimize the stress on future me.
Take my refrigerator and deep freezer as an example. When I lost power during Ike, they transformed from something to preserve food to something I had to clean out. And the food in them turned from something that could help me go for a while to something that had to be eaten before it went bad. That added stress and effort to an already stressful situation. Granted, sharing the frozen salmon with the neighbors was a hit and helped ease some of the tension for all of us, but having to do it RIGHT NOW, TODAY was sub-optimal.
I do have a generator. But generators are needy creatures. You have to feed them gasoline which requires storage and takes time. You also have to keep checking the oil levels because if you miss an oil change you have a very expensive door stop sitting on your back porch. And they are loud. Very loud. And smelly. And expensive. My wife does not like loud and smelly. Expensively loud and smelly is even lower on her list of likes. And my wife is my customer here.
I now have 30kwh of batteries hooked up to a solar system that will produce 25-30kwh of electricity every day. If I am not running the A/C, I will have enough electricity to run everything else in my house continuously for almost two weeks. And after the two weeks, the solar panels will run the house as long as the sunlight holds out. Since hurricanes happen in the summer, we get a lot of light. And I can still plug my generator into my electrical panel and burn a tank of gas to recharge the batteries giving me extra breathing room.
That installation turned my refrigerator and freezer back into food preservation assets. Holistically speaking, I don’t have to change anything in my normal shopping and consumption habits because I am already buying food in bulk, freezing it, and rotating through it.
It’s a complete bonus that I have been able to set up my electricity plan with free nights so that I use batteries and solar power during the day and then use the free electricity to fully charge those batteries overnight. I’m still making payments on the solar system, but this summer my electricity provider paid me for the excess electricity my solar panels generated above my consumption and my average monthly bill was -$5.00.
Holistic Thinking For The Win!
Where Am I Going To Put That?
Following “The Process”, we’ve gotten a working prototype put in place. So, what’s next?
Note – we accidentally had the plan tested. For no obvious reason whatsoever, we lost power for about six hours in the middle of summer 2024. No clue why. We had zero downtime, we got notified by our power management app, we turned the air-conditioning temperature setting way up to conserve electricity, and we watched the batteries. Power came back on and the batteries went back to charging. We were mildly uncomfortable.
Anyway…
We have not yet finished with the first most important thing. There are still refinements to be made. We have some coverage for our food supply via our solar system and batteries, but we don’t have food completely covered.
One realistic scenario is water coming into our house. In each of the years 2015, 2016, and 2017, Houston suffered substantial flooding. While my house only suffered minor damage during each of those events, within a five-minute drive are neighborhoods where the owners dumped their entire lives onto the curbs for garbage pickup three years running. It is heartbreaking to see, and worrisome to think about.
If my house encounters that much water, my refrigerator and freezer are ruined and so is the food within them. And all of the food in my pantry. My wife is not a happy camper in this scenario. Please note that when it comes to actual camping, my wife is never a happy camper. It’s just not her lifestyle. We know this and we plan to make it so she doesn’t ever need to.
I need tertiary food storage (primary is fridge and pantry, secondary is freezer and pantry). This is my emergency store. I make this type of food storage straightforward and part of my normal grocery routine. When I use something out of my pantry, I check my emergency food store. If there is a replacement in there, I pull it out and put it in the pantry. I add it to the grocery list and mark it to go to the emergency store when I unload. If it isn’t in the emergency store, I talk to my wife about whether it should be. If we agree it should be, I buy two – one for the pantry and one for the emergency store.
That’s all straightforward and it is now integrated into the routine of my life. Once again, holistic. It took some effort to get started, true. But once started, it’s no longer consuming my mental energy.
What did take energy was answering the question “Where am I going to put all of this?” The easy answer was “In a giant plastic box on the floor of the front room.” Then my wife rephrased the question to “Where are you going to put this so that when my friends come over they don’t ask me if I’m packing to leave you and am I worried about my safety?” Good customers have a great way of asking clarifying questions.
(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 2.)
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