When Mister and I were first married, I put together a 72 hour kit and forgot about it for about…oh, 15 years. It was pretty frightening when I went through it about 1 1/2 years ago. I couldn’t imagine the stress of trying to live through an emergency on what I had in that big, heavy duffle bag.
About 1 1/2 years ago, I decided to go through some 72 hour kits that I had purchased for the five of us while living in Arizona. They all needed updating, and I had to make yet another one because we had since welcomed Little Sis into the family. After a lot of research and money, I felt that I had our family fairly prepared for an emergency…until we had a lesson on emergency preparedness in Relief Society. I wrote notes and added items to the kits, and finished with the feeling that we were “more” prepared for an emergency.
Until I went to a presentation by the State Earthquake Lady. I added more notes to my long list of things to buy and do and thought I had it all figured out…until we had “another” lesson at church that took up both the Sunday School and Relief Society hours. I took even more notes and made even more plans.
A few days ago I decided that it was time to look over my kits “yet again” and update any expired items and add new ones. The dehydrated food was the biggest item that needed to be rotated (the food was in the original kits I purchased about 7 years ago in AZ). I had purchased some dehydrated food from a friend’s company last year and thought that the packages would be perfect for the kits. I started putting the very large packets in the kits when it soon dawned on me that some of the packets asked for 3 cups of water, others 4 cups of water, others 1 litre of water, others 1 gallon of water (the drink mixes).
I realized that these packets would not be appropriate for the 72 hours kits and the 18 4-oz. packets of water in each. I then looked at how much water the original packets of dehydrated food asked for… 1 cup each. How many food packets per kit? Nine. How many cups of water for those nine packets? Nine. How many cups in the 18 packets of water? Nine. If we used those food packets would we have any water left over for drinking? No.
I want to pull the hair out of my head. Now I need to find six larger bags to not only fit all the things in the kits now, but 18 more packets of 4-oz. waters in each so that we have enough water for the food “and” for drinking. Will this preparedness insanity ever end? Will I lose my sanity in the process of becoming prepared? Will we ever indeed have an emergency? I don’t know if I want to know that answer…it may drive me to insanity.
AMEN! I feel the same frustrations, but have not gone to the extreme lengths that you have to keep things up to date and rotated. I just get too overwhelmed. I would love a copy of your notes!