Practice Makes for Perfect Prepping

Overconfidence in your skills, your fitness level, your supplies…  If you overestimate yourself in any of these places, it could be deadly one day in the future.

Are you really ready to produce every bite of your food?  Can you survive comfortably for a few days without power?  How hard is it to cook everything from scratch?  What if you had to do your laundry off-grid from now until infinity?  Could you handle a weekend in the woods with only the items in your bug-out pack? And speaking of that bug-out pack, how long can you hike with it through rough terrain before succumbing to cardiac arrest or just plain exhaustion?One way to gain a more comprehensive grasp of the reality of your own situation is through drills and challenges. I’ve been attempting to challenge myself every month.  I belong to a really awesome (but small) ladies’ prepping forum called Sisters in Tinfoil, and several of us do a monthly skills challenge and/or a prepping challenge.  We help hold one another accountable to our goals there, and share advice and motivation.  Come on over and say hi, and consider joining in with our challenges.

I’m in the midst of a “Cooking from Scratch Challenge.” The nice thing about setting up your own challenges is that you make the rules.  So, my rules are, the food we eat this month has to be as “scratch” as I can make it. What have I discovered from this?  HOLY COW it’s a lot of work!!!!  I didn’t realize how much I relied on quick items like peanut butter and crackers.  Crackers aren’t so quick when you have to roll out a dough and bake it!  Pasta and sandwiches, former “quickie” meals, also talk several hours of advance preparation.  I’ve learned, however, to adjust the amounts I make so that I have leftovers in order to be able to have a quick meal during the workday or snacks for my daughter’s lunch box.  Before spending the month doing this, I wouldn’t really have known where to start. It’s so much nicer to challenge yourself when help is as close as the internet and reinforcements  are as close as the nearest grocery store. Wouldn’t you rather learn while that is still the case?