Emergencies – How you prepare really makes a difference!
Emergencies are, by definition, unpredictable. The lake-effect snowstorms that have battered Buffalo and surrounding areas are a very good example.
Coming so early in the season, the unprecedented blizzard conditions created millions of emergencies, large and small, in millions of lives. And unfortunately, from what I’m hearing, lots and lots of people were unprepared for the onslaught.
The thing about preparing for emergencies is that you hope you’ll never have to actually use your plan! And because emergencies happily don’t happen every day, you can end up feeling like the time spent in preparation has been wasted.
Emergencies – Is Preparing a Waste of Time?
The short answer is a resounding no! Nothing could be further from the truth.
The time spent preparing for emergencies gives you an opportunity to rehearse and be ready to respond with agility to what life presents. When the time comes, you may not be confronted with the exact emergency you’d planned for – but you’ll be better prepared than if you hadn’t thought about it at all.
I recently came upon a timely post on lifehacker titled “Put Together a Winter Home Emergency Kit.” In this piece the author (Jason Fitzpatrick) writes:
Creating a home emergency kit can be a simple to enormous undertaking depending on the level of energy and preparation you want to invest into it. Most people are on the “Stay warm and fed until the power comes back on” camp, not the “Prepared for zombie apocalypse” camp, and though it never hurts to prepare for the worst we’ll be focusing more on the former than the latter.
Emergencies – Know the Basics
The first piece of advice he offers serves, not just for emergencies but for everyday life. He basically says that it’s important to know how to “work” the utilities and key appliances in your home.
Important, indeed! How many of us know how to turn off the water or furnace … or where the circuit-breakers are?
For many of us, certain household tasks may fall to specific members of the family. A division of labor like that makes a lot of sense in everyday life – but in emergencies, not everyone may be around or available. So, there are some basic things that everyone in your household should know how to do. That’s because emergencies are NOT a good time to be suddenly learning a new skill!
I’d also suggest creating a centralized place where there are written instructions for key household utilities, important phone numbers, etc.
Make sure that everyone knows where these lists and templates are, and it certainly doesn’t hurt to review them periodically. (And yes, you can probably expect a certain amount of eye-rolling when you do this, especially if you have a teenager or two on board!) 😉
The rest of the article from lifehacker offers specific suggestions for items to have on hand for wintertime emergencies.
My suggestion to you is that you think about the kinds of unexpected events that are most likely to occur in your world and begin to brainstorm ways that you can be better prepared for the unexpected. Hopefully, your plans will never need to be set in motion – but in all likelihood, some version of them will.
Investing time in this now will serve you well in the long run. As always – here’s to your time success!
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