Yesterday we talked about how much I love September! There are so many fun things that happen in September – I love football, changing leaves, so many things about September rank among my favorites. September is also National Preparedness Month. I love to talk/think/do things about preparedness. When talking about things like National Preparedness Month, I think it is really easy to become overwhelmed by preparedness. There are so many topics and so many things to do. You can listen to lectures and read articles and find dozens of ways you are not prepared. It is really easy to look at the big picture of being prepared and begin to feel panic set in, which is not good at all. Now is the time to stop being overwhelmed by preparedness and to get organized and make a plan. Like anything else, if we break National Preparedness Month up into smaller topics we tend to be able to process it better and make more progress with preparedness. We can break those topics up and create sections in the preparedness binder we talked about making yesterday.

Did you find or create your preparedness binder, label it and dedicate it to emergency preparedness? Did you find a place to keep it that is handy and easy to access when you have a note to write or a plan to make? Did you put the binder in that place? There you have it! Yesterday you took the first step to being prepared and avoiding being overwhelmed by preparedness. Now we can take that one step further and create sections in the preparedness binder to keep things organized, put them in whatever order works for you. Below you will see some of the sections I suggest and a short explanation of why I think they are important.

Food Storage
Making a section for this in your preparedness binder seems like a pretty obvious choice. We all know we need food to survive and we really need a couple different kinds of food storage to do this. We can subdivide this section later.

Household Storage
Do you have a storage of common household supplies? We’ll talk about this a few times so you’ll want a section for it in your preparedness binder.

72 Hr Kits
We’ve all heard of 72 hour kits and we know we need them in case we have to evacuate our homes. There is lots of info for this section.
Go Bag
This central “brain” of the 72 hour kit system can be grabbed alone if needed. It is going to contain all the super important information and items, make room for a section for this in your preparedness binder.

Go Bag Info
We’ll talk about the information you need to keep in your Go Bag later, but it is a great idea to have a section in your preparedness binder to keep a master record of the information .

Money reserves
We all know we need financial preparedness. Make a section in your preparedness binder to track all of your money reserves and emergency cash.

First Aid Kits
This one is another easy one. Keep a section in your preparedness binder dedicated to your first aid kits. Notes about supplies and dates for rotations are just a couple of the things you’d keep in there.

Repairs
It might be a good idea to keep a section in your preparedness binder dedicated to common household repairs. Problems can appear suddenly and if you have a central place to look for that needed repairman or service, you can save time during an emergency.

Go ahead and start making these sections in your preparedness binder. We talk more about all of these topics this month and maybe even add a few more.