Now, listen. I am not a crazy fanatic who believes a zombie apocalypse will happen at any moment. I do not dream about dehydrating food, and I definitely do not try to raise chickens in my apartment complex. I am simply a normal, newly-married college girl that wants to follow the prophet’s counsel of self-reliance. The ambiguous phrase “self-reliance” most likely conjures up images of 72-hours kits and water stored on shelves but it is so much more than that. Basically, it’s when “we use the blessings and abilities God has given us to care for ourselves and our families and find solutions to our own problems… "the Lord wants us to become both spiritually and temporally self-reliant."
“Ok, I can do that, BUT HOW?” The task seems daunting. Where in the world do I start? I started this blog with as I continue on a quest for self-reliance, because I hope some of this information can be useful to people that are in a similar situation. And trust me, I will keep it real. Like many of you out there, I don’t have a lot of money, I don’t have a lot of time, I don’t have a lot of space, but, I know I can do this.
Before you completely give up on preparedness, just realize that there are a lot of myths and misconceptions about preparedness, that make it hard (with a capital H).
Myth #1 I’ve never been in a natural disaster so I don’t need food storage/supplies.
Food storage is not just for natural disasters. It is for unemployment, starving students, (let me repeat, starving students) unpaid internships,financial hardship etc. My husband had a somewhat similar mindset until I showed him the benefits and blessings. He agreed and we started saving food and money. A few months later he got into a major bike accident and couldn’t work. I had to complete a grueling unpaid internship so we lived off of our savings for six months. Suddenly all the food/ money we had managed to stock pile seemed like a pretty good idea.
Myth #2 Food storage is way too expensive.
It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. It all comes down to priorities. If you make it a priority to buy a little extra every time, it will actually cheaper than buying food with normal food-buying habits. This is because grocery markets price things in cycles. If you only buy items when they are on sale and save some for a rainy day, you will have plenty of food (and grocery bills will go down.) The key is to start small. Even one corn of can is a great place to start.
This is a good article on the subject.
Myth #3 People who store food are… kind of weird. Some of us have seen the movie “The RM” where the character of Kirby Heyborne has a bed made out of food storage because his bedroom was given away. That is weird. However, what’s even weirder, is not having supplies and self-sufficient skills when we really need them. Some stereotypes surrounding self-reliance may exist, but we don’t have to believe them. They’re just that -stereotypes.
No comments:
Post a Comment