Last week I was in St Andrews on the Scottish coast. Its a beautiful place if you ever have the chance to go there for a visit. The countryside is breathtaking and the town itself has a lot to offer as well. That was not why I was there, though I had gone to a conference. One of the things one of the speakers arranged for us to do as a fun exercise was an arty project that involved tying pieces of yarn onto a church gate. We were supposed to talk to people about their spiritual journey at the same time, well we were outside a church.

That does not sound like a problem but the leader had bought some yarn but had not thought about bringing any scissors. Typical Susan, I had a bag full of bits and pieces including my pencil case. In my pencil case was a pair of scissors. That was the equipment that we needed. My pencil case had another use. I wrapped some wool around it and then cut through the yarn on one side of the pencil case so that I had a number of strands of the same length. Why was that an obvious thing to do? It was one of those things that I learnt from making tassels for crochet items.  An unusual transferable skill if ever there was one. 

OK maybe this is not the type of preparedness that immediately springs to mind. Yet when I was presented with an unusual situation I was prepared in terms of having the equipment needed. Not only that I had the experience of using a technique that was helpful. However it is an example of how it is easier to carry out a task if you have access to the right equipment and have experience of using it. 

The question is what things do you need to be prepared for? Are you ready for any worsening of the financial situation? Are you ready for worsening weather conditions? Are you ready for too much rain (i.e. floods) or too little rain (i.e. drought)? Time you sat and thought a while and did a risk assessment. 

I made a discovery today. I suspect that I need new glasses as it can be a strain to see the text on the screen and they are on my shopping list. It is just that there other things on this list as well. In the meantime I have been using the zoom or magnification features to make it easier to read the text. When I have used Firefox and enlarged the screen to type a post in WordPress part of the text box has been obscured by the column at the side. I could only enlarge it so far without it causing other problems.

Today I tried using Google Chrome and enlarged the screen but this time there were no problems with part of the text box becoming covered by the menu from the side. Brilliant all I have to do is hold the ctrl key down as I press + and the screen gets bigger. I now have the text box so big that it fits the screen. I have adjusted the scroll bar that appeared and now I can read what I am typing in more easily. Yes it is bigger than I need at the moment but why struggle with small text when you can have it so big that you can read it easily. It has helped me catch a few spelling mistakes I might have missed otherwise. If I want to make it smaller again all I have to do is press ctrl and – at the same time. If you have a computer running windows it should work on your computer as well. Try it and see. 

What does this have to do with being a Prepared Home? Being prepared is about being able to solve problems. It means knowing what to do when things are not going well. It means being prepared to cope in difficult circumstances. One of the old articles on the original Prepared Home web site was written while I was struggling with an injured arm and found that using the computer was one of the easiest challenges I deal with. It was a struggle using a pen, cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry etc because I had to learn new ways of carrying out those tasks. However I already knew how to use a computer without a mouse and how to use the keys that make a computer more accessible. This meant that I did not have to learn another way to do what I wanted to do. I had already practised the techniques I needed in the new circumstances. 

That is just one example of how being prepared can be helpful. Now what sort of situation do you think that you could face in your own home that would be easier if had thought about how you could do the same thing in another way. Is your home in an area that one day might flood so you might need to evacuate in a hurry? If so have you thought about what you would want to take and how best to protect the things that you cannot take e.g. what will you move as far up away from the water as possible and how will you do it.  

What sort of situation could you face more easily if you learnt how to do things before you had to do them yourself?  One example of this was a college course for those who wanted to learn to cook before they went to university. I suspect that it would help anyone moving into a new home and who needed to feed themselves on a budget. 

The basis of the Surviving a Household Emergency course is to help you answer questions like that. A start has been made on updating it and the new version will be released before the end of 2011. 

Yesterday I took my camera and went out on a field trip researching ideas on the theme of bridges and bricks. I had driven through somewhere called Metal Bridge many times. It is small group of houses literally near a metal bridge. With a name like that it seemed a good place to look for ideas.

Strangely what also caught my eye were two bus shelters. In the UK the local council works with the bus company to provide a service to the community. There are a number of things to consider such as what routes the buses will take and where people will get on and off the buses. From time to time the route changes and new signs need to be put up. In addition to the signs sometimes they do things to make it more pleasant to wait for the bus. Some years ago in this area it was common for the council to build a bus shelter from bricks and to add a sloping roof to it. Many were built to the same basic design of three walls with a roof over the top so that they were a bit like a man made cave.

The idea was of course to provide shelter for anyone waiting for a bus so that if it was wet or windy they would have some protection. i looked at these shelters and wondered if buses still came past them. There were no bus stop signs next to them. In fact they looked too clean to be used very often. No rubbish no disinfectant to counter the urine from drunken men on the way home.

I looked at them more closely and I realised that if they were going to serve their purpose of protecting people they needed to be maintained. Because they were not well used they were not given priority terms of maintenance. When I looked inside, the roof of both the shelters I looked at had been damaged. This kind of roof construction is quite vulnerable as those intent on destruction or mischief can reach up inside and damage it or climb on top and damage it. The council were doing their best to provide these shelters for the community nearby but they have literally hundreds of these kind of shelters to care for scattered over many miles and limited resources to maintain them. They have to prioritize and use these resources to help the maximum number of people. Bus shelters that are rarely, if ever, used will obviously at the bottom of the list for attention. 

The point I am trying to make is this. Those like the council who provide services for the community can only do so much. If you need help such as shelter from bad weather they may have been able to do something in the past such as build a bus shelter. Those shelters may still be in place but these days their resources are so stretched that they may not be able to maintain them. When you are waiting for a bus you may need to go out better prepared to face the weather such as wearing more effective waterproof clothing so you can provide your own protection from the weather.

Remember in the UK your local council is there to support the community in a variety of ways including if there is s civil emergency such as flooding. When the council has to make choices about where it spends its limited resources it will prioritize them. Recently this has got even harder as they have less money to spend. If people are screaming at them to not to reduce the help they give to the elderly and disadvantaged today then they will struggle to put money aside in case of a civil emergency happens tomorrow. In other words, if something happens they will be less well prepared to help the community. Not only that but any supplies that they do have to turn a community centre into an emergency shelter will be getting older and less fit for the purpose intended because it will  be harder to replace them.

Another comparison is that just as bus routes can change so that some bus shelters are no longer used and there is a need to provide new bus stops. The are changes in what emergencies will occur. There could be changes in what facilities are available in a community if for example a community building the planners once relied on is no longer available. Their plans could go out of date which would make it harder to provide support for the community. 

In other words they have good reasons for being less able to support people in need in an emergency. That will not stop people complaining if something did go wrong. However, rather than complaining and blaming others for your difficult circumstances why not take responsibility yourself now and be better prepared for an emergency. .

Having things just in case is second nature to me. I was the little girl with the big bag with everything that she might need. You cannot trust that others will have you or will  have what you will need so that you have to be prepared to help yourself.

The core issue in preparedness is who do we depend upon? Do we expect the government whether nation or local to come to our aid when an emergency arises? Do we expect our family, our community a charity a church or just someone to support us in our time of need? Or do we do everything we can to be self-sufficient and be able to survive whatever happens. People at either end of the spectrum of dependency and self-sufficiency wonder if how the attitudes of those at the other end are sound and reasonable.

Wherever you stand on this spectrum of opinion one thing is certain in the early stages of a problem developing you have to be able to take care of yourself. It take times to gather and deploy the resources needed to cope with an emergency. The emergency services are judged on their response times. They are prepared and equipped for a certain level and number of every day emergencies like road traffic accidents or house fires but larger scale emergencies stretch their resources. They then end up prioritizing their efforts. What if you are not high up in their list of priorities? You will have to cope somehow. In a large scale disaster it can take days it reach your area to assess the situation never mind do something to help you. What do you do until help reaches you?

This is why preparedness is important. If you could not buy food for a week would you have enough in your home to manage? If the power went off for half a day how would you cope? Household emergencies are not just caused by natural disasters like volcanoes (although they can cause problems with those trying to fly somewhere) earthquakes (although not having the parts your company needs because the factory that made them has been destroyed by one could mean you lose your job) or tornadoes or tsunamis. They are not just caused by terrorist attacks although these will affect some households. A household emergency can be caused by someone in it going missing or becoming ill or having an accident.

In the run up to the millennium being prepared was a bandwagon that many people jumped on. Many saw it as a money making opportunity. It all fizzled out like a damp squid in the end. But there are things on the horizon on both the  national and international stages that affect our lives. The global economic outlook for 2011 can hardly be described as rosy or promising for most people. Ok there are people who are well placed to take advantage of the situation but for most people it is not an easy time. There are fears of further problems ahead. The situation and the reasons to be prepared for difficult times change but there are always some good reasons to be prepared.

The idea of this blog is to share my journey to becoming more prepared for the things that could affect my home. you are welcome to join me on that journey.

We have set up a survey to help us decide what we should do next? We have had some ideas but would love some feedback on them. 

http://www.lilythepinkministries.com/WhatShouldWeDoNext