8 Things to Start Doing in 2026 to Make This Your Best Year

If you knew that you had just one year to get your house in order before the excrement hits the rotating cooling device, what would your goals for the year be?  How would you go about preparing your family to survive such an event?  What steps could you take this year to make hard times easier?  While I can’t make an exhaustive list for your family, here are some general principles to get you started.

There are links in this post.  Some of the links may be affiliate links.  Some of the links may not be.  My promise to you is that I will only recommend the most economical version of the best quality of items to serve you. These are the items that I have bought for my own family.  You can feel free to use my affiliate links, of which I will get a small amount in compensation, or you can choose to search out your products on your own.

Things to Start Doing in 2019

Reading more

You’ve heard the saying that “Readers are Leaders.” And while this is completely true, not just any types of reading that produces leaders.  If you live on a ‘diet’ of SciFi fiction or romance novels, it won’t have the same effect as someone who reads books that contain helpful information.

But there is something that I DON’T mean by this.  I don’t mean that you haven’t read in the past.  I don’t mean that this was never a priority.  What I DO mean though is that this should be something that you try to step up your efforts in this specific area of your life whatever level of reading you used to do, just step it up a notch.

Spend this year reading more useful books.  While this may include a fiction book or two like One Second After or Atlas Shrugged, it shouldn’t stop there.  Check into books like Square Foot Gardening; The Bushcraft Field Guide to Trapping, Gathering, and Cooking in the Wild; Alchemy of Herbs; The Suburban Microfarm:  Modern Solutions for Busy People; Home Distiller’s Workbook – Your guide to making Moonshine, Whisky, Vodka, Rum and so much more!; or even The Complete Homeopathy Handbook.

Moving more 

Again, like reading this doesn’t mean that you weren’t moving before.  Whatever level of moving you did before, make it your goal to do MORE of it this year.

This could be as simple as getting a pedometer because your goal is walking more steps each day.  It could include meeting a friend once or twice a week to go for a walk together.  Moving more could mean joining an exercise class or hiring a professional to come into your home and help you learn to exercise better.  It could even be as simple (and FREE) as not sitting through commercials any more.  You could get up and walk around the room or have a ‘circuit of exercises that you work through during the commercials. No matter your level of physical activity, we can each do more than we did last year.

Growing more of you own food

If you’re an avid gardener who puts up most of their own produce for the winter, you really rock! Yea, I’m trying to turn my thumb from black to brown in hopes that one day it will be green.  That doesn’t mean I didn’t attempt a garden last year.  It was pretty pitiful, but I tried my hand at it.  This year, however, we have already planned out putting in 4-6 raised beds to work on growing more food.  Last year we only got 3 mini tomatoes after we planted about 10-15 different types of plants in our garden.

But even if you are a master gardener, there are other gardening topics to dive into like “guerrilla gardening” which I’ll be talking about later this year.  Or you could get into composting to help grow your yields.  You could looking into “fruit tree guilds” as a way to feed and nourish your fruit trees while also getting other things out of deal.

Learning/practicing skills 

This is a part of our tagline “Love, Learn, Practice, Overcome”  Learning and practicing those skills are SO important.  If you do nothing else this year, learn and practice more skills – I’m going to be highlighting one skill each month.  When possible, I’ll be demonstrating different ways that you can accomplish this skill.  Stay tuned for January’s skill.  I’ll be hitting that in the next week.

Looking for skills that you could try to tackle this year?  Let me give you just a few suggestions.

• Pressure Canning
• Waterbath canning
• Dehydrating
• Making jams/jellies
• Crocheting
• Knitting
• Composting
• Gardening
• Seed saving basic sewing
• Cooking from scratch
• Animal Husbandry
• Root Cellaring
• Spinning
• Fire starting
• trapping/snaring
• Track identification
• Orienteering

Creating a spending plan

I don’t suggest this ONLY so you can get your finances in order.  I suggest this because this year (if it were truly the last year that you have to get your house in order before the SHTF) there are things that you will want to buy, but you will want to buy them responsibly.

Do you need to buy yourself a canner, so you can pressure can soups when you have produce coming in?  Have you thought about purchasing a rifle so that you can be prepared to keep your family safe or be ready to hunt?  Is your stash of ammo really short?  Do you need to figure out a way to go laundry if you are without electricity?  Personally, while I won’t rely on this, I would like a few solar panels so that I could power one electronic item at a time in case I needed it.  It would at least simplify things having a LITTLE electricity.

What items are a financial priority for your family this year? Once you know this, create a spending plan that allows you to purchase the item(s) before the end of the year.

YNAB helps you create a spending plan

If you’ve been around this website long, you’ll have heard me talk about a budgeting software that we’ve been using for more than a year now called YNAB or You Need a Budget.  I cannot rave about this website (and app) enough!  It has revolutionized our spending.  It helps us see our holes in our spending and helps us plan for future bills.  I have categories such as “preparedness,” “Ammo Squared” (this is a subscription ammo service we use), to gym memberships.  Besides this we have normal categories like “mortgage, homeowners insurance, Netflix, groceries, health insurance, gas/electric, water, sewer, trash, and everything else that you would imagine is on a budget.

This year, tell your money what it is going to do for you.

Eating more fruits and veggies

This is simply working on y/our health issue.  I keep a bowl of apples on the desk at which I do most of my work.  While this isn’t always what grabs my attention, I do eat more fruit now than I have in the past (yea, not necessarily saying too much).  Find ways to sneak more fruits and veggies into your own diet.  Here are some suggestions:

• Add smoothies to your diet.
• Keep a fruit bowl around
• Slip foods you can tolerate (but don’t like) into recipes that you already love. i.e. slip extra peppers into queso, mix some avocado into your smoothie, blend some of those not-so-favorite veggies into soup that you already love.
• Try butternut squash pancakes. (These really are yummy)
• Add fresh herbs to dishes
• Mix some veggies into mashed potatoes.  Maybe mix mashed cauliflower with mashed potatoes.
• Slip them into casseroles in small quantities so they don’t overpower the taste.
• Try new ways of eating old veggies.  I am not a huge fan of green beans, but when you saute them lightly in butter and garlic powder, they are delish.  Try using a portabella mushroom in place of a hamburger, etc.
•  Puree an extra veggie or two into a pasta sauce.

 Drinking more water

Water not only hydrates our bodies but also cleanses our bodies of toxins.  It helps provide us with a feeling of satiety.  Water helps dissolve minerals so that they are more accessible for the body to use. It helps deliver oxygen to the body as well as lubricate joints and so many other benefits.

Getting our bodies in the best shape we can this year, and water is a part of that. Here are some basic suggestions on how to sneak more water in:

• Keep water bottles at your workspace
• Use a refillable water bottle and shoot for how many times you will refill it in a day.
• Start with a gallon milk (type) jug that has been thoroughly cleaned out and fill it with water at the beginning of the day.  Take time to work on it as the day goes on.
• Add a drop or two of essential oils which are marketed for internal ingestion to your water to flavor it.  Young Living has oils that are marked as usable for ingestion.
• Set a vibrating alarm to remind you to drink a water bottle.
• Use apps like Fitbit, My Fitness Pal, Waterlogged, Hydrate Me to track your drinking each day.
• Have a glass of water before each meal.
•  At the beginning of each day, place 4-7 rubber bands around your refillable water bottle.  As Each time that you refill your water bottle, remove one rubber band and put it around your wrist.  This way you know how many times you’ve refilled it that day, and it urges you on to get your water in for the day.

Put together a preparedness binder.

One of your greatest tools is having the appropriate information at your fingertips at a moment’s notice.  I have put together just the thing to make this posible.  I’ve developed the Prepper’s Printable Binder.  It’s 118 pages of contact information and prompts to help you gather all of your information one place.  It has prepper checklists.  It has prompts to help you know what pieces of informaiton you need to find like – your marriage license, car insurance policy, health insurance policy, life insurance policy, homeowners insurance policy, your tax returns, durable power of attorney,

trust documents, medical power of attorney, and so much more!  Not only that, it’s PRETTY!

What About You?

What other things do you think could be added to the list?  Do any of these align with your goals for the year?  I’d love to hear!  Leave a comment below, and let us know.

You’ve got this, Mama!