As I was going through my e-mail recently, I received an excellent question from one of my readers.  Anne-Marie wrote in and asked me this, “Over the last couple of years I’ve gotten more into having an emergency car bag ( I live in South Dakota) and grab and go […]

After most weddings and funerals, we eat a meal.  When a couple is celebrating an anniversary, going out to eat is oftentimes part of the celebration.  I don’t know about at your house, but at our house, the entire family goes out to eat for birthdays.  Mother’s Day and Father’s […]

It’s easy to look at the food in our bug-out bags and think that its only purpose is to keep our stomachs from grumbling for three days.  But our bug-out bag food serves a higher purpose than simply keeping our stomachs from reminding us we haven’t eaten in a few […]

When someone says the word ‘preparedness,’ what’s the first thing that pops into your head?  If you’re a woman – likely the first thing that comes to mind is something related to food.  More often than not, we women are the ones that take charge of making sure that our […]

In the last post, we spent time going over what to look for when you’re checking through your equipment in your Bug-Out-Bag.  But how do you know if it’s time to upgrade your equipment? Ask yourself the following questions (1) Is my old item well-worn and starting to wear out? […]

With the advent of warmer weather, it’s time to test our equipment and swap out our clothes and food.  I’m doing a short series on our Semi-Annual Bug-Out-Bag Check and Swap-Out.  Today we’re going to focus on making sure that our equipment functions properly.  If you’ve never built a Bug-Out-Bag […]

While some people could make an argument that I’ve beaten the “bugging out” horse to death, there are more aspects that we need to discuss.  Bugging out will usually occur during short-term disruptive situations (SHTF-type situations).   For us, those situations were the Ferguson Riots and being hit by a tornado.  […]

Last week, we experienced the polar vortex.  Temperatures dropped incredibly low, even for Central Illinois.  The way it worked out, my husband and I had to exchange cars.  I put more miles on my husband’s car then he usually does in a couple of days.  As a result I needed […]

As I’ve written about in another post, I had the unfortunate opportunity to bug out three times, and I’ve learned a lot of lessons doing it.  Before Christmas, I promised you all that I would do a series that included Bug-Out-Bags.  As I got to brainstorming I realized that there’s […]