When you live life with a husband and five kids, life can get a bit harried. Then throw in homeschooling, running a business, being involved at church, and everything else that God allows to come your way, and sometimes, it’s just easy to throw your hands up and want to say, “I Quit.” Motivation has left the building.
“Quit what?” In your heart of hearts, you want to say, “I quit everything,” but you know you don’t REALLY want to – or at least you won’t REALLY want to after a good night’s sleep. Since you can’t quit everything, little things start falling by the wayside. It might be that 20-minute walk that you used to take or spending some time feeding your spirit in a good book. Then other things fall by the wayside like meals cooked (mostly) from scratch or reading to your kids.
I want to encourage you, one crazy-busy mom, to another (or a dad), hang in there. Sometimes we need the motivation to do the things that we should do. How do we go about drumming it up?
(1) Doing something is better than nothing.
Don’t have time to read to your kids for 20 minutes? Snuggle with them for five. Don’t have time to make that meal from scratch? Something out of the freezer is fine for tonight! Don’t have time to outfit an entire BOB, just take 5 minutes and either inventory what you have or make a list of what you want to put in it.
Need suggestions for QUICK things that you can do to be better prepared than you are now? Check out this list of 100 Preparedness Tasks that you can do in 15 minutes or less.
(2) When the motivation and inspiration strike you, do 
more!
Many times I just don’t FEEL like doing a whole lot of preparedness. On Christmas Eve, one of the traditions that we’ve established is that we give a book to everyone that is celebrating with us. So everyone, including me, got a book. Well, I dug right into it. I won’t give you the name because while it was recommended to me, I can’t recommend it because the language was vile in places. But the act of reading a preparedness book got me off my backside and WANTING to do more.
Maybe some good prepper type fiction (or here are some other recommendations)will get you ready to prepare more this year.
(3) Get Some Accountability
When you know you NEED to do something, but you know you won’t, talk to a friend. If that person is a real friend and knows that you need to get more prepared, they will help give you some motivation. Three years ago when I was writing my book, I found an accountability partner who helped keep me on track. We’ve been working together for three years now – goodness it doesn’t feel like it could have been THAT long. We meet virtually once a week and tell each other how we did on last week’s goals and tell the other what the next week’s goals are. It really helps keep you on track when you have someone who is willing to hold you accountable.
(4) Get a Preparedness Buddy 
This is related, but not quite the same thing. You can be an accountability partner for someone in an area that you don’t know anything in. But if you have a buddy who can work alongside you, you’ve taken it even a step further. Talk about real motivation! Yesterday, I really wanted to tackle going through our vehicle and getting it properly outfitted again. Hey with 5 kids, things go missing quickly! But I knew I wasn’t going to do it on my own. I asked my 17-year-old daughter to help me, not because I couldn’t do it, but because I needed someone working alongside me to make it more social. I didn’t want to do it alone.
5.) Make Lists
My daughter and I went through the van, inventoried everything. We took things out, reorganized them, and replaced or made note of missing supplies. I use a free calendar/list/menu app called Cozi. On Cozi, I listed out EVERYTHING I have in the back of the van and WHERE it is. For example, we have a backpack that we keep in the back of the van. We keep some basic toiletries in it, one change of undergarments per person, 1000 hour candle, fire starters of various kinds, feminine supplies, ponchos, flashlights, cordage, and so much more, but we inventoried the whole thing.
The MOST IMPORTANT parts of the lists though were two-fold.
First – I listed where everything was. If it was in the backpack, it went under the heading “Backpack” in my “Back of the Van” list on Cozi. If it was in our back of the seat organizer (which we call our Car’nizer) it was in a list called “Back of the Van” under the heading of “Car’nizer.” But if it was in the Trunk Organizer (one of the best preparedness investments we made for our car) it was in the “Back of the Van” list under the heading of “Trunk Organizer.” If I EVER have to find something fast and I don’t know exactly where it is, it’s listed on my phone!
Second – I made sure to list items that need to be refilled or replaced. We hadn’t washed our collapsible bowls in more than a year – okay, say it with me “Eeewww, gross!” So I took them out to wash them, but I want to make sure that they get returned, so they are on a list of items to be returned. We needed to wash our picnic table cloths and our blanket, so they also got added to the “return” list. My kids have walked away with my (not-very-sharp-anyway) hatchet. I’m not worried. They build things all the time and probably used it to cut some branches off a tree in our ravine. They can learn a lot by making forts out in the woods! I need to replace it though, so it was added to the “replace” list in Cozi.
What About You?
How do you work yourself up into getting your preparedness items done? Do you have a secret trick to motivate yourself when everything else fails? I’d love to hear! Share it with us in the comments so that we can all be better prepared!
Together lets Love, Learn, Practice, and Overcome!
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.
