Originally posted 2019-01-10 21:31:08.

Ahoy mateys! It’s a new year already? 2018 was a wild ride, but it’s come to an end and we’re already into the second week of 2019. Lots of stuff is happening in the United States and the rest of the world, so I wanted to come up with some good prepping resolutions for the new year that I can focus on for both my own family’s personal preparedness and for this website.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

Benjamin Franklin

Personal prepping resolutions for this year:

Water Storage

This is one thing that I lack pretty badly and have been working on doing better. If there’s a power outage for more than a day or two, making sure you have a source of potable (that means drinkable, kids) water is going to be vital for you to not only to drink, but to be able to cook food, have decent hygiene and do things like garden. Previously, I was storing water in gallon jugs that I would purchase from the gas station and re-fill with tap water after I had used them at the gym or other places. Unfortunately, these Arrowhead brand jugs tend to get brittle and there have been several in my storage that I have found to get hairline cracks and begin to leak, making them useless for longer term emergencies.

What I’ve done this year is made a small investment into Water Bricks. These are stack-able heavy duty BPA free plastic bricks that can hold 3.5 gallons each. They come in packs of 6 or 8, and while they are certainly more expensive than a gas station water jug, rest assured they are a lot more durable and can hold water for a longer time. Of course, like any stored water or food, you should rotate the contents out every 6 months or so to ensure the water does not get stagnant or get some funky growth inside of it.

Water Bricks also have a nice little carrying handle, and you can purchase an additional screw-on spigot to make pouring water of of them easy to accomplish. A few of these stacks of water would provide you with a great long term emergency water supply that doesn’t take up a ton of room.

Small Scale Power generation

Another one of my prepping resolutions for this year is to obtain some sort of generator that could be used for at home power, especially things like being able to keep electricity running to vital appliances such as my fridge or even more important- my chest freezer that has a lot of delicious (and expensive!) meats stored away. I am still deciding on my options here. On one hand, you can pick up a gas generator fairly cheap that will do what it needs to, but these drink fuel pretty fast and can also be somewhat loud. An alternative is the GOAL ZERO YETI solar generator, which comes as an entire kit with solar panels, an alternator generator and everything else you’d need. This is a high ticket item, but it doesn’t require constant fuel to keep it running (just sunny days!) Goal zero also makes great smaller scale solar chargers, lanterns and other items that can be recharged via the sun or even hand cranking.

Car Emergency kits for family members

While my family isn’t quite as gung ho on all this prepardness stuff, I still have been easing them into such things with very basic items, like a handcrank radio for my mom this Christmas. I am also interested in building or buying them a small emergency backpack they can keep in their cars. I think everyone should have some sort of a “get home” bag in their vehicle with some basics: Food, water, a change of clothes, and other necessities. You can find pre made vehicle emergency kits online, but I think it’s probably better to just buy a bag to start then fill it with items that will pertain to your own personal situation. Along this line is that everyone should have a few things in their car like JUMPER CABLES!