Home Prepping Planning and Organization | National Preparedness Month

september is national preparedness month in the united states it's a month to create awareness for people to start looking into emergency preparedness measures i always seem to forget about national preparedness month because for me prepping is year long so it's every month but for some people they need that first step to get started and that's what this particular national preparedness month is dedicated towards so i've always wanted to do a special video for this but again i always forget about it so i got contacted by prepper potpourri and sutton's days and they organized a collaboration with other youtube preparedness channels to provide 30 days worth of preparedness videos as part of national preparedness month so i've provided information in the description box below for all the various channels that are going to be a part of this collaboration and this video is my contribution to national preparedness month as part of this youtube preparedness channel's collaboration so for my particular video i'm going to be covering home organization and other tricks of the trade that i use to help keep me organized and staying on track for my preparedness journey so without further ado let's get started there seems to be a fine line between prepping and hoarding one minute you think you're stockpiling on some non-perishable food for your pantry and the next thing that you know you have a garage full of all these random preps and these random boxes you have no idea where everything is at so the point of this video is to help try to avoid that by staying organized and having a strategy for your preparedness planning i'm actually not an organized person by nature i really have to force myself into being organized for my preparedness measures otherwise things just get out of control and snowballs very quickly prepping is a very vast topic with a lot of different areas that you could dive into whether that be first aid or comms or tactical you name it oftentimes you'll gravitate towards one and i think that you need to have a good strategy going into prepping to help stay organized and keep focused on your journey and so that's what we're going to be covering in this video the first thing that i recommend doing is create a scrum board for your emergency preparedness tasks scrum is a term that's used in software engineering in regards to agile methodology which is a way that software engineering teams organize the projects that they're working on to stay on task so teams usually have what's called a scrum board or also a kanban board scrum boards and kanban boards are similar in that they both are used as visual representations to track the progress of specified tasks they're intended to help make the development team build and release quality products faster so a scrum board is used to track the work in short incremental sprints software engineering teams usually use two weeks prints but for prepping i recommend having a month-long sprint before the sprint is completed your goal is to move all of the tasks to the done column typically a scrum board is divided into horizontal lanes or vertical columns that the team uses to track the progress agreed upon to be completed in the sprint so normally the first column is a to do column which is a prioritized backlog of all of the features that you're planning on getting done for this particular sprint they're usually represented in a sticky note which you put in that column so for prepping you can have a sticky note that says make a hospital go bag or make an altoids edc tin or get batteries for your home preps or buy one week's worth of long-term food storage those are all items that could be in the backlog so when you're ready to start working on that you could move it into the in progress column that means that you're actively working on this task i also have a column dedicated towards researching and i use this for my emergency preparedness projects because some of the times before i could actually implement it i have to do some background research after you've finished the project you can move it to the done column that means that you've completed the task and it's ready to go so again i recommend having a month-long sprint with various items that you think you could get done in that month try to make the goals achievable for that month to do that you might have to break up the large projects which are called stories and software engineering into multiple tasks that make up that story for example maybe your story is creating a bug out bag and your tasks are making the various modules for that bug out bag the visual representation of getting tasks into the done column will be very rewarding and addicting plus it's a great way of staying organized to know exactly what you're working on and to get it actually done this strategy of having a scrum board as part of agile methodology works for countless software engineering teams whether that be a google facebook twitter amazon microsoft you name it they're most likely using agile methodology and having a scrum board so again make a prepping scrum board the second thing that i recommend doing is start thinking in terms of prepping modules a module is another term that's used in software engineering in software a module is a part of a program programs are composed of one or more independently developed modules that are not combined until the program is linked and a single module can contain one or several routines for me i think of modules in terms of prepping as various tasks or categories that are in relation to prepping so i have a module for cooking tasks i may also have a mini module for batteries another module might be water purification so rather than trying to tackle the system as a whole you want to break it up into multiple achievable modules that you could attack one by one it's going to be much easier to piece together all of these various modules to create your overall prepping system so to start off with what i recommend doing is going to your local home depot or mclendon's and getting a bunch of sterilite storage boxes these are shoe size storage boxes that are plastic and clear and they include a lid they cost around a dollar 25 each so go to the store and pick up around 20 of them so if you're just getting started with prepping you could just start organizing various small items into these very small modules so for your home preps you may have one of those sterilite boxes dedicated towards tea light candles and then the other one could be dedicated towards matches and lighters you could have one for riding instruments and then another one for batteries maybe you have one for knives and one for flashlights and one for radios and then you can start branching out into various first aid items like having a module for band-aids having another one for cough and cold medicine having another one dedicated towards pain medication and then maybe also wound dressings and ointments if you work with this strategy it will help you create a manageable system of various modules or components that you could store in any closet you'll want to make sure that you label these to the various category of items that are stored in each one of those modules in our home we have these small sterilite storage boxes stored in multiple locations and they all contain a specific item for my prepping system eventually you're going to get to the point where you're going to need larger modules so again go back to home depot and pick up larger storage containers this could be a 20 gallon storage box for example so once you fill up that sterilite module you might have to expand the capabilities of it and so at this point you could create larger modules that you may have to store in a larger location so rather than have it stored in a shelf in your closet maybe you have a few shelves dedicated in your garage that store these various prepping categories that's what i do for my home preps is i have a few shelves dedicated in the garage for my various emergency preparedness modules i have mine color coordinated which we'll talk about next before moving on to the color coordination it's good to think of terms of modules and to leverage these style of boxes because they're stackable and it helps keep everything organized if you have a good labeling system you're able to keep track of everything and you could have certain closets dedicated towards certain type of items i recommend looking at a lot of the home organization channels that are on youtube for ideas on how you can store these various modules and label them one of my favorite channels for home organization is do it on a dime she leverages a lot of items that she gets over at the dollar store for her home organization and i try to apply the same strategy towards my home preparedness organization the next thing that i recommend is try to color coordinate your various modules to help with the organization of them i call this particular system the color of prepping which originated from a poll that i conducted several years back to associate certain colors with certain categories of items i use those categories as part of my modules for all of my prepping kits whether that be for my home preps for my bug out bag for edc regardless it uses the same color coordination so let's go down through all the colors that i use as part of my color coordination the color blue represents water items so ways of storing water filtering them and purifying them people associate the color blue with water the color green is dedicated towards food items so all of my food modules are in the color of green and they contain the various food items that i would eat whether that be for my long-term food storage or in an edc bag for snacks they're going to be stored in a green container brown is associated with a category of shelter so for shelter that means things like sleeping bags and tents and cots and sleeping pads people in the pool associated the color brown with shelter items maybe because dirt and wood is oftentimes brown the color red represents all of my first eight items this is pretty common in hospitals and even in any kind of building that you might be in the first aid kit is most likely going to be red so in my sterilite storage boxes and the boxes that are stored in the garage the red ones contain all of my first aid and trauma related items yellow represents comms or communication in addition to the electronics that help charge those various devices so things like radios or walkie-talkies or batteries those are all things that i store in my yellow modules orange represents fire items so things like matches and candles and fire starters i store those type of items in orange modules the color black represents tools and tactical so that could be a hammer a screwdriver a knife as a tool if you have firearms a firearm is a tool i store all of those items in black modules the color gray represents cooking so any kind of item that's used for preparing food or even boiling water that can include things like a dutch oven or cast iron pots or a can opener all of those items are for cooking the color white is associated with hygiene and sanitation items so things like hand sanitizer soap cleaning solutions bleach porta potty items all of those are stored in a white container or module the color purple is associated with clothing items so i leverage it for not only clothing items but also ppe items so items that you wear on your person for example i have a family hazmat suit that i store in a purple module and finally the color pink represents personal and miscellaneous items so the modules that i have that are in the color paint store a variety of different items whether those be family photos or games or other personal information i'll include those in a pink module so this entire system is something that i call the color of prepping but it's basically a color coordination methodology to help stay organized with all of the various modules for your prepping categories i've been using this system for years and it's really been handy to help me keep organized here's a quick tip for you if you're looking at building a bug out bag or a get home bag or a go bag what i like to do when i'm in the process of building these is to use a laundry hamper or even a storage bin to temporarily store all of the items so if i'm going to dedicate a particular flashlight to my bug out bag i just toss it in that laundry bin i'll do the same thing for the first aid kits and for the food and for the water i do this to help keep track of what the weight is going to be like and on occasion i'll just pick it up to see how heavy it is so the laundry basket itself represents the backpack and all of the other items represent the items that are going to be stored in that particular system so as you're working through your scrum board it may take you a few different sprints or months to create your bug out bag so rather than have everything spread out all over the place just use a laundry bin or a storage bin for tossing the items in as you have them dedicated towards a particular use case this will help keep everything in one place and you could organize and optimize how they're stored in the backpack at a later date but this will help serve as a guy to make sure that your bug-out bag isn't too heavy so as you're building your bag just toss the items in occasionally pick it up to see how heavy it is you'll start getting a good idea of how much weight you're going to want to store on your back for that type of emergency kit and that's what i do when i'm building my various bug out bags get home bags and go bags the next tip that i have for home organization is to distribute your supplies to various locations you don't want to have all of your eggs in one basket so rather than have all of your preps in a single location like the garage it's better to have them distributed throughout your home or even outside of your home for example i have a lot of items that are in the garage but i also have additional items in my office and we also have them in the basement we also have some in the attic and in the home pantry so just in case one of the locations gets compromised whether that be from rodents or from fire you'll still have some preps in your other areas because you've distributed them throughout your home what i like trying to do is find clever hiding spots in your homes for storing your emergency preps so while i try to store most of my supplies in the garage or in my office or in various closets i also like finding discreet places that no one really thinks about one of my favorites is sleigh beds if you have a sleigh bed it provides a little gap between the bed frame itself and the wall when we used to live in an apartment that's where i would store my five gallon water jugs another good place to store preps is underneath the beds so in your home try to get beds that have a frame that allow for various storage underneath it in my son's room for example we have a lot of toilet paper that's stored underneath his bed mattress you could also store preps in the attics but you're going to need to make sure that they're mouse proof so don't put them in cardboard boxes put them in a heavy duty storage box you could do the same strategy in basements we have a lot of prep stored underneath the staircase of our home oftentimes that's kind of an awkward closet to store things but it does make a great option to store your emergency preps another option that you could do if you could afford it is to have a dedicated storage unit that's external to your home when we were in apartment i started running out of storage space for my emergency preps so i ended up getting an inexpensive storage unit and i put a lot of shelves in that particular storage unit to store my various modules for my emergency preps again you want to make sure that you leverage the modular approach for your emergency preparedness and to color coordinate them to help stay organized but i think this is a good option for an external storage unit for your home preps for example maybe your home was damaged in an earthquake and a fire at least you would still have preps outside of the home that you could leverage in an emergency situation even if it's just some extra jugs of water a little 5x5 storage unit could go a long way and the final recommendation that i have for this particular video is to create some kind of blog or journal to document your preparedness journey i think it's great to start a blog or a youtube channel or just some kind of avenue that you could publicly post what you're working on emergency preparedness is kind of a lonely hobby sometimes your significant other isn't going to be into it and your family is going to make fun of you for doing it so it's good to have an outlet where you could talk to like-minded people so i think it's a good idea to start an online blog or a channel that you could document your journey this will help create a sense of accountability to stay the course over time as you're going through your preparedness journey you're going to get frustrated at times and get almost like writer's block you don't want that to happen so once you have your scrum board working and you're putting your various sprints together i recommend sharing those with someone there's going to be other people that don't have a significant other or a friend that they could collaborate with and reading your blog entry for some preparedness project that you're working on it's going to encourage that person and it's also going to encourage you to actually finish the projects that you're working on so again start a youtube channel or a blog and let people know what you're working on you won't want to let them down and it will help you keep motivated to complete your goals leverage any feedback that you receive and optimize your preparedness kits and planning having this channel for almost a decade now has really given me a sense of accountability to complete the tasks that i say i'm gonna do so oftentimes life gets in the way things happen and it's easy to get sidetracked but if you have that sense of accountability where people are tuning in to see what you're working on even if it's just 10 people it'll give you a sense of accountability to finish what you started so again document your preparedness journey somewhere and that wraps up what i wanted to cover for home prepping organization and tricks of the trade i hope that you guys enjoyed watching this video featuring my tips for home prepping organization and other tricks of the trade so leave your comments below in the comments section regarding this video again i've provided all of the various prepping channels that are a part of this collaboration i have links for them in the description box below in addition to a playlist that has all the videos that we're releasing for national preparedness month in september so again leave your comments below in the comments section and stay tuned for more videos see you guys next time [Music]

Channel: TheUrbanPrepper

Views: 152,916

Rating: 4.9240198 out of 5

Keywords: Emergency, Emergency Preparedness, Prep, Prepping, Survival, The Urban Prepper, garage organization, garage organization ideas, home organization, home organization ideas, home organization tips & techniques, home prepping organization, home prepping system, how to organize your preps, organizing prepping supplies, pantry, prepper organization, prepper pantry organization, prepping for beginners, shtf

Id: LS4iOekBssk

Length: 16min 14sec (974 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020