After the initial research (I can’t say I will ever be “done” researching, but I’ve got some general information in my head), I found I need to do two things before I can really do much about preparing.  I need to organize my thoughts and I need to organize my home.  The slightly anxious part of me, a tiny voice in my head that says “something is going to go wrong, you need to be ready!” wants to jump in and start buying and going all tin foil hat.  But I know that will just lead to wasted money and wasted time.

To organize my thoughts, I decided to write down all the major categories of preparedness, and start prioritizing what I feel is most important for my family.  Eventually, this will flesh out and become my emergency preparedness binder, but for now I am keeping it fairly simple.

Secondly, I gotta start organizing my home.  My pantry isn’t that large, and its a disaster of mostly disorganized, wasted space.  Half my garage is full of bins of things that wouldn’t be useful in an emergency, and has needed to be sorted into trash and donate piles for months years.  As for the rest of my home, with its limited storage areas — well, we just have Too Much Stuff.