Prepare Anywhere: Morale Boosters

As you may recall, I am currently working on a nonfiction book entitled Prepare Anywhere. The anticipated release is September of this year, with the hope that it will be available during National Preparedness Month here in the USA. This project came about because of my passion for helping people get more prepared no matter what their season of life or their ZIP code. While I enjoy reading fiction where folks have rural compounds and pantries the size of my bedroom, and I’ve gotten a kick out of watching reality shows where the family is building a castle, the truth is that’s just not attainable for me – or for a lot of folks.

Due to the military lifestyle, I’ve lived in areas where preparedness was a necessity; both when I was a child and now as a wife and mother. It can be overwhelming to look at some preparedness checklists and feel like you have to do it all, all at once, or it just isn’t going to be “right”. I really enjoy helping folks break those checklists down into more accessible chunks, and this morning I got a reminder on social media of one fun way of doing just that: storing morale boosting foods.

Morale boosting foods are things that you consider an important treat for your household. Experts say that when storing food and other emergency supplies, in addition to storing what you normally eat, you should store something that would be a treat, something to boost morale in hard times.

So – take a few minutes and think about the things that are your household’s most reached-for treats – what really perks you up after a super stressful week at work? When the kids (or pets) have been really awesome and you want to treat them to something fun, what do you reach for? Normally I would encourage my family to try to choose an experience instead of something food-based, but in this particular scenario, we’ll plan for something that doesn’t allow us to do those sort of things, okay? Think of things that would go in the cupboard, that you could pull out when stuck at home by a blizzard for a week, or an earthquake that brought a rockslide down, blocking your road to town for several days.

Make a list of three to five important morale boosters that you can stock up on – and don’t let them go to waste! An important part of food storage is proper food rotation. That means that when everybody’s put in a hard day of spring cleaning or fall canning, you can break out the ingredients for some s’mores to rotate that treat. Just be sure to restock on your next grocery trip!

What would your top 3 or 5 goodies be? Share in the comments – I’d love to hear from you. I’ll start… ours are:

Dark chocolate
Brownie mix
Jerky (beef and turkey)
Hot chocolate
Dog treats (technically for the dog, but I guess if we were hungry enough…) 😉