How to Start Prepping

Most people imagine prepping as something extreme. They picture bunkers and pallets of MREs. If that's what you think it is, no wonder it feels alien. The reality is much more ordinary, and, if you do it right, much calmer. Prepping is just what you'd do if you designed your household to keep working when a couple of common things go wrong.

The test is simple: Could you get through three days with no power, no tap water, and the possibility that you might have to leave home in a hurry? If you can pass that test, you've solved 80% of the problem. You won't be ready for everything, but you'll be ready for most things that actually happen.

The right way to approach this is the same way you'd learn any skill: small projects. The reason bunkers loom so large in people's imaginations is that they're one big project. Big projects are intimidating. They spawn a lot of talking and not much building. Small projects are easy to start. They teach you. And they stack.

I'll show you how to break prepping into small projects. The goal isn't to survive the apocalypse. The goal is to make a Tuesday night power outage with two sleeping kids feel like a non-event.

The 80/20 of Prepping

If you list all the bad things that could happen, you'll never start. So don't. Start with the ones that actually do. Power outages. Winter storms. Summer heat waves. Flooded intersections. A text from the city that says "boil your water." A fire alarm at 2 am. A fast-moving wildfire or chemical spill that means you're supposed to leave now.

You don't need obscure gear to handle these. You need some water, some shelf-stable food, a way to see in the dark, a way to hear what's going on, a simple plan, and a little practice. That's the 80%. Everything else is details.

People turn this into a performance. They buy complicated gadgets because complicated gadgets feel serious. But the most reliable gear is the gear that anyone in your house can use half-asleep. A flashlight with fresh batteries beats a candle every time. A small radio that turns on and tells you what's happening beats a closet full of gizmos you don't understand. The best plan is the one kids can remember.

When you look at prepping like this, it stops being a hobby for a certain kind of person and turns into what it actually is: basic household infrastructure.

Projects, Not Plans

Plans are guesses. Projects teach you. The ones that matter most are the ones you can do this week.

Start with three projects:

• Put a flashlight by every bed, with spare batteries, and test your smoke and CO alarms.
• Store three days of water and three days of shelf-stable food your family already eats.
• Write a one-page family plan: two meeting spots, a couple of contacts, and who does what if you have to leave.

You can do all three in a week without spending a lot. After that, keep adding small projects till you have two weeks of at-home capability. Two weeks sounds like a lot till you break it into pieces. It's just three days, done five times.

As you do these projects, you'll notice something: every step makes you calmer. That's not an accident. Anxiety likes vagueness. Projects turn vague problems into specific tasks. And when you do specific tasks, you get specific wins. A flashlight by the bed turns a midnight outage from a scramble into a shrug. A gallon of water per person per day gives you a number, not a worry.

Water

Water is the one thing you can't fake. If nothing else, get this right.

The rule of thumb is one gallon per person per day for drinking and basic sanitation. That's a minimum. In hot weather, or if someone is pregnant, nursing, ill, or mixing infant formula, you need more. Pets count too. Big dogs drink like small humans.

Where to put it? Use sealed bottled water or food-grade containers. Label the date and keep them out of direct sun, in a cool spot if you have one. If you're filling your own containers from the tap, clean them first and remember to rotate the water. The calendar is your friend here. Pick a date to check and swap what's old.

Where else can you get water? Your water heater is a surprisingly good reservoir if it's in decent shape. Learn how to shut off the incoming water so you don't pull in contaminated water if the main is compromised. And if a storm is coming you can see, fill the tub with a liner made for drinking water. That's a lot of water for very little effort.

What if the water's questionable? The simplest fix is boiling. Bring it to a rolling boil for at least a minute (longer if you're at altitude) and let it cool. If you can't boil, plain, unscented household bleach can disinfect water in a pinch, but only if you use the right kind and the right amount. If you're unsure, boil.

The reason to get water right is not just biology. It's mental. If you know you can drink, you don't have to think. And when you remove the big worry, everything else gets easier.

Food

People overcomplicate food. They buy astronaut meals and then, when the power goes out, they realize they hate them.

The best food to store is food you already eat that doesn't need a fridge. Canned beans, tuna or chicken, vegetables, fruit, soups. Peanut butter and other nut or seed butters. Oats, rice, pasta, tortillas, crackers. Shelf-stable milk or alternatives. Energy bars. If you have an infant, baby food or pouches. Keep a manual can opener with the food. You'd be surprised how many people remember it only when they need it.

Plan a simple three-day menu built from these. Not a fantasy menu. Real meals you and your kids will actually eat. Aim for a mix of things you can eat cold and things you might gently heat. If you plan to heat anything, do it safely, outside, and never with fuel-burning stoves inside.

Store it where it's easy to reach. Label it. Rotate it the way people who cook do: eat what you store and store what you eat. Every couple of months, pull a few things into regular meals and replace them. That way nothing expires quietly in the back of a closet. If someone in your house has allergies or specific dietary needs, stock the safe versions and keep them separate and obvious. You don't want to be reading labels by headlamp while a kid is hungry.

A word about fridges and freezers. If the power goes out, keep the doors closed. A refrigerator stays cold for about four hours if you don't open it. A full freezer can hold safe temperatures for roughly two days. Put a thermometer in both so you don't have to guess. If food has been above 40°F for more than two hours, don't be brave. The sense of smell is a poor statistician.

Light and Power

You can get a long way with light. The difference between groping and gliding is a headlamp. Give everyone their own. Put spares where you reach for them when you're half-asleep: by beds, at the breaker panel, near the front door.

Avoid candles. People love candles because they're old-fashioned and pretty. They're also a common cause of house fires. Kids and pets don't mix with open flames. There are no style points in emergencies. Use flashlights and headlamps.

Generators are where people get hurt. If you don't know exactly what you're doing with one, get more batteries instead. If you do use a generator, never run it inside, or in a garage, or near windows. Carbon monoxide is silent. It doesn't negotiate. Put CO alarms on every level and near sleeping areas, and test them. Use proper cords. Don't backfeed your house through an outlet. And let the generator cool before you refuel it. If any of that felt new, stick with battery power till it's not.

A small thing that pays big dividends is a routine. Charge your rechargeable lights monthly. Do it when you test your alarms. That way when the lights go out, you don't discover that all your gear is dead in a drawer.

Communication

The best plan in the world is useless if you don't know when to use it. You need two kinds of communication: one from the outside world to you, and one inside your family.

For the outside world, your phone is good, but it isn't enough. Networks get jammed. Phones get silenced. A small weather radio with battery backup will sit quietly and wake you up for tornadoes, flash floods, and other things that don't care if you're asleep. Program it for where you live and put it somewhere you can hear it at night.

For inside your family, text beats voice. Texts are short, resilient, and don't require a long connection. Decide, in advance, who checks in with whom and in what order. Pick an out-of-area contact everyone can text if local lines are bad. Put the numbers in your phones and on a small card in your wallets. The reason to do this now is that emergencies make simple tasks hard. You won't want to be inventing a plan while everyone is trying to call you.

Power for phones is nice. Keep a couple of charged power banks with your gear. Label one for the go-bag, keep one at home, and top them up on the same schedule as your alarms.

First Aid

A first aid kit is like insurance. You buy it and hope never to use it, and when you do, you don't want to be improvising. The funny thing about first aid kits is that people either have nothing or have a giant bag they can't find anything in. You want something in between: the basics, organized so you can get to them.

What are the basics? Assorted bandages. Sterile gauze pads. Tape. Antiseptic wipes. Antibiotic ointment. Hydrocortisone. Tweezers. Small scissors. Gloves. A digital thermometer. Instant cold packs. An elastic bandage. A triangular bandage. An emergency blanket. Saline or clean water for rinsing. A CPR face shield. And a small notebook and pen so you can write down times and symptoms when your memory is bad.

If someone in your family takes medications, write down what, how much, and when, and keep that with the kit, along with your doctors’ and pharmacies’ info. If your provider will allow it, keep a buffer of essential medications and rotate them the way you rotate food. If anyone relies on a medical device, plan for what you'll do if you lose power.

Kids and seniors add a few specifics: oral rehydration packets, a child-safe thermometer, diapering supplies and rash cream if you have little ones; spare glasses, hearing aid batteries, denture supplies, and mobility aids if you have older family members.

The most valuable part of a first aid kit isn't in the bag. It's in your head. Take a class. Learn CPR. Practice opening the kit and putting on gloves. The time to figure out how to make a sling is not when someone is crying.

Evacuation and Home Safety

House fires are both rare and common. Rare in any given week. Common over a lifetime. The way to handle them is practice.

Draw a simple floor plan. In each room, figure out two ways out if you can. Make sure windows open. If screens need two hands to remove, practice removing them. Pick a place outside to meet. A tree. A mailbox. Something you can point to.

Do two drills a year. One in daylight, one in the dark. Teach kids to crawl low under smoke, to close doors behind them if they can, and to never go back in. Assign an adult to get the pets. Assign someone to grab the go-bags if it's safe. Keep shoes by beds so stepping on glass at night doesn't turn a small problem into a bigger one.

Keep smoke alarms in every bedroom, outside sleeping areas, and on each level. Test them monthly. If people sleep with doors closed (which is good), make sure there's a working alarm inside the bedroom.

About the go-bag: it's not magical. It's just a small bag with essentials you don't want to gather while you're stressed. Copies of important documents. A change of clothes. Basic toiletries. Medications. A flashlight. A little cash. A phone charger. Some water and snacks. If you have a baby, diapers and wipes. If you have a pet, a leash and a small bag of food. Keep the bags somewhere you can grab them on the way out.

The Car

People forget the car. They shouldn't. It's your second house in a lot of emergencies. Keep the tank at least a quarter full by habit. A small kit in the trunk (water, snacks, a blanket, a flashlight, a first aid kit, a phone charger) covers a lot of situations, from being stuck in traffic during an evacuation to waiting for a tow truck on a cold night.

Documents and Money

Paperwork feels boring, which is why people avoid it. But if you've ever had to file a claim without the right documents, you appreciate how painful boring can be.

Make a list of what you'd need to prove who you are and what you own if your house was gone. IDs. Insurance policies. Medical info. Prescriptions. Bank details. Titles and deeds. Key contacts. Put copies in a waterproof, fire-resistant pouch. Scan them and keep encrypted digital copies in the cloud so you can reach them from your phone. If you want a belt-and-suspenders approach, put an encrypted copy on a USB drive and leave it with a trusted relative.

Have some cash in small bills. Not a lot. Enough to buy gas and groceries if the power is out and the card reader won't cooperate. Refresh it once in a while. The main point is to avoid the interesting experience of having money you can't spend.

Take a slow walk through your house with your phone and video everything. Open drawers. Narrate big-ticket items. Upload the video. It's boring, which is precisely why it will be easy to do now and impossible later. If you need to file a claim, you'll be grateful you did.

Practice and Maintenance

Preparedness isn't a one-time purchase. It's a small habit. The trick is to make maintenance so simple that you actually do it.

Every three months, do a five-minute pass: check water, rotate a couple of pantry items into meals, replace anything nearing expiration, test your weather radio and phone alerts, push the test buttons on your smoke and CO alarms, and click your flashlights on.

Twice a year, do your fire drill, review evacuation routes, and run a ten-minute communication check. Walk the kids to your meeting spot again. Do a mini "lights out" evening to see what you missed. You'll always find something small to fix. That's how this works.

Once a year, update your plan and documents. Babies turn into toddlers who need different things. Health changes. Hazards change. Swap seasonal items in go-bags: sunscreen and sun hats for summer, warm layers for winter. Review insurance and the photos you took.

Budget

The main reason people delay prepping is money. They think it has to be expensive because the pictures they see are expensive. It doesn't. If you can spread it over three months, it will feel ordinary.

In month one, do the basics: water, three days of food, lights, a simple first aid kit, and the one-page family plan. In month two, add a weather radio, more water and food variety, hygiene items, and, with your provider's help, a buffer of essential medications. In month three, round things out: backup power that matches your comfort and safety (power banks if you're not ready for generators), your document kit, and extra supplies for infants, seniors, pets, and anyone with specific needs.

That's not hypothetical. If you put a few items on each grocery list, you'll have a surprisingly solid setup by the end of the quarter. The nice thing about doing it this way is that you get all the psychological benefits right away. The first gallon of water and the first flashlight make life better now. You don't have to wait till you're "done" to feel different.

Kids, Seniors, and Pets

People treat kids as an exception. They're not. They're the reason to get this right.

For kids, the plan has to be simple. Two meeting spots, practiced till they're automatic. A wallet card with a couple of numbers. A small flashlight they know is theirs. A couple of familiar comfort items in the go-bag. The tone when you practice matters more than the details. Keep it calm. Confidence is the goal.

For seniors, small things make a big difference: spare glasses, hearing aid batteries, denture supplies, an extra cane tip, copies of medication lists in big type. For anyone with mobility needs, plan the path and practice it. Assign a buddy in drills.

Pets are family, which means you plan for them. A leash and a carrier near the door. A baggie of food and a bowl in the go-bag. Know which shelters or hotels will take them. If you wouldn't leave without them, include them in the plan.

The Tuesday Night Test

Most of the value in prepping is in making the common case boring. The test isn't whether your gear will get you through an epic, cinematic catastrophe. The test is whether you can handle the small stuff without drama.

Try this thought experiment. It's Tuesday night. The power goes out. Two kids are asleep. It's raining. You hear a siren in the distance. What happens next? In the unprepared version, people stumble around, bump into things, and start asking each other unanswerable questions. In the prepared version, you reach for the flashlight that is always by the bed. You check the time. You put your phone on low-power mode and a power bank on the nightstand. You turn the weather radio on and hear that a transformer blew and crews are on their way. You go back to sleep.

When you can pass that test, everything else gets easier. In fact, you can make a habit of running little Tuesday Night Tests. A ten-minute "lights out" is enough to reveal a dozen small improvements. Move a flashlight. Label a bin. Put a pair of shoes closer to the bed.

The Psychology

One of the most surprising things about prepping is how little of it is about stuff. Stuff matters, but psychology matters more.

The biggest mistake people make is to treat preparedness like a movie. Movies are about unusual events. Life is about frequent ones. In movies, the hero solves problems alone. In life, you want the simplest gear your grandparents could use. In movies, dramatic gestures save the day. In life, checklists do.

The second mistake is to think of this as deciding what you believe about the world. It isn't. It's deciding how to design your household. Whether or not you think you live in a risky place, the power will go out sometimes. Pipes will break sometimes. Texts about water quality will arrive at inconvenient times. This is not a referendum on the future. It's a way to be a good neighbor and a less stressed parent.

The third mistake is to try to get everything perfect before you do anything. Perfection is a stall tactic. Get a flashlight by the bed. That's enough for day one. On day two, put water in the closet. On day three, write the plan. That three-day sequence already covers most of what you'll see.

A lot of anxiety lives in the gap between vague fear and action. The way out is small, concrete moves. They don't just prepare you. They change how you feel now.

Defaults

One of the secrets of good design is good defaults. If the right thing happens by default, life gets easier. You don't need a heroic amount of discipline to put the phone on the charger if the charger is right where you put the phone anyway. You don't need a lecture to test alarms if the reminder shows up at the same time you always do something else.

You can do the same thing with prepping. Put a small flashlight by every bed as the default. Keep shoes by the bed as the default. Keep the go-bags near the door as the default. Make the quarterly checks and the twice-a-year drills reminders on a calendar you already use. Attach charging your power banks to testing your alarms. Attach rotating pantry cans to making chili.

Design your house so the right thing is the easy thing, and you'll do the right thing when you're tired. Emergencies are always inconvenient. Make your responses automatic.

A Note on Gear Culture

If you like gear, it's easy to make this a gear hobby. There's nothing wrong with that if you're also doing the basics. But remember that most of the value comes from a few humble items and a few practiced routines. A child who can text "we're at the mailbox" is worth more than a trunk full of things you haven't learned to use.

So if you're going to splurge anywhere, splurge on clarity. Label bins. Print the plan. Put a paper copy of contacts in each wallet. Take a picture of your meeting spots and show your kids. How something is organized matters more than what it is.

How to Start

All this probably still feels like a lot. So here's a way to start tonight that will make you feel different before you go to bed.

• Put a working flashlight and spare batteries in each bedroom. Turn them on. Leave them within reach.
• Test your smoke and CO alarms. If you don't have CO alarms, get them.
• Write down two meeting spots (one nearby, one out of the neighborhood) and an out-of-area contact. Put the names and numbers on a piece of paper and tape it to the fridge. Put the numbers in your phones.

That's it. Tomorrow, put three gallons of water in your cart for every person in your house. The next day, buy three days of shelf-stable food your family already eats, plus a manual can opener. The day after that, order a small weather radio.

By the end of the week, you'll be more prepared than most people. By the end of the month, if you keep going, you'll be in the top few percent. Not because you built a bunker, but because you designed your house to keep working when common things go wrong.

The good news is that once you begin, momentum helps you. You'll notice sticking doors, like the shopkeeper who posts a sign that the door sticks and never planes it. You'll see the little points of friction in your own setup, and you'll fix them one by one. The radio is too far away at night. Move it. The water is on the concrete where it gets warm. Raise it. The plan is on the fridge but not in your wallets. Print cards. None of these are hard. They just needed to be noticed.

And that's the real reason to start. Yes, you will be better off the next time the lights go out. But you'll also feel different now. You'll have a sense that your house works the way you think it does. That difference is worth as much as the gear.

If I had to compress everything into one sentence, it would be this: make the next failure boring. That's the whole game. If you can make a power outage, a boil-water notice, or a late-night fire alarm boring, you've done it right.

You don't need a bunker for that. You need a plan your kids can remember, a few ordinary tools, and a habit of small projects. Start tonight.