On today’s episode, I’m joined by Janae, who runs a website and Instagram account called Prepared Like a Mother, where she helps readers learn to prepare things like food storage for emergencies. You all know I’m a casual prepper, so I wanted to have Janae on to help us learn a little bit more about how to prepare for emergencies—not the zombie apocalypse kind, but real-life shit. First, Janae explains how she got into disaster preparedness via a childhood obsession with severe weather and a resulting determination not to be left scrambling in the event of a disaster. She then turns to food storage specifically and discusses the benefits of maintaining a store even outside of doomsday events, along with practical, sensible tips on creating a store without getting wacky about it. Plus, we talk about our efforts with homesteading and how it’s a return to a way of life that used to be normal, even if our views on canning differ somewhat!
I then ask Janae to guide us through what she’d put in a bare-bones disaster preparedness kit. She emphasizes that basic prepping doesn’t have to consist of an extravagant, expensive list of stuff and that most people have a lot of what they need in their houses already. She also tackles the issue of affordability and food storage, acknowledging that even day-to-day groceries are expensive right now and advising building up your store slowly and steadily with small extra purchases. And finally, we return to the idea of normalizing preparedness and discuss how to avoid panic by making casual prep a part of your everyday life in a way that makes sense for you.

The Finer Details of This Episode:

The benefits of having a food store

Storing food without going to the wacky side

Janae’s bare-bones disaster preparedness guide

Disaster preparedness and affordability

Normalizing preparedness


Quotes:
“Even as a young child, I’ve always loved severe weather. And with that love, you see the catastrophic events, you see what it does, you see people hurting and dying and starving and in really bad ways. And then, in my brain, I was like, oh, I need to be prepared for that because I don’t want to be that person who can’t feed my family, and I don’t want to be that person who isn’t ready and scrambling.”
“Food storage comes in handy for a job loss. Food storage comes in handy for just if you are in the middle of cooking dinner, and you’re like, crap, I don’t have, I don’t even know, barbecue sauce. So go in the food storage, go get your barbecue sauce. You don’t have to hurry and run to the store. So there’s so many more good reasons to have a food storage than a doomsday.”
“If you’re using your seventy-two-hour kits or natural disaster, whatever happens, you’re basically just going on a miserable vacation. You know, you’re not going to have your house, you’re not going to have whatever. So you have to adapt. And most people have the ability to adapt in their own house, they can just throw it all in a bag.”
“Do what’s going to make you most comfortable. You’re going to be the one that’s in charge of your own destiny if there’s an earthquake, or if there’s a hurricane, or if there’s a nor’easter, you’re in charge of yourself, so do what makes sense to you.”

Links:
Jamie’s Homepage - www.jamieglowacki.com
Oh Crap! Potty Training – https://www.amazon.com/Crap-Potty-Training-Everything-Parenting-ebook/dp/B00V3L8YSU
Oh Crap! I Have A Toddler -
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Oh-Crap!-I-Have-a-Toddler/Jamie-Glowacki/Oh-Crap-Parenting/9781982109738
Jamie’s Patreon Page: www.patreon.com/join/jamieglowacki?
Jamie’s Instagram Page: @jamie.glowacki

Janae’s Instagram Page: @preparedlikeamother
Prepared Like A Mother Homepage: http://www.preparedlikeamother.com