Prepping Without a Place

Living out of a bag isn’t fun, but it beats living without it. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since the kerfuffle in July, I have been staying with Dad and Jean. They have been wonderful enough to open their home to me and the 140 lbs (and growing) of dogs that come with me. Where I had been living in what amounted to a large one-bedroom apartment, I am now in a small bedroom, and a guest bedroom at that. My experience in July taught me the value of being prepared for emergencies, but it is hard when you are living in a guest room/motel/on someone’s cough/in a shared apartment/dorm room/barracks room.

These are some things that I have been doing to build my transient safety net. Of course, any of these ideas can be used in any situation, but they are especially well suited for those of us without much residential stability.

Document, Document, Document!

• When I was packing, the one thing that I was most worried about was leaving vital paperwork behind. I had most of my documents in one place, but there were a few papers I had to search for. Since then, I bought an $8 zipper binder and I am filling it with all of my important documents. Any piece of paper that identifies me, proves that important things belong to me, or give me access to my finances live in this binder.
• I am still working on it. I plan to include things like inventories, my contact lists, and copies of my favorite pictures.
• If you want help creating your own binder, Misty over at Your Own Home Store has a great explanation. It’s what I started out with.

Get It In The Bag

• You can call it a Bug Out Bag (BOB), a 72 hour kit, or -my personal favorite- a vacation ready bag, but you really should have one. I have an old black backpack stuffed with a few days of clean clothes (old clothes that won’t be missed), a travel hygiene kit (the kind you can take on airplanes), a pair of sturdy and comfortable shoes, some snacks and water bottles, a phone charger, flash light, a knitting kit (never know when you’ll get bored), enough cash for a full tank of gas, and a couple plastic grocery bags (I tend to use these for trash). When I put my bag together, I imagined what I would need for an 3 day road trip.
• Speaking of, this sort of bag is great for surprise trips too. I ended up driving by myself from Chicago to upstate New York in March with about 12 hours notice. Those 12 hours included work and sleep. I had an early version of this bag ready to go, so I only had to grab a few snacks. Packing for a weekend trip in 15 minutes? Awesome.

Keep the Car Running

This sort of go-bag would be great to keep in the car. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• If you have a car, make sure it’s in good working order. Tires filled up, oil changed, all that jazz. Some other things to keep in the car are a phone charger, first aid kit, snacks, water, change for tolls and parking, a map of your area, enough cash to fill up the tank, and a pair of pants and normal shoes (trust me, you don’t want to try to change a tire in heels and a skirt).
• When you’re REALLY short on space, your car’s trunk makes a great pace to store things that aren’t temperature sensitive. Clothes, bedding, books, non-essential paperwork, and extra paper goods are options. Just please use common sense. Don’t keep sensitive documents in the car, and if you live in an area where break-ins are fairly common, find another place to keep things.

Help Stock Your Hosts’ Pantry

• I help out with the cooking and shopping. Dad doesn’t usually go shopping until the pantry is bare, so I go once a week and buy staples. I make sure that they are all things that Dad and Jean use, but I’ll buy in bulk and make sure I keep restocking. I am also contributing at least half of my preserves to their pantry, and I keep the cookie jar full.
• I keep the house stocked with my prefered cleaning supplies, since I try to do a good bit of cleaning and I have some chemical sensitivities to “normal” cleaning solutions.

I know that being prepared in a small space can seem daunting, and if you are living in a place with the storage capacity of a locket it might just seem impossible. I’m working at it though, and you can too.

Do you have any suggestions for prepping in a teeny tiny place?

My First Jam and a New Sister-In-Law To Be

My goodness, what a busy weekend I had! I am no longer a canning newbie (all of 12 half pints of jam and jelly put up), I got to spend a day out with my dad, and my baby brother got engaged! I’m very excited that Caitlin will be my sister, we all love her. Though why she puts up with my brother I’ll never know ;)

My brother Daniel and his fiance Caitlin

On top of that wonderful news, I also learned a few things about canning.

1. It takes forE-V-E-R to get a canning pot full of water to boil.
2. The pot you think is big enough? Not even close. Get a bigger one.
3. Mashing berries with a spoon is silly, use a potato masher instead.
4. If you are going to be adding cups of sugar to an already boiling mixture, put it all into a batter bowl with a handle to save your hands from scalding steam and to prevent pouring most of the sugar onto the hot burner where it will promptly caramelize and become a huge mess.
5. Red wine jelly totally counts as a serving of fruit. Really.

If you were wondering, I used this pectin free strawberry jam recipe and this wine jelly recipe. Both are very good, though I really love the wine jelly. I’m thinking that next time I make it, I’ll add some Glühwein spices in a cheesecloth bag to the boiling stage and I’ll have Glühwein jelly! Yum!

My wine jelly, made with fancy shmancy boxed wine.

So, for those of you keeping score at home, I did in fact meet my goal of putting up 12 cans of homemade goods last week. Granted, that much jam and jelly will probably last me at least 9 months. Aside from toast and English muffins, what can I use this for?

Determining Your Priorities

If you are trying to focus your energy, money, or time effectively, you need to know what your priorities are. I’ve seen a lot of self-help type instructions that tell you that the key is to prioritize, but very few actually tell you how to do it. This is how I figured out how I wanted to use my extra money.

What to do with all that extra money? (Photo credit: Ano Lobb. @healthyrx)

I worked it out in a web chart. I worked mine up on the computer, only because I didn’t have a sheet of paper handy. You can use crayons and your wall if you like (just make sure it’s your wall, no graffiti please), it really isn’t important. What is important is that you get it written down.

At the center of your page/screen/wall I want you to write what it is you will be spending. Are you using up cash, time, energy, or something else? Whatever it is, write it in the center.

Spaced about equally around your center and in no particular order write the five main categories- Food, Security, Shelter, Entertainment, and Fulfillment.

Spend at most fifteen minutes writing down anything you want around each category. Don’t censor anything, just write it down.

Now take a break. Walk away, stop thinking about your priorities. I went and did the dishes and mopped the floor. That’s how I procrastinate.

When you come back, cross off anything you know isn’t that important. I had put down vacation, but the hotel/tourist type vacations are not that important to me. After the unimportant things are crossed out, highlight any Want that showed up in more than one category or should be in multiple categories.

If any of these wants are actually needs, just describe their ideal. For instance, because of my work I need an internet connection and a cell phone. I wrote their ideal as high speed wireless internet and an iPhone with unlimited everything and a hot spot.

Spend a half minute or so expanding on each of the remaining wants. I used note cards because I had them handy. Make a note of which categories each want falls under. Write at least one sentence for each want. Feel free to write more if it applies.

This is where you’re going to need to make some decisions. Look at your notes. They should give a good idea of what sorts of things are important to you. Maybe you can already set a few aside. That’s fine, it will make picking easier. Here are a few tips to help you pick:

• Look for wants that fall under multiple categories, they are probably higher priorities
  • I actually eliminated any want that only fell into one category
• Can some of the wants be combined? Does that make them more important?
  • It turns out that two of my multiple category wants could be combined, this made those two wants very high priority for me.
• Is there one want that stands out? Does one have a lot of explanations where most have just a quick line? That one might be important
• If you did a web chart, check out where you placed things. We will subconsciously put important ideas in more prominent places. Maybe there is one want that has a lot of space around it, or a want that is very interconnected. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a high priority, but it could help if you’re stuck.

Check out the priority web I used to find out what to do with my Extra Cash:

Yellow is for wants that show up more than once
Black is for wants that aren’t important

The home grown/made, storage preps, and baking/cooking wants all combined well, and meant that my new priority (canning food to put up) falls under three categories. Realistically, it can qualify as Entertainment and Shelter too, which makes it an ideal priority.

Do you have a different method to help make decisions? What do you think of this technique?

Canning My New Priorities

Since I quit smoking, it turns out that I have $40 extra in my budget every week. Being happy with my savings level, and not wanting to just piddle the extra money away (because it ends up being $2,080 a year!), I decided to find a good use for it. Of course, this is a “flex” item on my freedom account sheet, which means that it only gets filled AFTER all my other budgeted categories are happy.

 

I now just have to figure out what I want to spend my money on. It needs to be something that a) I will remember in 6 months, b) actually improves my lifestyle, and c) can be worked towards instead of just saved for. I was drawing a blank. Then, I realized this was a perfect opportunity to use some of those brainstorming/mind mapping techniques that I thought were so useless in school (remember those?). After extensive introspection, a couple dozen 3×5 cards, and a few unnecessary chores (my way of procrastinating. Yes, I’m weird, it’s one of my few charms) I figured out that my priority is to have a well stocked pantry that leans very heavily on food I have canned/prepared/made myself. That is a little vague, and I like to have very concrete goals. Fine. My goal is to have 3 months of healthy homemade canned food in my pantry.

 

What I want my pantry to look like (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Along with the concrete goals, I also work best when the path is broken down into teeny-tiny easy-peasy steps. This is where I geeked out a bit. I spent a lot longer than any sane person would in Excel figuring out exactly what I would can, how much each serving would be, how many total ounces I would need of each thing, what size jar the thing would be best in, how many of each size jar I would need, and an approximation of how much I would spend on jars. See? Didn’t I geek out?

 

Thanks to my way too complicated and convoluted Excel spread sheet, I figured out that if I just put up 12 cans of what ever each week, I would hit my goal of 3 months worth of food in just 6 months. That seems doable, even living with Dad right now. The $40 should more than cover the cost of jars and food. Hopefully, after a few weeks I will have enough extra cash to buy a pressure cooker so I can put up some Arrabiata (spicy, garlicky, basil filled tomato sauce which is so incredibly good) while the tomatoes and basil are freshest.

 

Now, I didn’t mention that I have never canned anything before, did I? Yep. Not once, not ever.  Strangely, despite never having canned, I do have all the equipment save the jars themselves. So all I will need to buy this week are the ingredients and the jars. I’ll start small. I’m thinking this strawberry jam and/or wine jelly. Strawberries are on sale this week and I already have 2 boxes of wine (left over from Dad’s wedding).  Wish me luck?

 

Don’t worry, if you want help finding your own priorities for spending spare time/money/energy on, I’m working on a blog post explaining what I did.

 

Prepping Pups for Evacuations

I was lucky enough (sarcasm there) to do a mini evacuation a couple weeks ago. I didn’t have to go far and I was the only one moving, which really made it a great test run for a full scale emergency. One parts of my packing/moving went almost perfectly: getting my dogs and all of their things gathered. It could have been easier, but I had a doggie go-bag all ready.

English: A dog with a rawhide chew toy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here are the things I had together:

• Food in single serving sized packets- 3 days worth for each dog
• Equal volume of water- I actually only had one day’s worth, I will need to fix that
• Spare food & water dish
• Poop disposal (at least one per meal packed)
• Leash & extra collar for each dog
• Muzzle- I have a pair of cut up nylons for this, and I practice using them as muzzles
• Medication (don’t forget flea drops/heart worm)- you will want a dose of even monthly meds in case you evacuate a day or two before they’re due
• Chew toys (especially one that will keep them busy)- my boys LOVE the meaty bones and will ignore everything else while chewing these
• Treats
• Brushes and nail clippers

That seems pretty comprehensive, but there were a few extra things that I had to run around to grab for the dogs.

• Medical records, including shot records. I also wish I had health certificates for them both (some hotels and apartments require a health certificate before admitting pets)
  • along with medical records, I would feel better if I had the number for alternate vets in case I can’t contact mine
• Towels or blankets for using as a bed or for drying off/cleaning up
• Dog first aid kit along with a first aid book for animals
• Dog harnesses/seat belts. These things are great for travel, it keeps Fido in his seat instead of in your lap and it keeps the pup from going through the windshield in an accident.

So have I forgotten anything? Have you ever had to evacuate with pets?

Budgets and Savings

English: ceramic piggy bank (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yesterday was payday for me. First time I got to see my improved paycheck. Because I’m trying to reach multiple savings goals all at once (house deposit, re-build my emergency fund, and save up to get the dog fixed), I am working with a strict budget. I have tried budgeting many times before, and it never seemed to work out that well for me. I’m not sure why, but Kimberlee’s Freedom Account over at the Peaceful Mom has been something I have been able to stick to. I did adjusted her categories and inputs, but it has really helped me out. I don’t look at my checking account balance anymore, instead, I check my Freedom Account.

One big thing that really made this particular budget work for me was that I gave myself $60 per week to take out in cash. The deal was that if a purchase didn’t fall into one of the budget categories, I had to pay for it with cash. If I bought something non-budgeted on-line, that also came out of the cash budget. Because I can only take out cash in $20 increments, if I bought something on-line, I would have to round-up to the nearest twenty. Now, $60 a week seems like a lot, but that was my budget when I smoked. At $9 a pack, my cash didn’t really last that long. Luckily, I have quit smoking, so my cigarette budget can go into savings.

I have run into a slight problem though. After portioning my paycheck into categories, I went shopping. I didn’t go over budget and most of the things I got were necessities, but I did end up with a few impulse buys. None of the impulse buys were really frivolous, but they still cost money that I could have saved.

Do you have a favorite budget, or budgeting tips? How do you keep those impulse items from jumping into your cart?

Looking for Home

Since losing a great living arrangement two weeks ago, I am on the look out for a new place to live. I am on a budget, so I realize that I won’t be living in the lap of luxury. All I ask for is a place that will accept large breed dogs (two), is within a half hour or so commute from work, and costs under $850. I understand that I probably won’t get a dishwasher, on-site laundry, hardwood floors, or much closet space, but I do (did) expect to find something.  Guess what. An apartment like that does not exist. I’ve waded through at least half a dozen apartment finder sites and found nothing. Nadda.

On a 5th cup of coffee induced whim, I decided to see if there could possibly be a house that fits my criteria. Sure enough, within 20 minutes of work (barring traffic) there are a couple dozen or so single family homes for less than $100,000. Now, based on what the internet tells me and rounding up generously, a $100,000 30 year mortgage would probably run me about $600 per month. I am not entirely naive (famous last words)– I understand that home ownership has all sorts of extra costs that renters never need to think about like taxes and insurance. So I’ll say that my budget is around $80,000 for a move in ready place.

Because I am very much a list maker, I spent this morning (aided by all that coffee, and maybe a couple extra cups) figuring out what my needs and wants are. Here’s what I came up with, and my reasoning.

Non-Negotiable:

• Price. Unless we’re negotiating down.
• Two or more bedrooms (the extra bedroom for a guest/craft room, maybe eventually a kid’s room, and- most importantly- resale value)
• No major renovations needed- all the plumbing, electric, structure, and heating needs to be in good working order (I want to be able to move in ASAP, and big projects tend to always go over budget)
• Decent sized yard with plenty of sun that I can fence in (this is for the dogs and for food gardening)
• ABSOLUTELY NO HOA. EVER. If you aren’t framiliar with HOAs, you can read all about them over at Wikipedia. I do not like them.

There is also a whole slew of things I would like- covered parking, a nice big kitchen, double pane windows, hardwood floors, open floor plan, etc. But really, for $80,000 I’ll be happy if the house comes with appliances.

Am I missing something(s)? Do you have cautionary tales about buying a home?