Well, after many years in the 1 — 1/2 bedroom apartment in Northern NJ, Ms. Prepper and I recently moved in together, and into a new home. Anyone that has accumulated any amount of stuff, knows that the mere act of packing your stuff and moving it can be a daunting task. In this prepper’s case, however, I really didn’t understand how much stuff I had. More specifically, I didn’t really understand the extent of my preps. Nor did I understand what it was going to take to move those preps. In the scope of transparency, I really have not put as much into prepping as I should have in the past year. I achieved a certain level of preps, and sort of just plateaued. I promised myself I would hone some skills as well, and life sort of got in the way and that never happened either. I’m now starting to “schedule” my skills training for myself so that I don’t lose sight of what is important. You may have noticed by the lack luster number of posts on the blog as well. But I digress…
On another note, one of the upsides of moving is that you get to determine what you might actually need and what you might not need going forward. That’s huge. Now the downside. As a prepper, you have a ton of stored clothes, boots, gloves, MOPPS gear, wheat, beans, rice, flour, etc, etc, etc. You get the picture. All of you you think you need, just in case… So, I looked it over, determined that some of the food could go, get donated, etc. I could replace it later, and I had enough long term storage to fill the gap if I needed it to. So that is where I am. But what was daunting was loading up buckets, buckets, and more buckets of food… I felt like it would never end. To boot, we’ve moved from a place with a basement. You know, that cool dry place you’re supposed to keep your food storage, to a home without a basement, but a crawl space. So all my food storage is in the warm humid garage at the moment, until I can figure out the next step, which may be a climate controlled storage unit. But that is not a perfect scenario either. I’ll probably get an air conditioner for the garage and kill two birds with one stone, keep it cooler, and kill the humidity as well.
The other issue I have is organizing it all. I have a garage that is full of stuff still in boxes, and it really does need to be sorted out soon, as in the event of an actual emergency, I’ll be wasting a lot of time doing things like digging out a propane heater or the generator that is currently buried. All of this takes time.
Back to the move. I had originally planned on moving all my preps myself. I wanted a higher level of OPSEC. Reality kicked in though with some business travel and barely enough time to pack, so the preps got moved with everything else. That said, many preps were in cardboard moving boxes or in opaque plastic bins. The movers had no clue what they were moving. Other preps were in five and six gallon buckets clearly marked as wheat, flour, beans, and other types of long term food storage. Can you say oops. So much for OPSEC, as anyone that watched Doomsday Preppers or any other preparedness show would know exactly what it was. They asked, and I said I did a LOT of camping, and tried to reinforce it with my three various size tents, and many sleeping bags. I’m not too sure they bought it.
As for guns, ammunition, gasoline, and other items a moving company prohibit, I did move myself the day before the official move. I didn’t want anyone to see them or how many of them. Good thing the neighborhood we bought the house in is relatively quiet.
We’ve been in the house now for almost five months. Everytime I look in the garage, I cringe at all the work there is to do. My mistake was not having a solid plan around moving and organizing my preps. Had I had the time, and access to the house early enough, I would have moved the preps earlier, organized everything, and felt more comfortable about it. Meaning, I really need to get my Bug Out Bag off the floor in the furthest corner of the garage so that it is accessible, get the generator out so that it is accessible, etc.
The moral of the story is, have a plan to stay organized, and stick to it if you plan on moving your preps to a new home or a new location.
