Disaster Preparedness Kit for Home and Car

Do you have a Disaster Emergency Kit ready for you and your loved ones in your home and then in your car? Now that I'm taking a Safety class known as CERT, Community Emergency Response Training, ( they are free, nationwide, highly recommend it) I've discovered it's time to add more supplies to the kits I've got at home, and also in the car.

I didn't have spare cash in my kits and that is important considering in a major disaster ATM machines won't be working. You don't want to only have a 100 dollar bill when all you need to buy is a bottle of water or some other supply. Something else that is great to add to your home kit is a makeshift toilet! Hardware stores sell them--a plastic tub, like the jumbo detergent soap tubs, but it comes with a "toilet" lid. Just line it with two hefty trash bags, and make sure you have some T-P and wet wipes and you are good to "go".

Now for your car kit, here's a great discovery--a fold up blanket made of Mylar and can fit in your backpack easily because it folds down to the size of a sandwich! Plus you want to get some of those glow in the dark sticks popular around Halloween time! They last for 12 hours and in some cases may work better than a flashlight--no batteries needed. Check out the website www.readyamerica.com or www. redcross.org for these supplies.

So here's my list for my Home Disaster Preparedness kit:

1-Bottled Water for 3-5 Days
2-Food - (peanut butter, tuna, canned fruit, protein bars) Think high in protein and carbs ( forget the diet, this is a disaster at this point right?)low in salt given you'll just get thirstier.
3-Clothing - Tennis shoes or boots, sweatpants, t-shirt and sweatshirt
4-Bedding- Blanket, sleeping bag,
5-First Aid Kit-
6-Your important prescriptions along with: pain reliever, anti-diarrhea, Pepto-Bismal, vitamins. Glasses/contact lenses and solution.
7-Battery Operated Radio, and TV too
8-Flashlight and spare batteries.
9-Food and Supplies for children
10-Pet food and supplies along with leashes.
11-Monopoly, playing cards
12-Toiletries, including sunscreen
13- Map of the area
14-Pencils and pens
15-Can opener, and Swiss army knife
16-Copies of important id documents from bank account to insurance policy, driver's license in a portable WATER proof container.Make sure you have a Home Inventory of your possessions! Check out my friends at www.cyarightnow.com

Be sure to listen to archives of my show Home Wizards devoted to Home Safety Preparedness. Just cut and paste this link into your browser!

http://homewizards.tv/archive_view.asp?id=172

What's in your kit? Would love to hear so we can learn from each other!

-Cindy

Your Vision for Life is the Answer to Home Clutter Forever!

No matter how organized you are, clutter just finds a way of creeping up on us all! If it's not the magazine subscriptions and the junk mail, it's t-shirts people give us, not to mention our closet! Well Organization guru, Peter Walsh hit the answer to all of this on the head with a strategy that truly speaks to the why we are saving and holding onto things that may do NOTHING to enhance our lives or our homes and just occupy space, robbing us of the home we really want to have!
Listen to my interview with Peter here on www.homewizards.tv
I also highly recommend this book, "It's All Too Much" In it Peter outlines how NOT to fall into the trap of diving into organizing and organization boxes and systems without first going room to room and declaring for yourself how you want that room to function and how you want to live your life! After that, the stuff suddenly seems far less important and it's easier to part with.
Let me know your techniques to keeping your home clutter free!
Cindy

First Blog Post

Hey there! Welcome to my blog!

This is the place to come and share what kind of projects you are up to around your home, and garden—what is working and what isn’t!

Something I’ve learned that is important to add to your home, inside and outside is a bit of whimsy or humor! It’s youthful, it’s fun and it puts a smile on someone’s face.

Here’s what I did this weekend to achieve that~ I had two large bags of recycled glass—gorgeous icy blue, that remind me of a glacier in Alaska. But what to do with it was the question! Here’s the solution—create a faux water feature in your garden with the rocks, and recycled glass to add movement creativity and playfulness to your landscaping.

Here’s what you need:

Large bag of recycled glass (Great place to buy is Pasadena's Cactus Center - www.cactuscenter.com)

Weed fabric (at any nursery)

River rocks (big box stores by the bag)

Yard stone art like a turtle, fish or maybe a terra cotta fountain.

Create an “S” shape design for your river path. Dig about an inch or two for depth, creating a little “gutter” on the sides to catch excess dirt. The Weed fabric does a great job of protecting your glass, but you want to add extra protection especially when it’s rainy.

Lay out the weed fabric (plastic shiny part up, soft fabric part down) over the river path with extra around the edges to be trimmed later. Now cover with the recycled glass, and then the river rocks as a border.

Using a utility knife/ razor blade cut the weed fabric (carefully) close to the edges so it will disappear. Now go back and add additional rocks where needed to you don’t see any of the weed fabric. Add a yard art feature like a turtle that appears to be walking into the river of rocks, or something else.


Check it out~! ( picture coming)

Voila!

If you have a fun project, let me know!

Talk soon,

Cindy