It's an Emergency!

Image from moneycrashers.com

As I slowly get started organizing our "pantry" and preparing to try our hands at hanging crown molding I've decided to take on a third project this week; Preparing for an emergency here. It is so embarrassing to admit this, but as it stands now we have no food stored (unless you count the things from the "pantry"), no water stored, no solar powered radios, and we don't even have a working flashlight around the house! There is no emergency kit, no first aid kit, and our smoke detector is collecting dust on the floor next to our unstrapped water heater. I'm taking a class in emergency preparedness for work, and I'm at little more ashamed and alarmed at each meeting. Up until now our disaster plan has been to walk to Scott's uber prepared parent's house 4 miles away and mooch off of them. This, from 33 year old people!

Image from djproject.com

So our Little Green Cottage is getting an emergency overhaul. We'll retrofit the house by strapping down the water heater (insulating it too while we're at it), installing the existing smoke detector plus another and  purchasing and hanging at least one fire extinguisher. We'll put together a first aid kit and an earthquake preparedness kit with everything we need to survive with no city services for about a week in the event of a major disaster. Then we'll fine tune our existing emergency plan and make sure that everything makes sense.

Living in Los Angeles with whispers of The Big One to come, it's really time that we stop fooling around and get serious about safety. I'll be sure to post all of the changes as we go along too.