Safe-guarding your documents and photos

So you're house just burned down, or was leveled by a tornado, or inundated by a flood. Where are the important documents you may need? Your insurance agreements, your identification (social security cards, birth certificates, passports, titles to cars, etc.)? Your photo albums? If they only exist in paper form in your house, you may be out of luck. Ask anyone who has lost everything to a fire or other disaster and they'll say they miss their pictures most because they aren't replaceable.

There are a few simple ways you can protect all your important documents and have them available to you almost anywhere you go.

1. Make copies to keep in your house and store the originals in a safe deposit box. Documents are only available to you if you can reach the bank, but the originals are preserved.  Some may consider fireproof safes kept in the home, but these are also not 100% guaranteed.
   
2. Scan copies into digital format (PDF is preferred) and email them to yourself. Documents can be accessed anywhere an internet connection is available, but you won't have your original documents.
3. Build a bomb-proof, steel reinforced, concrete fortress in your backyard and encase your documents in a lead shielded, booby trapped Zero-Halliburton briefcase inside. Great conversation piece for parties, but may not match with your new patio furniture.

As for your photos, getting and using a scanner is a must. You can easily scan all your old photos and upload them to any number of photo sites such as Flickr or Google Photos and they will be saved online permanently. (Some of these sites may limit the amount of data you can upload per month unless you pay for their premium services).  Any new digital photos you take can be easily and automatically backed up for you using free software such as Picasa or iPhoto.

You may have a slew of computer files as well that you wouldn't like to lose in a disaster. These also can be easily backed up for safe keeping and can be available almost anywhere. Several free online back-up services are available, including Dropbox and Syncplicity. They both allow you to back-up most of your documents and computer files online and have them accessible from any computer hooked up to the internet (check their websites for more details as some do not allow back-up of all types of files and have storage limits). Online email services, particularly Gmail, allow you to email documents to yourself then file them away in various folders that can be accessed anytime. 

So if you've been holding on to 19 years of tax returns and MasterCard statements or just saving those paper instructions on how to build a canoe out of phonebooks and electrical tape, you better get to backing them up friend, or you'll be out of luck when the big one hits and your house is washed away in an alluvium of coal ash and mercury laden sewer effluent (worst case scenario, probably won't happen to everybody).

Feel free to respond to this post if you have any questions or suggestions.

Inventory your property

Your house was just broken into, or lost to fire or another disaster. Do you know everything you had inside? If you'd been in the home for a while you probably accumulated a lot of things, all of which could be replaced by your home or renter's insurance, but you have to remember them to be able to claim them. There are a few ways to go about this.

1. Make a video recording of all the contents of your home. Go systematically from room to room, narrating your video by talking about everything you are seeing. Use a new video cassette and take as much time as you need to see everything. Put the tape into a safe-deposit box or fire-proof safe in your home. For added security and ease of access, upload to an online video service that allows private videos (i.e. Google Video).
   
2. If video isn't your thing, take still pictures of everything in your home. Open every drawer and closet and take photos of all your possessions. Store the photos in a safe deposit box or upload them to your favorite online photo site (see previous post).
   
3. Make a paper or electronic list of all your possessions, room by room. This can be time consuming, but your list would be ready in the event of an accident and a claim could be made sooner.
4. Become a reality TV star, letting them video tape every moment of your dull existence. When the show is finally cancelled, ask them for all that seemingly wasted footage of you hanging out with all your junk, which now serves as your property inventory.
   

As someone who was recently robbed, I can attest to the utility of this type of preparation. My wife had wisely taken photos of all our possessions just a few days before and this helped us quickly identify what was missing, including some things we probably would have forgotten. Got any other ideas, you can post them below.

Food Storage, Part 1

Food storage is a big topic and there are a lot of considerations, including what to buy, how much to buy, where to store it all, and how long food lasts. We are going to attempt to answer all those questions and give you a few options on planning your food storage purchases. No plan works for everyone. Some people would rather just let the locusts (or walking dead in the event of a zombie apocalypse) eat them than subsist on wheat and potato pearls for six months. Others might welcome the challenge of seeing how many ways they can serve black beans before their fallout-shelter-mates kick them outside into the radioactive hot zone. Wherever you may be, we can all agree that eating is good and having plenty for your family in troubling times is better.

First, what to buy. We need subsistence foods that provide maximal nutrients with minimal weight and volume. These will be your unprocessed whole grains, proteins in the form of legumes or canned meats, fat in the form of cooking oil, and starches like dried potatoes and rice. You'll need additional ingredients to prepare these foods like water, baking powder or soda, yeast, salt, sugar, and a heat source. Count on buying some other spices to make your food edible and allow for variation. These items would all ideally be purchased in bulk sizes to reduce cost and reduce the number of storage containers needed.

There is no all inclusive list of how much to buy that would fit the bill for everyone, but I have put together 2 lists of food storage strategies from information published online. The first, which you can download clicking here, is a monthly buying plan for either a year supply or 3 month supply. This list is good if you have adequate space and can spend a few hundred dollars in certain months (for the year supply). The second list, downloadable clicking here, is a way of spending roughly $5 dollars a week (per 2 people) with a year's supple being the ultimate result. Some weeks cost more than $5 and some may be less, but if you put at least $5 aside each week, it should be close. Although, with food prices going up as they have, this may actually cost you a little more than $5, but it is still a reasonable goal.

Many of us have the problem of where to store it all. If this has been your major concern, here are a few ideas. Good places to put food include in boxes under beds ( you can put small blocks under the legs to give more clearance), tucked in the back of clothes closets, in an insulated attic (attics can get very hot in the summer, so beware), under couches, under end tables. If you are really short on space, try pulling out your bottom dresser drawers and using the space beneath, or putting food on top of kitchen cupboards with something decorative to hide it.

Now you've got 3000 lbs. of wheat under your bed and 197 cans of stew in your 2nd bathtub. The giant asteroids can fall like rain, and you'll be eating cracked wheat pancakes 'til the cockroaches come home and laughing the day away in your lead-lined breakfast nook. But wait, you don't know how long it will last. There is some basic information on duration on providentliving.org. Most grains, when properly packaged, will last 15-30 years. Canned foods are generally good for at least a year or more. Water should be replenished every 6 months. The key to maximizing your investment is to keep your storage in a dry, temperature controlled environment and away from direct sun (not a problem in nuclear winter).

I hope this gets you started in the right direction. Read our following posts to see other ways of attacking the food storage challenge. Share your experiences in the comments section below.

Food Storage, Part 2 - Water

So now you have a plan to amass a year's supply and eat high on the hog while your doubting neighbors eat dirt and tin can soup.  But unless you've included water in that plan, you'll only last 3 days after the water is cut off and they find you choked on dry lima beans and ground red wheat.  Water storage can be challenging, so planning ahead is important.  Consider these points about your family's water needs:

1. Drinking/bathing water: 2 adults and 3 children. -- Needs: 14 gallons per person for a 2 week emergency situation plus additional water for an extended situation or to help out others. Solution: buy two 5-gallon and 4 15-gallon water jugs, which can be easily transported, and a 55-gallon drum to refill. All can be stored in the garage. Treat water with 5 drops of bleach per gallon (or iodine, potable water tablets, etc.).
2. Emergency back-up water sources: -- Needs: Find out what the community will do in the event of loss of water supply in an emergency (i.e. water trucks, wells). Alternative solution: If this appears shaky, consider investing in water purification equipment.
3. Water conservation: discuss water conservation in our next family home evening. -- Message: avoid wasting water by not letting sinks run, not flushing toilets excessively (yellow = keep it mellow, brown = flush it down), not watering lawns during the heat of the day (or at all if you can help it), reusing grey water to water plants and gardens.

Work on this, or a similar list until you have it completed. You now have a plan in place for one of life's most precious commodities and your family is better prepared for a disaster. This site here has more detailed information on water storage specifically.