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Clutter Free Academy Podcast #403

Ready for Anything – Part TWO

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Kathi – Well hey, friends. Welcome to Clutter Free Academy, where our goal is to help you take small, doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. Here we are in the midst of our series, talking about how to be prepared for any crisis, big or small. We’re talking Ready for Anything and I am here with my new prepper friend, Tonya Kubo. Did we talk, in the last episode, about the care package you’re receiving?

Tonya – We did not.

Kathi – Well, I think you need to tell people about the care package. Somebody deeply loves you and this is what they’re sending you. 

Tonya – I don’t know if you want to call me The Baby Prepper or the Novice Prepper, but I have someone who loves me so much, that lives in a different state, and understands what’s going on in our world right now. I’ve been to a grocery store, when it opens, every single day this week, and cannot find toilet paper for sale; cannot get shampoo and conditioner. So, I am receiving, from what it looks like in the picture, about 12 rolls of toilet paper, two rolls of paper towels, a box of Kleenex, a box of dryer sheets and a box of laundry detergent.

Kathi – Ooh, that’s so good. So good. How grateful are you that there are people in the world? I call it philateliphobia. So, philatelic is postage stamps. There are a lot of people that are scared of going to the post office. That’s not their thing. Your friend does not have those restrictions in her area yet. She’s able to go.

Tonya – This is love.  She made this offer Monday night, and I was, “No. We’ll be fine.” Then, yesterday, she was, “Okay, be honest.” And I’m like, “Yes. I do need toilet paper, because apparently everyone in my town has lost their mind and I can’t find it.” Then she was like, “Since I’m mailing you something anyway, what else can I put in there?” And it truly is a gift. We talk about being ready for anything, and I know we’re going to talk about that in the episode, but this is not a reality that I ever would have imagined, even if I was the prepper of my dreams.

Kathi – Right! I wrote an entire book, where I don’t believe I mentioned a pandemic. That was not on my mind. Here’s the thing. The ideas in the book, the crux of the book, the theory of the book applies to any emergency. Each emergency is going to have a different ‘living it out’ situation. So, in the last episode, we talked about being prepped 3-2-3. So, the first 3 is Three Days, if you had to leave your house. The thing is, this is real life for me. We live in the mountains where, at any point, if we know there’s a snowstorm coming, we can either choose to hunker down for two weeks until the snow melts, hopefully. Right now, our generator is running like crazy. It costs us $100 a day to run our generator. Nobody’s living there, right now. So, it’s interesting, all these things we have to balance. You might have to leave your house because of a fire. You might have to leave your house because of a tornado. One of your kids might get sick, and immediately, you have to go meet them somewhere. There are million different reasons that you might have to leave your house for three days, one day, longer, but if you have a Three Day Bag to get out, you will be better prepared. So, I want to talk through what’s in that Three Day Bag, then I want to talk about another aspect of this called The Five Minute Plan. So, first of all, I want to talk about the Three Day Bag. So, this is really, “What do you need – REALLY – to live for three days away from your house?” So, certain things like water. A gallon a day per person. So, having that available. Food. Non-perishable and easy to prepare. So, I’m thinking food packets and things like that. Other things that should either be in your car, or readily available, so like a flashlight. A hand crank radio. People thought I was crazy for suggesting these thing until we got into what’s going on in the world right now. Now I seem a lot less crazy. My crazy factor has gone down, for some reason.

Tonya – My crazy factor has gone up. People used to think I was so practical. I don’t feel very practical right now, when somebody has to mail me toilet paper from out of state.

Kathi – Like we said. Who could have known? I have more toilet paper than your average bear, but let’s be clear: I haven’t bought toilet paper since this started. I think I bought one package, because we’re at my mom’s house and we’re not at home, but here’s the deal. I had plenty, because I had stocked up before. Now, when I tell people to stock up, I bet more people will listen to me. This is not to gloat or to brag, it’s so I can share. I want to be able to share with other people.

Tonya – I know, Kathi, we’re detailing what’s in the Three Day Bugout Bag, but I do feel like the words ‘stock up’ can be so relative. So, just in this context, when you say ‘Stock up on toilet paper.” What’s reasonable? Is it a roll/person/day or is it a roll/person/week?

Kathi – I would feel that, Roger and I are probably close to a roll or a roll and a half per week. To me, that feels reasonable. But you know what? Your needs may vary depending on diet, exercise, where you’re at, your age. Who knows?

Tonya – It was very eloquent, how you framed that.

Kathi – It’s interesting. I want people to be prepared. I want you to be prepared before the disaster hits, so you’re just doing a few little things to get you through, instead of having to buy from scratch. That’s so important.

Tonya – That’s so good.

Kathi – Okay, so we have this whole list that I want to share with you guys, about what you would need in your Bugout Bag. Here’s the principle behind it, guys. I want you to have one bag for every member of your family. So, that means, Roger and Kathi have four bags. We have Roger. We have Kathi. We have Ashley, the cat, and we have Moose the boxachi. So, that means we have food for each of them. We have a bow for each of them. Now, the Red Cross says you should have a gallon of water per human or animal. I agree, we should have a gallon of water per human, but my animals are not big. Moose can get lost very easily in our house. She’s barely ten pounds. So, we don’t quite need a gallon of water for her, every day, ‘cause she’s not going to be bathing or anything like that. So, figure that out and be smart. The thing is, you don’t know if you’re going to have to be away from your house for a day. Tonya, you and I know somebody that had to be evacuated and is going to be away from their house for six months. I can’t even imagine. They’re living internationally. So, thinking through your particular scenario and what would I need? So, we’re going to offer this list to each and every one of you. The other thing I would say is, I would love for you to have a bag where you put a list in the bag of items that you need to grab. So, these are things that you wouldn’t have set aside, like an emergency kit. Stuff like your passport, cash, your wallet, your cellphone and charger, maybe even your laptop and charger. Just a list that you’re not going to have to decide in the moment. You know my story from when our house was on fire. We were the people where, somebody was yelling, “Fire! Fire! Fire!” Roger and I were working from home. We run outside, barefoot, both of us, the only thing we have besides the clothes on our back is our dog Jake and my cell phone. We’re standing out there, on the grass, watching two doors down – ‘cause we live in townhouses, or we did until a week ago – and our neighbor’s townhouse is on fire. Our next door neighbor is getting the smoke and the water damage and all of that. It’s creeping over to our house. So, we get out, and we’re so grateful, but here was the problem. It was the first day of college, and we didn’t know Jeremy’s schedule, so I look at Roger, and was like, “Jeremy didn’t come home from school, did he?” He goes, “No, we would have heard him.” And just as he was saying “…heard him…” Roger ran back into the house and about 30-seconds later, here comes Roger running out of the house with Jeremy close behind him. Roger would like it noted, for posterity, that he ran into a burning building to get his child. Not even knowing if he was there. It’s pretty hard to get around the fact that we left our child in a burning building, but grabbed the dog. That’s not a good scenario, so now we know, if we’re leaving a burning building, check to see that all the humans are coming with us. We overestimate our ability to make decisions in an emergency. That’s why we want to be ready for anything. We want to be able to ask those kinds of things. So, Tonya, what’s the most likely scenario where you’d have to leave your house, do you think?

Tonya – I think, in our neighborhood that we live in, it would actually be a windstorm, knocking down trees. It’s an old neighborhood. Lots of trees close together. It’s actually happened, where trees just start toppling into each other and on to homes. So, of course, when I talk about the disaster preparedness of my brain is not the disaster preparedness of my reality, because I have been in that place of, “If we had to evacuate, it would be because our structure was in danger. Could we get to our car? Could we get off the street in time?” But that’s where we were last year. We had to spend a lot of money cutting back our trees because that happened in our neighborhood, and we woke up one morning to loud crashes. Some people had half a house.

Kathi – We had that happen, not just where we lived in San Jose, but also where I grew up. It was a disaster. For us, it’s fire. We live in the mountains and the forest, and it’s fire. So, we need to be ready for anything at any point. So, that’s one of the concepts. So, on the podcast page, we’re going to have the list of everything that should be in your Bugout Bag. I want you to start preparing this now. I know the book is coming out later, but I need my friends, I need my people to know what they need to have set aside, so they are not in a panic. So, I want to give you this list so everybody can have it.

Tonya – I think that’s beautiful, Kathi. The other thing is, here’s our new mantra, and I’m just going to declare it. “We’re going to be prepared, not scared.”

Kathi – Amen, sister.

Tonya – I think that, I know for a fact that there is a lot of hesitance against preparation, or against preparation conversations, ‘cause we don’t want to think about it. We don’t want to face how unprepared we are, but some of us are living that lack of preparation, not to name any names, but I think it starts with a ‘T’. I’ve read the book, and I love that it’s not shaming. You’ve been so kind to me through this whole thing. You would have mailed me toilet paper.

Kathi – I would have, yes.

Tonya – I think the idea of just having a bag. You know what I think, it’s no difference than raising kids and having a diaper bag. When you’ve got babies, I’m fairly certain there were times when I had five days’ worth of stuff, because we went through five days’ worth of stuff in one trip to the grocery store.

Kathi – Right! Absolutely. I get that. Here’s the thing. First of all, there’s no reason to shame anybody for not being on the same level of being prepared. Two years ago, I would not have been this prepared. Let’s just be super-clear. But here’s the other part of it: even if you’re 1% more prepared today than you were yesterday, that’s going to give you such an advantage in a crisis. That’s what I want for each person listening here. The other thing that goes along with getting out of the house really quickly, is this concept of The Five Minute Plan. Let me tell you what I mean by that. So, I want to know, in an emergency, in a crisis, in a disaster, what are you going to do for the first five minutes? So, the most likely crisis that any of us are going to confront, I think, is, someone in our family is going to lose their job. Let’s be clear. That’s not fun. It’s a scary time. I think I’ve told you, Tonya, I have a history of the major bread winner in our family, losing their job. My dad was chronically unemployed. My first husband lost his job a couple of times. I’ve got this very tender spot in my heart. Now, I am married to the most…

Tonya – Stable Steady Eddie.

Kathi – Exactly. He’s been at the same job for over thirty years. Who does that? In Silicon Valley, who does that? Still, we’ve had the discussion, if he comes home and has to tell me that he’s lost his job, what is our Five Minute Plan? So, we’ve got a three part Five Minute Plan. So the first thing we’re going to do is, we’re going to pray together. We want to get our hearts right. Number two: Roger is going to spend those first five minutes of starting the process of liquidating some of emergency funds for the next couple of months. So, how do we do that? Start gathering things up. Me? I’m going to start cancelling everything I can cancel. If it is not essential to our survival, it’s being cancelled. Here’s what I’m really going to encourage you guys to do. Think through what is your most likely scenario. Is it an earthquake? Is it job loss? Is it fire? Then say, “What is our Five Minute Plan?” Tonya, I really want to encourage you, who has two small kids, a couple of whom we can hear right now. Hey! This is live. This is podcasting. This is what we’re doing.

Tonya – This is real life right now.

Kathi – It’s life. We’re all cohabitating with our coworkers. So, I want you to think through, if there is a crisis in your house, not only what are Brian and Tonya’s first five minutes, but I want to hear what Lily and Abbie’s first five minutes are like. What can they do? Could Lily count up the change in the jug that you throw all the change into, so you know exactly how much that is? Could Abbie put on a show or music that everybody in the family likes so you can all calm down? Could Lily make a snack for everybody? Even if it’s just cheese and crackers. So, that there’s rations. Every kid needs a job. Everybody in the house needs a job in that circumstance.

Tonya – You know what I like about that, Kathi? Everybody gets a job. On one hand, it alleviates the pressure from our listener. I don’t know about anybody else, but I have a tendency to feel like it’s all on me. That can be so overwhelming that I don’t know what the next step is. So, first of all, it does that, but second, I do believe, and I’m seeing this first hand, when people have a job to do that’s all theirs, it really does help them manage the stress of the situation. So, in our house, for instance, one of the conversations that has occurred this week is, we have to get all of our laundry caught up. If all the laundry is caught up, we have a better sense of what we have for clothing. Do we have two pairs of pants that fit the five year old? Or does she have five pairs of pants that fit? So in a scenario you described, like job loss, the pantry and freezer inventory is huge. That’s one of the preorder bonus for Ready for Anything. Being able to have it all in one spot. Here’s what’s in my pantry. Here’s what’s in my freezer. Here’s the two week meal plan. Here are recipes that work with that. Being able to hand your ten year old or 13 year old a list and just say, “Hey, can you check off all the ingredients we have and circle what we don’t have?” Huge.

Kathi – And when you are purposeful and not panicking. I don’t want to guilt anyone for being panicky. We’ve got people in our lives right now, who are scared. They are just scared. I get it. I just get it. We’re not in that position, but we don’t have huge health compromises. We don’t have huge issues going on with us. We’ve got friends who do. I’m not saying be stoic for your kids, but pull together and see what progress you can make together. Giving your kids a plan gives you an opportunity to be able to say, “You know what? We’re moving forward. We’re moving forward together. It’s going to be okay.” So, Tonya, can you just mention those preorder bonuses again? Here’s what Zondervan has done. They have pulled up the release of the eBook by almost two months. The print book they could only do by two weeks, but we just wanted to be able to get this into everybody’s hands. We’re going to do more preorder bonuses than we’ve ever done in our life, for any book before. Can you tell people what those are? We want this book to practically be free for you. With the give aways, it is.

Tonya – We should get an address for Zondervan, ‘cause our listeners should all send Zondervan thank yous. ‘Cause we had this idea, but both of us didn’t think it was possible to pull up the publication date. The fact that they made it happen is just huge. People should know, we don’t always record all of our podcast episodes on the same day, so things do change. So, first and foremost, you are going to get everything we mentioned in the last episode and. So, we’ve already told people that they are going to get a two-week meal plan. Shopping lists. Freezer inventory. Pantry inventory. We also talked about the 5-day Homeschool Curriculum. That could just be five days of different activities for your family. It doesn’t have to be for the homeschooling mom. It really is applicable to anybody who has kids in their life. Honestly? I learned a thing or two. So, it could be cool if you don’t have kids in your life. But on top of that, I want to make sure I don’t forget, we’re offering everybody our two week eCourse Kickstart to Clutter Free. Here’s why this matters. Kathi, we don’t live in the same location, so you can’t throw anything at me, but I know that you would support this decision. We sell that, and it sells quite frequently. It sells for $49. It’s a combination of video and some instruction on just getting that daily habit of getting clutter free, but with so many people feeling cooped up in their houses right now and not sure what to do? I think it is almost a diversion. We could almost call it entertainment. So, here’s the other thing we’re doing. They’re going to preorder the book, Ready for Anything, and they are going to get all of this immediately. They don’t have to wait. We’re going to put all of that into your hands immediately. On top of that, already it’s over a $100 value, but on top of all that, we’re going to give you a curated set of sample chapters from the book, so that can get started right now. You don’t have to wait for the book to come out. You don’t have to wait to receive it. You’ve got what you need and you can just get moving.

Kathi – I love it so much. Here’s the other thing, too, guys. We want you to go to the podcast page, ‘cause we’re going to give you the download Bugout Bag Three Day Inventory. Most of this you’re going to be able to create with stuff you already have in your house. Go see. Our preorder bonuses are there and click the link to preorder the book. We want to give you all the things. We really do. Tonya, thanks so much for being on with me during this crazy time. Thanks to Lily and Abbie for being so cool while we’re doing it. We’re so grateful.

Tonya – They try.

Kathi – I know. They are just so done with Mom having to do work. Shouldn’t you be baking all the time?

Tonya – They want to bake and Abbie wants to play LOL Dolls.

Kathi – Oh, very cool. LOL Surprise Dolls. I’ve heard all about them.

Tonya – The one you sent them is their favorite right now.

Kathi – Shut up! Oh, I feel very cool and very popular. I didn’t even really know what I was sending, so I was like, “Okay, if this makes them happy, I’m going to do it!” Friends, thank you for joining us. You’ve been listening to Clutter Free Academy. I’m Kathi Lipp. Now, go create the clutter free life you were always intended to live.

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