E260: What Happens When You Are Drowning in Preparedness

In this ITRH summer short, we ponder what happens when you are drowning in preparedness. And we’ll discuss simple ideas for avoiding it.

Think of this episode as an addendum to episode 259. Once you’ve reviewed everything, you’ll have a fresh inventory. Now it’s time to evaluate what you have and consider if it is enough or perhaps too much.

A quick story.

Roughly two years ago, I stood staring at the back of my pickup truck. It was nearly filled with something very odd: boxes of toilet paper. I questioned my sanity. My wife asked if I was planning on living off bran muffins after the zombie apocalypse. She is a huge smart ass, after all.

Then there was the OPSEC issue concerning the movers. But we’ll come back to this later. First, let’s continue with the TP gate.

You see, when I became serious about preparedness, I made an essentials list. It was a list of all the items I thought should be stored up in mass.

Then I began the process of building up stores of those items. At first, it was a few weeks. Then a couple of months.

Subscriptions services were introduced by Amazon and a few others. So I put my essentials list on a monthly automatic purchase.

One less thing to think about every month, right? Just set it and forget it. Every month a bunch of boxes arrived. All I had to do was take the contents and put them away.

My preparedness was now on autopilot. It was so handy. And I was on my way to the state of plenty.

But there is a funny thing about plenty: You never arrive. You think to yourself, “Once I get to this point, I’ll be good.” But then you reach the level, and it feels normal. Going further is no longer perceived as going too far. So you continue.

Before you know it, the powers of autopilot and never enough combine like prepper supper twins. And this is how you end up with a four year supply of toilet paper filling the bed of your pickup truck on moving day.

Is a four year supply terrible? It may not be. But it depends on the answers to a few questions that only you can answer for yourself. And you must evaluate on an item by item basis.

Tune in or watch to learn the basic questions need to evaluate if you’re drowning in preparedness.