1: Swap out all bottled water.

2: Continue building up food stores (canned and dry).

3: Donate hydraulic body lift and powered wheelchair to Goodwill. That will clear up significant space in my garage.

4: Reorganize garage to bring it one more step closer to my Emergency Shelter Plan. That will save a couple of hours if conversion were needed. Will convert C3 (communications, command, & control) area and relocate equipment.

5: Start swapping out old gasoline stores and replace with fresh gas. (ouch!)

If you have rehab hospital in your area, may I suggest they would greatly appreciate the lift and chair? If not, what about a VA hospital? With all due respect to Goodwill, I think some other organizations could find someone with a more immediate need.

Yes, medical supplies can often be a godsend for low-income handicapped.

You might contact these people and see if they're still doing this, or know who is:

"The East Baton Rouge Recycling Office, Recycling Foundation and ExxonMobile ExC!TE are partnering with Come & Help, The Lions Club and the Louisiana School for the Deaf to add medical equipment and supplies, eyeglasses, and hearing aids to other materials collected for recycling at the monthly drop-off. The drop-off is held the third Saturday of each month from 8 a.m. until 12 p.m. at the Louisiana Department of Insurance Office of Receivership at 6945 Florida Blvd. on the corner of Florida and Donmoor. The new items will be collected on a regular basis beginning October of 2003."

http://brgov.com/Dept/recycle/medicalroundup.htm

Sue

Thanks for that info Sue!! Bo

I agree but the local VA (clinic) isn't intrested in donations, but I was able to find a large adult 2 months ago that needed a nearly-new large power chair. He is now mobile & I freed up some critically needed space in my garage.

I will try to place the lift and sling (nearly new condition) but Goodwill is the only place that will take the power chair, recondition it, and get it to someone who needs it.

- Order some more Israeli-bandages

- Add more bottled water

- Order Maxpedition Jumbo Versipack for EDC

- Buy lot's of fireworks for the new year..uhmmm...signalling

We also had a neighbor who's 87 yr old dad died and he had a hard time getting rid of many of the pieces of medical equipment that he had purchased for his dad. It was a shame that all that money is spent and there doesn't seem to be a widely known method of getting that equipment into someones hands who needs it.

In the nursing-home I work now, a woman died, and me and a colleague (sp??) were sent to get all of the medical stuff out of the room...

About 5 boxes of 50 sterile gauze pads, 4 boxes of 20 elastic-bandage rolls (10cm x 4m), tons of gloves, antiseptic, transparent dressings, saline, syringes..you name it, it was there..

When we took the stuff pack to the guy who is in charge of the supplies he said: 'You can throw all that stuff away, it expires in 3 years, we'll just order new...'

And they wonder why health-care is so expensive, what a waste!

Guess where all that stuff is now...

(and yes, I did ask him if I could have it.)

try craigslist.com -- and its free!

There's a pressing need for medical equipment, donating is a great idea. In the Pacific Northwest this page lists a number of resources. You could locate similar places in your region and donate there. http://www.bridgemin.org/medicalequipment/medicalequipment02.html

I have no connection to Bridge Ministries except they have provided free medical equipment to my Dad over the years, for which I'm eternally grateful.

Or www.freecycle.org

Include a Maxpedition Jumbo Versipack on my Christmas list.

Get my hands on the new Photon ReX, test the heck out of it. If it's pulled off right, I'm standard-gifting it to some friends who will really appreciate it.

Put together a plan on how to keep a tank full of turtles warm in a winter power outage...Thinking a smaller UPS to handle the water heater, insulate the glass, stove-warmed water, etc.

Buy some new NiMH cells, the longer-lasting kind. Have a ton of batteries floating around, no testing method, rather hope to burn through them and start fresh.

Get a poncho liner. Not for me, got a friend who uses his more than I use my cell phone, he'd love the sleeping bag option and some extra warmth.

Get some metal cups for my Nalgenes.

Find something essentially useful, but cute and meaningful enough to give my other half on top of the essential nicer gifts.

Get band-aids, Tylenol, Pepto, preferably as much as possible since people always come to me for this sort of thing.

Stash some older clothes away at places where I might need them.

Get together a care package to send to the troops, just a holiday thing.

The wheelchair would make a great donation to your local VFW or American Legion Post. The Service Officer loans out such equipment to veterans on an as needed basis.

I wish I could get my kids to be prepared. They are in their twenties and thirties, have kids of their own and just don't understand why its important.

Seems to me that they are extra irrersponsible if they have kids and don't prep for them.
Since their kids are your grandkids can you start educating them? Start them in boy/cub/girl scouts to get them in the whole be prepared mindset or something like that.

I donate everything I can't use, ie clothing, bedding, and wheel chairs ( 3 so far) to the Veterans Hospital nearby. You get a tax write off to boot...

Our daughter and son in law are in their mid 30's and have one kid.
They live in New Hampshire, and make the big money. They think my wife and I are totally bonkers out of our gourds because we tell them to prepare for bad times senarios...
They have bought into all the crap of their generation...it is too bad!
We can't tell them what to do...so they are are their own...

I fear what their reactions will be later if everything does go down the tubes...

They spend their money as fast as they make it, and barely make it on 250 K a year! I think they are the ones who are out of their gourds...but what can you say to them.

If you figure it out, let me know.

A philosopher said that "what doesn't kill us, makes us stronger." In life, some trouble gets your attention and can actually make you better able to cope.

A friend in aviation safety once told me that the 2 safest (army aviation) pilots are those just out of training and those nearing retirement. Why? The new guys are scared and double check everything. The old guys KNOW that something can or will go wrong, and expect it. The guys in the middle are confident and think they have it down pat then have bad things happen that a) kills them or b) puts the fear of death into them, making them safer pilots as they continue in their career and get out of the close scrapes. Such is life.

At least DD2 and BF have now decided to take their BoB's and keep them at their apt. That's an improvement!!!!

So how did you accomplish that?

-Blast

Blast, if you are worrying about that already, I'm going to be terrified.

*laughs*

Actually, believe it or not, I had a chat concerning the wisdom of keeping their BoB's close by. Go figure that one.

She suddenly decided that the old man might not be a complete idiot!!!!

My prep plans for December include trying to figure out how to restock my food stores for little money and how to do so quickly.

On the upside, being prepared for a long term emergency helped when a lot of my freelance clients started getting fidgety about the economy and drastically cut back the jobs they were sending my way. I was able to delve into my stored food supply and make it through without a problem.

I guess that's what being prepared is all about; the emergencies that would normally set back the unprepared; even if they're only emergencies on a personal level. So, I don't mind the fact that I had to use what was there.

On the downside, I took at least three to four month's worth of food out of my stores without being able to replace what I took. I had a little under a year's worth of food in storage at the beginning so I'm still relatively well prepared, but I'd like to get back to a year's supply if at all possible.

As a secondary bonus, I easily lost 10 pounds during that time.

Join a food Co-op and work a few spare hours for discounted food? Or, get family members to work the CO-OP.

Good Idea.

I'm going to have to try and find one around here.

Thanks!

I'm asking for a new emergency crank radio and camp stove for christmas. hope santa hooks me up.

I've also cut back the thermostat to save a few bucks on heating costs. I have a programmable and its great, i highly recommend them.