Priorities

Ran into this question on Lisa's and Linda's blogs, and from there to Shelley.

"You have to leave. You have roughly an hour to get your butt in gear, and you have to travel light. Not including people and pets, or survival items (i.e. food, water) what three things would you take with you?"

Since we live in hurricane country, we have a disaster evacuation plan all ready to go and non-essentials are covered as well as emergency supplies.

1. Get kids and pets to the gassed up car.
2. Grab the four backpacks that hold our 3 day evacuation kits: clothes, food, water, personal care, toys and first aid for each person. I also have some cash in the parents' packs.
3. Grab the small suitcase where we store family photos and important papers.

Once you have a disaster kit set up, it's easy to maintain. You just need to review the contents once a year and replace the old food and water with new. Make sure the clothes in there fit the kids (you can pick up clothes at yard sales or thrift shops just for these kits.) Check expirations on any medication and replace as necessary. I got the backpacks at yard sales and a lot of the personal care/first aid stuff in the sample/travel section at Walmart.

I keep everything in a corner of the family room, out of sight behind a chair, during the heart of the hurricane season. The rest of the year I keep them in our bedroom closet (we have a nice big one in this house.) If there was a fire, a tornado, a tree caved in our roof or any other "get out of the house quick!" type of emergency we could be out in minutes at most, seconds if necessary.

The Red Cross has a whole section of their site on disaster preparedness. Check it out at their Family Disaster Planning and Disaster Supplies Kit pages. I would strongly urge even those of you who don't live in areas where you anticipate hurricanes or earthquakes or other natural disasters to put together something like this. It's easy and the peace of mind is worth it.

I want to put together a pack to keep in the car in case something happens and we break down on the side of the road - food and water for the kids, toys, diapers, blankets, etc. I also need to put together something for the teen now that he's here. We shouldn't have to worry about hurricanes in our new home, but I'm sure there will be something. My mother in the West lives with the possibility of brush fires every summer; some areas have earthquakes, some have blizzards, some have floods. There's always something you need to watch out for.

Getting back to the original question though, the only thing after living beings and survival items that I'd grab would be the photos and papers. I archive our computer files online so I don't need to worry about that. Anything else in the house would just have to be left behind. I'd be sad to lose things like my wedding dress, the girls' blessing gown, my wedding night negligee (hmmm, what does it say about me that it's clothes I think of as mementos?) but, oh well. I can't take everything. I have the memories of the important things and everything else can be replaced.