Home

Meal Planning

3 Comments Posted on March 16, 2015June 1, 2015 by Snoskred

This year, I’ve been using this great free meal planner found at #4 on this post – High Five for Getting Organized! – from kelly’s kinda crazy.

The meal planner comes with a grocery list – Above you see Carter – my trusty skeleton friend – holding it. I’m thinking from now on he will get to hold the grocery list each fortnight so if I need to add something he will remind me to add it when I walk past. :) Here is a closer view with this fortnights shopping on it.

When I write my shopping list, I mentally walk around Aldi in my mind and I write things on the list in the order they appear in the store. Thank the deities, unlike Coles and Woolworths, Aldi rarely changes their floor plan. Both Coles and Woolworths have recently re-arranged their stores and now I can’t find anything in there. :(

I also sit down with my laptop and the shopping list and go through the Coles and Woolworths brochures and write down any items which are on special that we need to stock up on. I’ve been doing this for so long now that in general we never run out of things that we regularly use.

I’m loving the cute design of the meal planner. I used to do meal planning on my whiteboard which was not so pretty, nor could I take it with me to other rooms of the house which, on occasion especially when writing the shopping list, was mildly inconvenient. It also means I can keep copies of the old meal plans on the clipboard and review them when making the next meal plan. This way, I tend to notice meals we have not had for a while and add them back in.

Just be aware the file prints out an entire year worth of meal planning – you can choose to print just one or two pages at a time but you’d have to do it manually. I printed mine out at the start of the year and I’ll have enough to last until the end of this year..

This meal planner runs fortnightly and so we have been planning our menu fortnightly and shopping fortnightly as well, with just a quick stop at the shops on the second weekend if we need to pick up something fresh. Most of the time we don’t need to, because I am getting very good at planning meals which have the fresh ingredients closest to the shopping trip – and also very good at freezing things we need for later.

This past weekend we made our regular trip to Lenards at Warrawong which is roughly an hour or so drive from here, depending which way you go. We took a little detour past Albion Park to catch a glimpse of the Grand Old Lady VH-OJA at the HARS museum. If it wasn’t too busy we would have stopped to get out and take some photos, but as expected the place was absolutely packed and we just drove past. So, my apologies, I have no pics of that for you.

I also have no pics of Chicken Young Lad who has served us on our past 3-4 trips and who is starting to remember that we are the Crazy Bulk Buying People. Even so, after each item he asks “Anything else today” and we’re all.. YEP, give us 4 of those and 8 of those.

Meat wise, we eat quite a bit of chicken in the house. When we lived in Adelaide we had a Lenards close by and we could drop in and pick up chicken on the same day we were going to cook it. We really grew to love their chicken and moving here we discovered two things –

1. It is super expensive to buy pre-prepared chicken here eg kievs & filos.

2. Even though it was super expensive to buy, none of the local options tasted anywhere near as good as the options from Lenards did.

So we make the trek to Warrawong every 8-12 weeks, and we stock up on our chicken, we bring it home, then we food-save it and freeze it. We have the Sunbeam Foodsaver. I’ve tried other methods in the past including freezer bags and ziploc bags and we find the foodsaver to be the better option.It ends up looking like this –

The red chicken breasts that you see paired in the foodsaver packets with Chicken Kievs are the pocketed breast with baby spinach, dill, fetta and ricotta. They are my favourite – so tasty! I don’t mind a chicken kiev, either, but I deeply love these little red thingies.

We took every single chicken mini roast that they had prepared and we would have taken more if they had them out the back – sorry everyone else who wanted one. I normally pre-order but this time it did not happen, for a few non-interesting reasons. I foodsaved 6 roasters but we got 7 – one went into the fridge for tonights dinner, which looked like this –

We also stopped in at Dan Murphys and bought enough cask wine for cooking to last the next 6 months or so. I use Banrock Station Cabernet Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc for cooking and they are routinely $5 or so more expensive locally so if I need them and we’re already up Shellharbour way, I like to stock up.

Last fortnight, I ran out of white cask wine and had to use red wine for our white sauce chicken, bacon and leek pasta. When you use red wine in white sauce, you end up with a delicate light purple sauce. Not that either of us minds that because it still tastes great, and I find the merlot has some interesting flavours which the sav blanc does not. I really do need to put my white sauce pasta recipe up here sometime soon. :)

If you enjoyed reading this, you might want to take a look at this post – some things I know for sure about grocery shopping.

None of the companies or products mentioned gave me anything or paid me to say this stuff, and of course if anyone did I would make that very clear right at the top of the post and it would not change my opinions on things – I call it as I see it.. :)

So, over to you..

Do you meal plan?

Carter, country life, food, get organised, Home, shopping

Before and After

6 Comments Posted on January 30, 2015June 1, 2015 by Snoskred

So you might recall my clock post, and my paperweight post. Here is how the area looked before..

And here is how it looked after I used a table runner to cover the top of the cupboard. The golden sleigh was a Christmas present and I am going to use this to keep all my whiteboard markers and scissors in one place.

This is the area just inside our front door, and it leads into the kitchen. There is a large whiteboard which we probably need to redo from scratch as we made it back in the days we had other people living with us and we used it to track where everyone was going to be each day. what the meal was going to be and who was going to cook it, etc.

I still use the whiteboard for meal planning and we use it to write in things like appointments. I am a huge whiteboard nut, I love the things. I just bought my fourth one, which I will also share with you as a surprise shortly! ;)

The blue bowl I made myself in Ceramics a long time ago. I presently use it to hold the wax melts once I’ve used them in the oil burners several times but they still have some scent left, so I don’t like to throw them out right away.

About Snoskred, Happy Snoskred, Home, Snoskred hearts, yay

My Paper Weight

10 Comments Posted on January 23, 2015June 1, 2015 by Snoskred

During a family visit a few years ago, we went to this little shop called Global Contact in Berry. It is the kind of shop you’d recognise by the smell, which is a blend of sandalwood and patchouli and various incense scents..

You are either a person who loves that kind of shop, or you hate this kind of shop. My Mother is the only person I know who does not love a shop with incense, crystals, jewellery but I assume that there are other people who are not related to me who also may not like this kind of shop. :)

Berry is this quaint little country town with a shopping strip, all different kinds of shops. You can find everything from cuckoo clocks to sausages, from candles to teatowels, from artisan wool to artisan gelato. It is an absolutely delightful place to wander for an afternoon and window shop, but if you have some money to spend it is even more awesome.

For some reason I was drawn to this paperweight. Well, if you know me well enough you’d instantly know why I was drawn to it – because this thing marries two elements I very dearly love. Cobalt blue, and gold. You’ll note the blue is almost exactly the shade of blue which makes up the background of this blog.

It is not actually scratched. I had just cleaned it before I took these photos and I have gone back and double checked it since seeing these photos, and there are no scratches. Weird! But I do think some of the bobbles you can see here are caused by the liquid on the glass wipes I used.

Anyway, while I was cleaning this area I noticed that the top of this cupboard is stained from the whiteboard eraser which has sometimes rested on top of this cupboard. So, I decided to re-do this area and I’ll post about that another day. The photo you see below is after a *lot* of cleaning.

I’ll head over to Berry soon and take some photos and write an actual post, or even a series of them, because Berry is the perfect driving distance from Sydney for a day trip. You can also catch a train there, and the main street is a very walkable distance from the train station. Bring a tote bag in case you shop up a storm, though!

And to end this post on a weird tangent, Berry was the location for Village Vets Australia, which was a fantastic tv show on the Lifestyle Channel on Austar, and if you missed it, the episodes are sometimes on youtube for a couple of weeks, until they are taken down again..

The show was awesome for so many reasons – I learned a lot of new things about cows. They did a rumen contents transplant on a cow which was absolutely fascinating if terrifying for a germophobe. But be aware the show does contain some surgery on animals, and some very sad moments, in among the great moments of which there are also many.

Australia, Berry, Happy Snoskred, Home, New South Wales, Snoskred hearts

Going Back In Time

1 Comment Posted on January 21, 2015June 2, 2015 by Snoskred

I mentioned recently that an item on my to-do list was to go back through the oldest posts on the blog. I know there are plenty of dead links and videos which no longer work and I’m fixing them if possible – finding another video of the same thing, or finding a similar link which still works..

In my review, I stumbled upon – This message may come to you as a surprise.. – where one of my clocks had fallen off the wall while I was at work. I said in that post that I would love to get a clock like the photo above..

and I look up from the laptop and see this – it turns out, I did get one exactly like that – it has the same model name and everything! Not a floor clock like the one above, but the clock I did get was a smaller wall version of the floor clock. It was an insane bargain when the store decided to clear that brand out. I think it retailed for over $300 and I got it on clearance for $30 or even cheaper.

You probably are wondering what is that thing in front of it – tis a paperweight. I’ll write a separate post just about that item, where I got it, and what it means to me.

An interesting side effect is – going through my old posts is like going back in time through my mind. It also shows me how much I have learned about blogging, which is a post for another day. :)

About Snoskred, Happy Snoskred, Home, Snoskred hearts

Kitty Kerfuffle

3 Comments Posted on January 14, 2015June 1, 2015 by Snoskred

If pressed to categorize the present goings on in Snoskredland over Christmas and New Years, one would have to thesaurus words for absolutely nothing. Categorically zilch.. Truly Nix..

The most exciting thing going on was a Kitty Kerfuffle involving this pillow pet that Sephyroth once sent me. They have been taking it in turns, and when one arrives to find the spot taken, a glare is given to the occupying kitty.

About Snoskred, Home, kitties, yay

Shoe Cleaning Station

13 Comments Posted on November 2, 2014May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you might remember my very first Shoe Sunday post – I showed you where my shoes live.

I do own a lot of shoes, and every single pair gets a regular clean. What I usually do is wait until a rainy afternoon, when I can’t be doing anything useful outside, and all my other chores are done for a bit, so I do not feel even a tiny bit guilty about spending a good couple of hours with my much loved shoes..

First up, I cover the work space with a floor mat – the kind you might use in a bathroom. It is good to use something with a bit of thickness to protect the work space, as there will be times when I am removing stones from the shoes with a metal nail file. I always make sure to have a pair of nail scissors and a metal nail file handy at my shoe cleaning station, because your shoes may have some surprises for you.. like this –

I recently sat down with a couple of freshly arrived TV episodes – Homeland and Downton Abbey, my anti-bacterial wipes because there is a lot of flotsam and poopsam on the soles of shoes. The outside of the shoe get a decent wipe down, the place where my foot sits also gets a decent clean, plus the soles get a really thorough scrub. Here is a pair mid scrub, you can see the suds. I’m using the Kirkland Antibacterial Wipes from Costco.

Below you can see one clean sole, and one ready to be cleaned sole.

I cleaned 13 pairs in the space of a pleasant couple of hours, while watching teevee. Once the shoes are clean, they are placed on a clean towel so they can dry off. These shoes all went off for a photo shoot right after being cleaned, for future Shoe Sundays here on the blog.

Tell a story about your shoes on your blog, and link up below!

get the InLinkz code

germophobe, health, Home, NaBloPoMo, NaBloPoMo 2014, Shoe Linkup

And It Begins

1 Comment Posted on January 9, 2013May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

There are some jobs that I have been wanting to do for over a year. One of them was to sort out the shoes. Why would I do this in preparation for kitchen jobs you ask? Well the kitchen is like one huge open plan area and in one corner of that we had shoe racks – it was right near the entry way and it seemed like a logical place for them to go but it never worked in practice. All shoes have now been moved to this new home.

Plus some shoes have been put aside for donation and some for throwing out. Decluttering is always a happy feeling for me..

The scarf storage has been on the door of the new “shoe room” for a while. I’ve put the jewellery cabinet and storer into the same room as well. Kinda like a mini dressing room. Now I just have to get all the jewellery in the one place – I can think of 7 different locations where you can find jewellery of mine right now – on top of the soda stream being the most bizarre one. :)

The plastic containers have been a nightmare I never seemed to wake up from, and I was over it. OVER IT. But now, it is sorted – using a bookshelf which was no longer needed for storage of the tupperware type containers, and all the plastic storage containers I bought today for use with the new plan of things.

Here is our new pressure & slow cooker! Shiny, no? Well kinda no, it was the floor model so it is a little dusty. Now I just need to learn everything there is to know about slow cooking. As in how it works, etc. I have never done this before.

We bought a meat slicer. Yays! I am sick of spending excessive amounts of money on sliced chicken, turkey and ham. We have a foodsaver already.

I also got this rocket blender. I have wanted one of these things for a while now and I think a strawberry/banana coconut milk smoothie might work for the mornings as a breakfast.

Of course with the new deep freeze, I can freeze fruit like there is no tomorrow. Bananas tended to sit and get ignored until they went bad and got thrown out in the past. When I find good strawberries I like to buy a lot of them, wash them off and store them. Now I can just put them in the freezer.

I bought a whole watermelon today half of which I have frozen for the chooks in case we get any more of those super hot days. I’ve cut up a bunch of apples to freeze for them. I had frozen zucchini prepared for them on Tuesday which went into their water as ice cubes, they loved it enormously.

Speaking of Tuesday, which was a catastrophic fire risk day here.. this SMS came to me as a surprise, twice. Plus we got an electronic recorded message to the home phone.

I was still up when the sun rose on Tuesday so I went out and washed out the chickens water bowls and ran the sprinkler in their enclosure for a while – the water helps keep the sand cool and helps with their dust bathing themselves down to a cooler level of earth. It was already 31 degrees on my weather station before the sun even came up, but it was overcast so I went to bed thinking everything would be less hot than predicted.

Around 10am just as I was drifting off to sleep the safety switch tripped. I had to get up, get dressed, go out and turn it back on. Around 2, some telemarketer called me on my mobile which I had turned to ring from silent in case there was some kind of emergency. I was not making a great deal of sense on the phone seeing as I was asleep, lucky for the telemarketer else I would have gone off for being woken up. After I hung up, I woke up and went out to check on the chooks – the weather station said 44 degrees C. Hot time!

The girls were doing ok, chilling out in the shade under their coop, dustbathing happily. I put some more frozen veg in their water and went back to bed. Absolutely terrible sleep and then I had to go to work earlier than I had been used to – 5pm instead of 6. I nearly did not make it.

Tonight I am hoping to head back to bed at a more regular time having got up about 2 today and then doing a hard day of chores. I tried to do this last night – went to bed at 2, tossed and turned till 6, said stuff it, I’ll go watch another Dexter ep until I am tired, which turned into 2 eps.

Tomorrow it is off to Sydney for an Ikea & Costco trip. We’re heading up a little later than usual in the hope of missing all the peak hour traffic we usually hit on the way home – it is daylight until late now and Costco is open till 8:30pm. Will update you urgently! :)

cooking, country life, get organised, health, Home, prep for going paleo

Speaking Of My Balcony

13 Comments Posted on October 15, 2007March 20, 2015 by Snoskred

I went to test out the new lens and have a few pics for you.

My new lavender plant, which I have had for maybe three weeks and it has taken off like a rocket. Does anyone know, if you want to cut off the older lavender heads is there a certain place you should snip them?

My wisteria – it is a pink version called “summer wisteria”. I’ve had it for almost a year now. I love it!

My new herb garden which seems to be quickly outgrowing the pot it was put into – I did not expect it to take off quite so much. There is basil, italian flat parsley, chives and a capsicum tree. It smells incredible and I have used the herbs in my cooking twice now. Right behind it you can see one of my two tomato plants which I surrounded with chives because I got an 8 pack seedling tray. Both the chives and the tomato plant have doubled in size in just over a week!

The second tomato plant. Both tomato plants are already flowering, I think this is a good sign? I have been inspired by some fellow bloggers who have been growing their own foods. I decided to plant herbs and tomatoes but now I have a stack of pots without anything in them, so I may expand my new hobby. ;)

My dwarf fuchsia which has been repotted and is very happy by the look of things.

We have re-potted maybe 75% of our plants and we have gone through 6 bags of potting mix! We still need to get a few more pots and potting mix to finish the job. I go out every night and water the plants just before I cook dinner. It is such a peaceful time for me. It is just starting to get dark, I can smell the sea breeze drifting my way and the stars start appearing – and you can see them so clearly here without all the big city lights.

Tonight I am going to give them a good dose of fertilizer when I water them. They always enjoy that. The plants seem as happy by the change in location as we are. All the plants have new growth and the ones that can flower have buds all over the place. They get the morning and mid-day sun and miss out on that painful afternoon sun, which makes them happy I think.

Just so I know, do you prefer thumbnail pics so the page can load faster and then you can click on the ones you would like to view closer? Let me know in the comments..

garden, Home, move to the beach

Time Management – Tuesday Think Tank

20 Comments Posted on October 10, 2007March 19, 2015 by Snoskred

Time goes by – so quickly. Many of us are disorganised people who get distracted by shiny things and lose a couple of hours seemingly in the blink of an eye. Combine that with the ability to access the internet and you can lose half a day just surfing around, reading blogs and looking at photographs. Recently I decided it was time to take my time into my own hands. I asked myself how can I combat this? I did all the hard work, and now I’m going to tell you what has worked for me.

The Daily Planner –

I spoke about the daily planner before, but this is the number one thing which has changed my life. I treat it like the old Microsoft slogan – Where do you want to go today? I write down all the things I would like to get done during my day onto the daily planner. I give them a priority – A, B or C. When I have finished that task, I put big ticks on either side of it. There is something so satisfying to me about finishing a task and ticking it off my list.

Oops, I Ran Out Of Time –

Sometimes there aren’t enough hours in the day. I was putting these long to do lists in front of myself and not getting everything done by the end of the day. Sometimes a task takes a LOT longer than you expected. For example, installing wordpress plugins – I thought it would take 1 hour. It took 5 hours.

Permission Granted –

One of the most discouraging things about setting yourself goals and tasks is not achieving them. It is one reason people simply give up and quit. There were a few days when I beat myself up about not finishing everything on the list. I almost wanted to quit because of it. In the end, I had to give myself permission to draw an arrow through any of the items on my to-do list and then add it to tomorrow’s to do list. As long as I have done my best each day I’m happy.

The Number One Rule –

You will want to write this one down. “Do It Now”.

It sounds simple but it is not so simple to achieve this in reality. You have to treat it like a religion. You have to chant it like a mantra. You have to change your thinking from “I can do that later” to “I’ll do it now”.

Everything Has A Home –

As I wrote in my Snoskred Is Getting Organised article, I don’t put things back where they belong. One of the reasons I had trouble with this was – things did not have a specific home. My new office is a lot more organised. I have a set of drawers with labels on them so that I know where things live. I also have a lot more bookshelf space for my aromatherapy oils, for my incense, for my cosmetics and lip balms.

Keep It Bare –

On my desk, there are only essential work related things now. I used to have a lot of personal items on my desk. I’m finding new homes for them because I recognise I could often zone out while looking at them. That is because I am attracted to shiny, sparkly things. If I see something shiny and sparkly it can make all rational thought vanish from my mind. That’s a good thing – and ok in the right place. The right place for that is NOT my work desk. ;)

Handle It Once –

When you have something in your hand and you are considering putting it down, make sure you put it into the place it is going to live for good. I was one of those people who would put things down and not be able to find them again. Having a home for everything, and being disciplined about putting things back can fix this.

Devotion –

You might choose to devote 5-10 minutes at the end of the day making sure everything is where it lives, or you can choose to “do it now”. I prefer to do it now and devote that 5 minutes at the end of the day to a quick clean of my desk.

Recognise Daily Tasks –

There are some things I need to do every day. I like to tick them off a daily check list. At the old house there was a week where I was on a roll and got those things done every single day. Since moving here I have got out of the habit a little bit. It annoys me – especially getting out of the habit of replying to the comments daily. So I am putting this back on my to do list and I will be re-creating the list as I have more daily tasks now.

Plan –

Sephy wrote about Google Calendar for his Tuesday Think Tank. Right now I’m a little annoyed at Google but this calendar may be the best thing since sliced bread for me. Perhaps I might look for a version which has nothing to do with Google at all, just because I do not want to become too reliant on them. In the meantime, I am planning my blog with Google Calendar. Planning is a choice you can make, if you want to.

What do you mean, plan?

Here was the plan for last week.

Sun Sep 30 – Weekly Wrap Up
Mon Oct 1 – Emily’s Questions
Tue Oct 2 – Think Tank – HTML
Wed Oct 3 – Hump Day Hmmm
Thu Oct 4 – CD Review – Madonna Confessions
Fri Oct 5 – Out Of Your Niche – Thomas
Sat Oct 6 – Australians Let Us All Waste Water
Sun Oct 7 – Weekly Wrap UP

6 out of 7 ended up exactly as I planned them. I wrote all the articles, this means I have an extra article left over which I can re-schedule.

Why Plan?

You can pre-write your blog posts when you’re having a writing “fit”.
You know where you’re going, it’s the “Where do you want to go today” extended version.
You won’t have a day where you don’t know what to write about if you have planned a topic in advance.

Why Pre-Write?

The simple fact is, there are times when you are in the mood for writing and the words come out fast and lovely. There are times when you are NOT in the mood for writing at all. The Search Engines are more “loyal” (they come back more often) to sites that post new content frequently. That is one reason I have the “Thought For Today” post. It’s not just because I take good photos and like looking for relevant quotes. There is method to my madness.

WordPress Will Change My Life –

The major reason I have switched to WordPress is the “publish in advance” feature. I can go in and write a months worth of “thought for today” posts in one sitting (this will take me an hour or so) and set them to automatically publish at the same time each day – and then forget it. That is an excellent use of my time. ;)

Try It Out With NaBloPoMo –

November is National Blog Posting Month. You can sign up for NaBloPoMo which is a month of posting every day – but rather than going into it without a plan, sit down and think how you are going to post every day for 30 days. Use a paper calendar or Google Calendar and plan your month of November well in advance. Try planning your blog and see if it works for you.

Spontaneous People –

Some people prefer not to plan. That is also a valid choice. When it comes to blogging it may be the wrong choice. Your readers are looking for –

reliability
good content
positivity
ideas
something unique

The best way you can give that to them is to have a plan. If your plan is positive where will you fit in a negative, spur of the moment post that loses you readers? You can’t. We have ALL done that. We have ALL posted something and regretted it later. You can choose to stop doing it. ;)

Further Reading –

Thoughts On Making Positive Changes – Can You Do It?
Snoskred is Getting Organised – Are You?
Email Zen: Clear Out Your Inbox

Previously in the Tuesday Think Tank
21st August: RSS
14 Reasons Readers Unsubscribe From Your Blog
Tuesday Think Tank: All About RSS

28th August: Blog Templates
Blog Design – Open Your Eyes.
Demystifying Blogger Template Editing

4th September: Nofollow
Spam, Spiders And Do Follow, Oh My!
Say No! to Nofollow

11th September: Site Meters
Do NOT Rely On Your Site Meter.
Track Your Visitors with Google Analytics

18th September: Technorati
Technorati – Sending Out An SOS
The Ups (and Downs) of Technorati

25th September: Google Reader
Google Reader Can Make Your Life Easier – Here’s How.
Improving your Google Reader Experience

2nd October: HTML
Basic HTML for Bloggers.
Some HTML Tips & Tricks

Over To You –

What are your thoughts on time management?
If you liked this article, don’t forget to give it a stumble. ;)

Home, time management, tuesday think tank

Do you have a plan?

8 Comments Posted on September 29, 2007March 2, 2015 by Snoskred

The other day I realized something scary. We now live in a location that can be cut off completely if there is a bushfire. The only way to get in or out of here would be by boat. We don’t happen to have a boat of our own, and the only friend we know who has one just sold it. The other half leaves in the morning for work and it is possible that he may not be able to get back here at the end of his work day. So I have been thinking that we need a plan to deal with a bushfire emergency – and I need a plan in case I am here all alone.

It’s not impossible, either. My sister almost lost her home in the bushfires over Christmas in 2005. They were visiting here when the bushfires happened – and at home by itself being fed by her partners family daily was their cat. They had to come up with a plan to retrieve the cat on the spur of the moment, and they had to enlist the help of the firefighters, who had better things to do than attempt to collect a cat from its home without even a pet carrier.

They did manage to collect the cat which was a big relief for my sister, and when they got home they saw just how lucky they had been. Within a metre of the back door, there was fire damage. The house that used to be behind them was entirely gone. Their back fence was entirely gone. She also lived somewhere that they had to evacuate people by boat. It is lucky for all involved that she was not there because she is a major drama queen at the best of times – if you put her in a life and death situation she’d fall apart completely because she does not have any resources to deal with it.

Ever since that happened, the pet carriers have never been somewhere I can’t get to them in moments, and if we have to go away the cats go to a boarding place – not just any boarding place but one which has a clear plan for dealing with any kind of emergency. It is a plan they give a copy of to people who board their cats there with emergency contact numbers, how they make decisions on whether to stay or go, the procedures they use for keeping enough food on hand to feed 20 cats for 3 months, right down to three different locations they can take all the pets to if the boarding place is at risk from fire.

After just moving house, I don’t have a lot of food in storage here. I could probably live for 2 weeks on the food in the fridge and freezer, but what if there is no power? Again the location where we live now could easily lose power for an extended amount of time if there was a bushfire.

Do you know the phone number for your insurance company and the number of your policy off the top of your head? Me either. It’s not the kind of thing I have memorized – but I have memorized the phone number of the local Chinese restaurant, and the song lyrics to many songs.. that’s not going to help me! ;) If you were away from home and something happened to your home, it is handy to have that kind of information stored somewhere.

Another thing I like about the site is that you can choose to share your plan online with other family members. Not only is this useful but it may get them thinking about creating their own emergency plan.

Consider all the people in New York after 9/11 who could not get back to their apartments – and thus their pets – for weeks. I’ve seen so many people say “I leave the toilet lid up now in case I can’t get home, so the pets can get water” but if that is your only plan for an emergency I think you’re going to find it difficult to cope in the event of an actual disaster and so will your pets. I’m going to buy one of those pet feeders where you can put a longer supply of dry cat food ASAP because pets need food as well as water!

I think it is worth considering what you’d do in the event of an emergency, and it is worth creating a plan. It is also worth regularly backing up your computer data and storing it somewhere other than your home. It is worth putting all your digital photos onto CD or DVD and sending a copy to a couple of family members. It is worth making an inventory of your books, dvd’s, and treasured items in case you ever need to replace them. You can do that photographically and I’ll write a how to on that sometime over the next few weeks.

We never like to think of what could happen but there are times that we should think about it. For those of us in Australia, now is the time to begin thinking about summer and the upcoming bushfire season. Make a plan, just in case. ;) If you never have to use it, that is fantastic – but if you do have to use it you’ll be prepared as a family.

Does your family have an emergency plan? If yes let me know in the comments.. ;)

Home, life lessons