A Quiet Simple Life | Sallie Borrink

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:23

A Quiet Simple Life

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Sallie Borrink

Head Down, Blinders On, Antennae Up – Multi Topic Update


My blogging friend, Dianna, often uses the phrase “Head down, blinders on” to encourage us to focus on what we have set out to do. I’ve been dutifully applying it this month. If you look at what I’ve posted in June, you’ll see it hasn’t been much. I have been adding content to the forum from time to time. I’ve also kept up with obligations I had for reviews and such. But other than that it’s all been behind the scenes until yesterday when I republished the Prudent & Prepared Homemaker Series. I’ve also been very bad about replying to comments and I apologize for that.

From Cozy to Simple

Part of the work was changing most of the “cozy living” language on my site to “simple living.” Why? It’s just easier to use the term simple living. People can immediately connect with it when they arrive here. I’m still going to talk about cozy living, but using it as a key phrase to build content around wasn’t working. It was making things way more complicated than I wanted them to be moving forward. My desire is to help women improve their life so if I can remove a clunky layer that needs to be explained when they come to my site for the first time, then that’s a good thing.

So this has necessitated redoing a lot of products and posts.

Learning Printables

We’re also still in the process of updating all of my learning printables. Many haven’t been updated in three years which is a long time in printable land. If you’ve purchased things in my shop, be sure to see if they have been updated so you can get the fresh new version. You’ll be able to tell because it will have the stitched ribbon band and logo along the bottom of the cover.

So, for example, if you go to the Reading and Writing section of the shop, you can tell that (at the present moment) Apples, Pumpkins, America, December, Spring, Picnic, etc. have been updated but others we’re still working on. I hope you’ll download the new versions because they really are much improved.

New Website Design

You can see that we’ve installed a completely new WordPress theme. It has streamlined everything behind the scenes and is amazingly simple to use.

I’ve gone around and around on the layout of my site in recent years. What I have always wanted was a magazine type theme because I’ve wanted to build a magazine type site with multiple in-depth categories. However, we could never find a magazine theme that was beautiful and didn’t look overwhelming. There was one blog I found who had something very close to what I wanted, but it had some deal breakers so I kept looking.

I then happened across someone using this theme and That. Was. It. Not only did I like the theme, I liked the way she used it. I’ve looked at many other websites that used the same theme and didn’t like them nearly as well. So we bought the theme and set about to making it my own through some customizing details. I still have quite a few things to clean up, but my goal is July 7 to be all caught up so I can do NEW THINGS. WOO HOO!

Antennae Up

At the same time I’ve been head down, blinkers on I’ve also been (in typical Sallie fashion) what I’m going to call “antennae up”

There were probably fifty posts I could have written this month. So much has been happening in the church and in the world and I’ve been trying to keep up with it all and determine how it all fits together. I’ve gone looking for information and found new podcasts with helpful people. Since a lot of the website and product work I had to do behind the scenes was rather mindless, I could stream podcasts while working. I’ve been sharing some in the forums and will share more below and in the days ahead.

Here are some post topics I could have written (in random order but kind of grouped by big themes). In fact, some of these will still be coming. Some of these are related to current events as well as other topics. There is simply no way to avoid talking about what’s going on in my own life without discussing how it is being impacted by the culture. So I’ll mention them here, but the links will be in the forum because the discussions should take place in there.

Here are the things I’m thinking…

Beth Moore and Women Being Deceived

This section was moved to a separate post: Women Are More Easily Deceived & Thoughts on Beth Moore

Social Media Related

I deleted my Instagram account. I never used it and I’m only one person, but I’m doing what I can to continue to fight Big Tech and censorship.

I try to avoid using CensorTube as much as possible and will watch people on their website or Bitchute if they are on there. I only use Twitter when I need to find a tweet to embed in the forum or a post. I wish more people would quit Facebook, Twitter, etc. and help take them down.

I’m on Parler. I’ve been on there for a year, but didn’t do much. The massive influx of people in the past week leads me to believe that this might be the tipping point. (I wrote about this in the forum.) If you want to be on a social media platform where there is no algorithm blocking what you can see and free speech is allowed, please join. If you believe in the First Amendment, make an account. Make your voice heard even in a small way by supporting something like Parler.

Events in America

My policy of almost never commenting publicly on developing stories has been proven correct multiple times just in this month alone. The first parts are almost always false. Convington, anyone? Smollet, anyone? Now even more of them.

Sororities in the National Panhellenic Conference are now in the process of purging their rituals of “white ideals and perspectives” which is coded critical race theory language for Christian content (Scripture passages, references to Christ, etc.). They have gone full woke and it won’t end well. I got into a lengthy discussion online regarding this and pointed out the slippery slope this opens up. I’ve half written a post about this and am even more convinced of what I said after watching my own Tri Delta initiation ritual this weekend online when they did a virtual initiation. I knew exactly which part they would remove and they did. It emptied the ritual of the most beautiful and meaningful imagery. Most sorority alumnae have no idea their ritual is being dismantled in the name of purging “white ideals and perspectives” as Delta Gamma phrased it. (Post now here: Breaking Our Bonds: Wokeness Will Destroy National Panhellenic Conference Sororities)

A few months ago, Tim Pool did series of videos about millennial women and feminists who are upset that men don’t want to date them, marry them, who feel unfulfilled, etc. I wanted to write a post about it but never got around to it. What we are seeing right now is the result of telling women that they are only fulfilled if they are basically men, if they sleep around, if they buy that sex has no meaning, don’t get married, children are a burden, abortion solves all your problems, etc. We are seeing women who are born with the God-given propensity to nurture who have turned that natural impulse into self-loathing and empathy that is destructive not only to themselves but our entire culture.

Okay, I have to stop and post this. I know it’s kind of all over the place and haphazard but I wanted to connect with everyone today. I could be at this all day with all I’ve been contemplating the past month. LOL!

Lots of work still to do.

Back again soon.

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4 Tips For Discussing Emergency Preparedness With Children


If you have children, you will want to think through how you are going to handle these topics of pantry building and emergency preparedness with them. This is especially true if doing things like this is a big departure from what is normal in your home and/or you have children prone to anxiety about the unknown.

That said, I do think there are a number of ways to incorporate these topics into your everyday parenting and learning. Below I’ve listed four suggestions which include talking about changes with your children, making a game of it with your children, making it part of your homeschooling, and reading survival and preparedness books with your children.

Talking About Changes With Your Children

Explaining a pantry to children is easy. You build up a pantry so you don’t have to go to the store as often and so you don’t forget to have the things your family likes right there in the house. Or you can say that you learned some new tricks about shopping and saving money so you are buying more of some things at certain times to do so.

If your children are a little older and/or more prone to anxiously asking the reason for everything, then you will want to have a solid answer before you start stashing water and such. My philosophy is you give a child an honest answer, but only the information that is absolutely necessary. For example, an explanation of water might be something like:

“A friend mentioned that they lost their water for three days when their water main broke. I thought about what a pain that would be if it happened to us so I decided to buy some water and keep it on hand just in case.”

This is completely true (because our water main did break) and enough to satisfy most kids as long as you deliver it in a matter of fact way.

I really do think this is key: Being matter of fact. If you deliver the information in the same way you would inform them that you bought hot dogs or grandma called, most kids won’t think twice about it. It’s when they can read uncertainty in your eyes or you give an evasive answer that they wonder what you are hiding.

When you get to the point of expanding your pantry and venturing into more preparedness, then you might have to rethink how to approach it. I’ll suggest two ideas in the next steps.

Make It A Game With Your Kids

I’ve found that often the best approach is simply to make a game of something. Kids like games. Little ones won’t really be able to grasp the big picture, but will find it fun to “help” you organize your pantry supplies and such. Kids who are a little older can help you clean out your pantry, make a master pantry list, organize it, etc.

There are lots of different ways to make play out of pantry building and preparedness with younger children.

  • Talk about it being like a savings account because you save money when you buy things when they’re on sale.
  • Compare it to having a stocked up pantry like Laura Ingalls in Little House in the Big Woods or other pioneers your child may have learned about from books or movies.
  • Discuss how grandparents and great-grandparents stocked a pantry when they grew their own food, canned, hunted, etc.

Whatever works with your kids, make it fun.

The government also has a section on their Ready.gov site just for kids called Ready Kids. There is quite a bit there for all ages including a downloadable disaster preparedness activity book for younger children called Prepare with Pedro. (Pedro is a cute penguin!)

Make Preparedness A Part Of Homeschooling

If you are a homeschooler, then you have an easy way to work this into your interactions with your children. There is so much from history that includes filling a pantry, living through difficult times, etc. As long as your children aren’t overly anxious, it makes a great study with natural ways to discuss it relative to your life today.

There are many read alouds that talk about storing food in the past. It could open up an interesting discussion about why those people stored food and what your family could learn from them. Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder in exceptionally good in detailing the work that goes into planting, growing, harvesting, and storing food as well as caring for livestock.

You can add in home economics, math, cooking, etc. as part of your pantry expansion.

If you have a child who loves to organize, enlist his/her help.

There are also many classic chapter books and read alouds that discuss topics such as prepping and surviving difficult times. While some children might find them upsetting, others will eat them up and want to explore the topic in depth. I put together a collection of possible books below. I haven’t read them all, but they come highly recommended by many parents.

I’ve also created a downloadable printable you can use to brainstorm ways to integrate pantry building and preparedness into your homeschooling. You can find that in The Prudent and Prepared Homemaker..

Survival and Preparedness Books For Kids

I confess that survival books were never my cup of tea when I was a kid or young adult. Although I’ve seen these titles for years, I have not read most of them and never found myself in a teaching position where they were part of the curriculum.

I do know that most of these are widely read and taught. As always, preview each book to make sure it aligns with your family standards and values.

Survival Books for Children – Read Alouds or Independent Reading

Skills Books

Picture Books

If you can recommend other books for this list, please do! I will add them to the original lists so people can easily find them.

So there are four effective ways to approach pantry building and emergency preparedness with your children. If you have more ideas, please share them in the comments to other parents can benefit from your insight.

The Prudent & Prepared Homemaker

Read All of the Posts in the Series

3 Reasons To Become A Prudent & Prepared Homemaker

5 Reasons To Keep Written Pantry & Emergency Notes

4 Must-Know Tips About Stocking a Pantry 

3 Tips for Building Your Pantry 

7 Places To Find Extra Money For Stocking Your Pantry

3 Reasons Most “First Things to Buy” Prepper Lists Are Worthless

4 Tips to Deal with Emergency Anxiety

4 Facts About Preparing For Emergencies

3 Unusual Tips For Emergency Preparedness

11 Ways To Prepare Your Home For A Storm

4 Important Tips About Safe Water

4 Types of People Who Should Buy a 14-Day Emergency Food Supply Pack

4 Tips For Discussing Emergency Preparedness With Children

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4 Types of People Who Should Buy a 14-Day Emergency Food Supply Pack


Although most people will build a pantry over time by shopping at their local grocery store, sometimes it makes sense to purchase a food supply or food storage pack. In this post, let’s look at what kinds of emergency foods are available and who might benefit from investing in emergency supply pack.

When I originally wrote this post several months ago for my forum, emergency food was widely available and shipped almost immediately. It is now backordered for months in many cases. If this is something that is important to you as you pursue being a prudent and prepared homemaker, you would be wise to order whatever it is you want now so it will eventually make its way to you. You won’t get it any sooner by biding your time.

Who Should Buy a 14-Day Emergency Food Supply Pack?

A food storage or food supply pack could be an excellent choice for some individuals and families. Here are a few people who would be wise to consider making an investment in something like this.

Limited Physical Abilities: These could be very helpful if you are concerned about your ability to physically function well in an emergency. If you have health issues, stamina issues, etc. that will make the extra work of preparing food in an emergency more of a burden, then ready-to-eat foods might be a very wise investment.

High Probability of Evacuation: If you are concerned about evacuations these could be a huge blessing. You can easily throw a few weeks worth of food into your car and leave. You put yourself in a much better position of not being dependent on others for your food while away from home. These packs are compact so you can take them with you much more easily than you could if everything was in cans, canning jars, boxes, etc. from your pantry.

Quickly Establishing Food Storage: This could be the way to go if you want to accomplish a food prep goal quickly. If having a food supply concerns you greatly because of your particular location or situation, you can order these and be done with it as compared to spending weeks or months slowly stocking a pantry based on sales and grocery shopping.

Limited Storage Space: If you have limited storage space because you live in an apartment or a house without adequate storage space, these could work well. If you don’t have a basement or pantry, it can be much more challenging to find places to create a deep pantry.

Ready-Made Food Supply Companies

There are a number of companies that sell ready-made food supply packs for every time frame from two or three days to a year. If you aren’t familiar with them, here are several packages available on Amazon by different companies so you can get an idea of what they include and how they are structured price-wise. Due to my food restrictions, I haven’t tried any of them. I know they all have their fans and at the time of compiling this list they all had excellent reviews.

Mountain House

NorthWest Fork

Legacy

Wise Company

Augason Farms

I think food storage packs could be a wise purchase for some families. They are pricey. For some of my readers, I know this isn’t within the realm of possibility. Other readers could order the most expensive packs on the list and not think twice about laying out that kind of money. Many readers are somewhere in-between. We each have to choose what works best for our situation. These are one option for some people.

The Prudent & Prepared Homemaker

Read All of the Posts in the Series

3 Reasons To Become A Prudent & Prepared Homemaker

5 Reasons To Keep Written Pantry & Emergency Notes

4 Must-Know Tips About Stocking a Pantry 

3 Tips for Building Your Pantry 

7 Places To Find Extra Money For Stocking Your Pantry

3 Reasons Most “First Things to Buy” Prepper Lists Are Worthless

4 Tips to Deal with Emergency Anxiety

4 Facts About Preparing For Emergencies

3 Unusual Tips For Emergency Preparedness

11 Ways To Prepare Your Home For A Storm

4 Important Tips About Safe Water

4 Types of People Who Should Buy a 14-Day Emergency Food Supply Pack

4 Tips For Discussing Emergency Preparedness With Children

Category: 1 Comment

4 Important Tips About Safe Water


Unsafe water and waterborne disease kill more people worldwide than anything else – violence, war, etc. We won’t get into all the statistics here, but they are grim in a way that’s hard for people in a first world country to begin to comprehend. Walking miles each day for safe water is so far out of our frame of reference it almost doesn’t compute. Safe and fresh is something we all take for granted every single day.

The reality is that safe water is concern number one, two, and three for your family when it comes to being prepared for the unexpected. Nothing else even comes close.

The Critical Necessity of Safe Water

It’s hard for most of us to think about a lack of access to clean and safe water, but it can happen. There could be a time when safe water doesn’t pour out of your faucets on demand. What are some ways your water source could be contaminated or even lost? A few include:

  • Routine water main break due to maintenance or age issues
  • Loss of power to deliver the water
  • Natural disaster that breaks the pipes that deliver water
  • Sabotage of water treatment facilities

There are other even grimmer possibilities, but these are the most likely.

If you’ve ever lived through a boil water advisory for a few days, you know how hard it is to boil all the water you need for everything.

If you’ve ever lived through a no-contact advisory where you aren’t even supposed to shower or wash your hands with the water, then you know how old that gets very quickly.

I’ve lived through both and they are no fun. They make everything more challenging and time-consuming.

Now imagine if that happened on a large scale. For several days. Or a week. Or longer.

  • How long would your family stay hydrated?
  • How would your family stay clean?
  • How would you cook and eat?

Safe water is the foundation of everything when it comes to taking care of your loved ones.

Before You Do Anything Else – Water

Before you do anything else with the information in the Prudent & Prepared Homemaker series, your first job is to get water stored for your family. We’ll look at the options that are available and then you can plan accordingly based on your family and your resources.

Don’t put this off. Either this morning, this afternoon, tonight, or tomorrow morning you must take care of this. Don’t worry about doing anything else recommended in these posts until you take care of this.

Big plans start with the first small step. Water is your first step.

How Much to Store

A general rule of thumb is to store one gallon per person, per day. So if you have a family of 5, you need a minimum of 5 gallons for each day.

  • If you are going to store enough water for 3 days, then you need 15 gallons.
  • A week means 35 gallons.
  • A month means roughly 150 gallons.

The amount you want per person per day will depend on how you are going to keep clean, the time of year, where you live, and what else you are storing. We’ll talk more about sanitation in later posts, but this is simply to get you started.

I personally think one gallon per person per day is not nearly enough, but that is the general guideline so we’ll go with it.

Water in the Home Worksheet

There is a Water in the Home worksheet in The Prudent and Prepared Homemaker to help you think through how much water your particular home needs to store for emergencies.

Should You Store Water Bottles?

Water bottles are a hot topic right now. There are people who absolutely will not allow them in their home or allow their children to use them.

For our purposes, let’s put all of the scientific and environmental details aside and deal with it from the emergency perspective.

Water bottles are one of the quickest and cheapest ways to add this absolute necessity to your home. If you have the cash, you can go to Costco, Walmart, Meijer, Kroger, or wherever right now, buy four or five or ten 24-packs of water bottles, bring them home, and put them in your basement or wherever you are going to keep them.

Just like that you will have accomplished the first part of an important process.

I certainly respect that not everyone wants to use water bottles on a daily basis. But given the choice between not having any water for your children and having them drink a bit of water from a water bottle, I think the water bottle is the best choice in an emergency. In fact, I’m sure you will be beyond thankful to have water bottles for your kids – and you.

There are other options we’re going to look at in the following topics, but buying packages of water bottles is the quickest and easiest way to deal with this.

If you prefer, you can buy gallon jugs of water. Those will work well, but they don’t store nearly as easily. It’s much easier to stack packages of water bottles three or four high than it is to arrange jugs. But jugs will work as well if you have the space for them.

Another benefit of water bottles over jugs is that if you get a leak in one water bottle, you are only out one bottle. If you break open or spill a gallon jug accidentally, you could lose the whole thing (which represents a full day of water for one member of your family).

Controversy aside, water bottles are the quickest and cheapest way to get started as you work your way toward longer-term options in the months ahead.

Tools for Water Filtration and Purification

There are several different options for water filtration and purification. We’ll take a brief look at a few of them now, but will cover this topic more in-depth when we discuss longer-term preparedness. You can see the details of many of these items in the Amazon List I’ve made: Prudent & Prepared – Water.

Individual Devices

There are individual devices you can purchase for water needs. One of the most popular and widely used is the Life Straw. It’s an amazing product. I think every family should have one of these for every member of the family if funds allow. Even a couple for emergencies is better than none.

This would also be something to consider keeping in your car. With a Life Straw, as long as you can find ANY kind of water somewhere, you will be able to drink.

Sawyer also makes an individual device. It is constructed a bit differently, but many people like it as well.

There are also water bottles, larger gravity pouches, and more which you can see in the list.

Water Purification with Chemicals

There are multiple ways to purify water. Water purification tablets are probably the most widely known. There are other options, however, including bleach and pool shock. Keeping some inexpensive plain bleach or pool shock somewhere dark and out of the way is an inexpensive way to be prepared to purify water in an emergency.

Click Prudent & Prepared – Water to see details of various water filtration and purification products.

And then go get the water you need. Right away.

The Prudent & Prepared Homemaker

Read All of the Posts in the Series

3 Reasons To Become A Prudent & Prepared Homemaker

5 Reasons To Keep Written Pantry & Emergency Notes

4 Must-Know Tips About Stocking a Pantry 

3 Tips for Building Your Pantry 

7 Places To Find Extra Money For Stocking Your Pantry

3 Reasons Most “First Things to Buy” Prepper Lists Are Worthless

4 Tips to Deal with Emergency Anxiety

4 Facts About Preparing For Emergencies

3 Unusual Tips For Emergency Preparedness

11 Ways To Prepare Your Home For A Storm

4 Important Tips About Safe Water

4 Types of People Who Should Buy a 14-Day Emergency Food Supply Pack

4 Tips For Discussing Emergency Preparedness With Children

Category: Be The First To Comment