Why You Should Keep Written Pantry and Emergency Notes

In Becoming a Prudent & Prepared Homemaker, we looked at the importance of developing a plan for your home including why you need a pantry and why you need to prepare for difficult circumstances. In doing these things, you’ll be embarking on an important journey with the potential to make a tremendous impact on your family. By making one little choice, taking one little action, and then doing the next small thing, you can achieve significant accomplishments over time.

So if you are serious about taking deliberate steps toward being prudent and prepared, then I encourage you to assemble a 3-ring binder in order to keep all of your information in one place. During the course of this series, I’ll be recommending pages from my A Quiet Simple Life Planner & Guidebook. I’ll also be linking to other important information online that you should download, print, and save. You need one place to keep all of it.

Reasons to Keep Pantry and Emergency Notes

There are four reasons why it’s important for you to keep written notes as you go through this process.

Writing for Retention

We better retain what we write down. It’s a basic fact of life. The process of writing and seeing something written down helps us remember it. The work you do while going through this series on behalf of your loved ones will better stick with you if you write it down.

Clear Your Brain

Everything you write down, you get out of your head. Instead of trying to remember the food you want to buy tonight at the grocery store, the doohickey you keep meaning to order from Amazon, and what you want next week when you drive by Lowe’s, you have it written down.

Your life is full enough. Write it all down and clear your brain for other things that are more important and necessary.

A Record of What You’ve Accomplished

Keep track of everything you do as you go through this process. This includes jotting down to do lists, brainstorming lists, etc. You won’t generate enough paper to make it a problem in your home. You will, however, generate enough to make you realize how much you’ve accomplished in two weeks, six weeks, three months, six months, etc.

It’s easy to forget the humble beginnings as you move along. Keep your notes. Don’t throw away those brainstorming pages. When you look back, you’ll be proud of how far you’ve come as a homemaker.

A Written Plan Has a Better Chance of Being Executed

Lastly, a written plan has a better chance of being executed. If you take the time to write it down, then you can act on it. Reading the posts in this series and then walking away without putting pen or pencil to paper won’t do you or your loved ones any good.

Write it down.

You can start by printing off the binder covers and spines in the Guidebook.

There are also lovely pages for Notes, Lists & Records that you can print off to begin brainstorming as you go through this process.

What If You Aren’t Available?

As the women who hold it all together in our homes, we carry a lot of responsibility for the well-being of our loved ones. Whether it is you and one other person in the home or you and ten others, the woman is usually the one who makes it all tick.

The woman is also the one who usually knows how everything works together, where everything is stored, etc.

But what would happen to your loved ones if you weren’t available?

Part of the process as you put together your Prudent & Prepared binder is to put in writing and in detail the things your loved ones would need to know in order to keep things running smoothly.

If you were unexpectedly in the hospital for a week or two, would your family know where you keep everything? If there was a disaster while you were away from the home, do they know what to do? Do they know when and how to pay the bills? Do they know the special supplies you might have purchased and tucked away just in case?

If you don’t have everything written down for them in a place where they know to look, then all of your efforts toward being prudent and prepared aren’t going to benefit them one bit.

I strongly encourage you to make this a top priority. Begin building your binder and begin the process of getting your home in order.

Setting Personal Goals

At this point, your mind might be filled with ideas, opportunities, and maybe even fears. This is okay!

Take some time to think about what you hope to accomplish as you read through this series. You can use the Setting Personal Goals worksheet to start writing down all of the ideas that have already come to mind.

Put your thoughts to paper. It will help you begin to move forward. It will also be something to reflect back on in the weeks and months ahead as you make tremendous progress in this area of your life. (Because I am confident you will!)