The Benefits of Planning Ahead

A very real but messy picture of our medicine boxes.

I enjoy reading preparedness articles and while I am not a "prepper" in the true sense of the word I do like to plan ahead. Planning ahead is just a smart thing to do. If you know about something in the future that will happen or is likely to happen, why would you not get ready for it? If you were to ask my husband about my planning ahead he would probably tell you that sometimes it can be annoying (planning a 3 day vacation to a destination 2 hours away, 9 months in advance) but when he sees it in action it's appreciated!

 A good example of this is our property tax bill. Each month I transferred a small amount of money from our checking account to our savings account and when the bill came I was able to pay it from our savings account plus a few more dollars out of pocket. I was not panicked and trying to figure out where the money was going to come from, it just made sense.

My latest bulk yeast purchase, love it!

Additionally, because I bake about 2 loaves of bread a week I go through a decent amount of yeast. If I purchased yeast in the little packets at the store this would definitely be expensive. For a while I purchased it in the glass jars at my local grocery store but my last visit to the nearest Amish store brought about my use of bulk yeast. Why would I not buy more at a smaller per unit price if I know I'm going to use it?

I have heard people say "failing to plan is planning for failure" and I can tell you that this most certainly would have been true for the last week and a half. You see at varying times everyone my household has been sick for the last week and a half (B still is as I write this). This is less of a big deal because as you read a few months ago in my Preparing For Winter post, I always have 2 weeks of food in my house. I also completely restocked/overstocked my medicine boxes (kids and adults) in an effort to be prepared for impending winter illnesses. This meant that for the 5 worst days of my illness I only had to leave the house once, to see my Dr and get my antibiotic. This makes all the difference in the world! Now I will not deny that I ordered pizza a few nights ago as I felt too ill and tired to cook but I still could have or my husband could have put something in the crockpot that morning.

How many times do we fail to plan and are racing around to get ready or must simply deal with the consequences? What are things you do to plan ahead? How has not planning ahead come back to "bite" you?