One of the Best Benefits of Prepping: You Stop Running Out of Things

One of my favorite benefits of prepping has nothing to do with a major disaster.

I rarely run out of ordinary things.

If I finish the peanut butter, there are other jars in my storage. Run out of butter in the fridge? No problem – I have pounds of it in a chest freezer (bought on sale by the way). Same with almost any of our normally consumable foods and supplies. Coffee, cooking oils, spices, batteries, trash bags, paper goods, hygiene products, and plenty of other things we use around the house.

I simply go get the backup, put the item on the shopping list, and buy another one the next time I’m at the store.

No special trip. No inconvenience. No realizing halfway through a job or a recipe that I’m missing something.

I’ve been doing this for years, and I’ve come to appreciate just how much easier it makes everyday life.

That may be one of the most overlooked benefits of preparedness.

Everyday Preparedness Helps With Ordinary Problems Too

People tend to associate prepping with power outages, hurricanes, supply shortages, economic problems, or worse.

Those are valid reasons to prepare.

But most days aren’t emergencies.

Most days are filled with much smaller problems. The flashlight batteries are dead. The last roll of paper towels is gone. You discover there isn’t enough cooking oil for dinner. The toothpaste tube finally gives up.

None of these things are serious.

They’re annoying.

Having backups turns many of those little annoyances into almost nothing.

You walk to wherever you keep your supplies, grab another one, and continue with whatever you were doing.

I consider that one of the rewards for maintaining preparedness supplies in the first place.

My Simple Rule: Use One, Replace One

The system doesn’t need to be complicated.

For many everyday household essentials, I basically want at least one unopened replacement behind the one I’m currently using. For many items I keep two, three, or more depending.

When the working supply runs out, I open the backup.

At that point, the backup has become the working supply, so I add another one to my shopping list.

That’s the part that makes the system work.

You aren’t waiting until you’re completely out before remembering that you need more. Your personal “out of stock” point is reached while you still have another one sitting on the shelf.

Depending on the item, I may keep considerably more than one backup. Foods that we regularly eat, batteries, paper products, cleaning supplies, and other useful consumables may warrant several.

The last one isn’t really the last one.

This Is Different From Buying a Bunch of Random Stuff

There is an important distinction between maintaining useful backups and simply accumulating things.

I don’t see much value in filling shelves with products that nobody normally uses.

The most useful preparedness inventory tends to be the ordinary stuff already moving through your household.

Think about what you bought during your last few grocery or household-supply trips. Those purchases reveal quite a bit about what you actually use.

Coffee. Peanut butter. Cooking oil. Canned foods. Dish soap. Laundry detergent. Toothpaste. Shampoo. Trash bags. Batteries.

Your list will be different.

That’s good.

A preparedness supply should fit your household, not somebody else’s preparedness checklist.

A simple label maker can also be surprisingly useful once supplies begin occupying several shelves or storage bins. I like being able to see what is where without opening everything.

Mrs. J has been the label-er around here 😀

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. There is no extra cost to you.

→ Brother P-Touch PT-N25BT label maker

The Backup Becomes Your Buffer

What you’re really creating is a buffer between consumption and the store.

Normally, the chain looks like this:

You use the last one, discover you’re out, and now you need the store.

With a backup supply, the store doesn’t need to solve the problem immediately.

Maybe you won’t be shopping until Friday.

Fine.

Maybe the product is temporarily out of stock.

Still fine.

Maybe a snowstorm is coming and everyone else is making a last-minute trip for supplies.

You may already have what you need.

That small buffer works every day, but it becomes more useful as circumstances become less normal.

The exact same bottle of detergent that saves you a trip to town on Tuesday may also be useful during a week-long storm.

There isn’t a separate category of “emergency detergent.”

It’s just detergent you bought early.

Backups Save Trips to the Store

This benefit becomes even more noticeable if going to the store isn’t particularly convenient.

Running out of one small item can turn into a substantial waste of time.

Maybe you’re 20 or 30 minutes from town. Maybe you’re in the middle of cooking. Maybe you’re working on something in the garage and discover that the battery you need is dead.

Having replacements on hand removes many of those trips.

I don’t calculate the exact number of miles or hours this has saved me over the years, but I know it has been considerable.

There’s also something satisfying about solving the problem in about thirty seconds.

Need batteries?

Go get batteries.

Need another bar of soap?

Go get one.

Then put it on the list.

Done.

What Household Supplies Are Worth Keeping Backups Of?

One backup is enough for certain items. Others make more sense in quantity.

Batteries are a good example.

We have plenty of devices that use AA, AAA, 9-volt, coin cells, and other battery sizes. Keeping an organized battery supply saves the aggravation of hunting through drawers or discovering that the particular size you need isn’t there.

A battery organizer works well for this because you can see your inventory at a glance.

→ Battery Daddy Storage & Organizer Case w/Tester (Amazon)

The included tester is useful too. An old loose battery doesn’t have to become a guessing game.

Household lighting is another area where redundancy pays off. I have flashlights and other lighting options because lights are useful far more often than during a major blackout.

The same idea applies to charging cables, extension cords, tape, common hardware, work gloves, matches, lighters, cleaning supplies, and plenty of things that aren’t normally thought of as “preps.”

They’re simply useful things to have available.

Buy More When the Price Makes Sense

Keeping backups also changes how you shop.

You aren’t always buying something because you desperately need it today.

That gives you some flexibility.

If something you regularly use goes on sale, you can buy several instead of one.

Then you may not need to buy it again for months.

This works especially well with shelf-stable food and household consumables that you know you’ll eventually use anyway.

There’s an important catch.

Don’t buy five of something merely because it’s cheap.

A bargain isn’t much of a bargain if two years later you’re throwing it away.

This is another reason I prefer storing what we already use.

Rotation happens naturally.

Watch Shelf Life and Storage Conditions

Not everything makes a good long-term backup.

Food obviously has shelf-life considerations, but so do plenty of non-food items.

Some adhesives dry out. Certain batteries can leak if forgotten for years. Rubber products age. Some chemicals degrade. Medicines have expiration dates. Even shoes can deteriorate while sitting unused, depending on their construction and materials.

So “buy extras” doesn’t mean “buy a lifetime supply.”

There is a practical middle ground.

Keep enough that you’re comfortably ahead of normal consumption, and rotate through it.

For food, I generally want the oldest usable product toward the front and newer purchases behind it.

The same idea works for many household supplies.

Use the older one first.

A Stocked House Makes Life Easier When Life Gets Busy

There is another situation where this pays off that has nothing to do with disaster.

Sometimes you simply don’t feel like shopping.

Maybe you’re busy. Maybe you’ve been working long hours. Maybe the weather is miserable. Maybe you would rather spend Saturday doing something else.

A reasonably stocked pantry and household supply area gives you that choice.

You can skip a shopping trip without immediately discovering that you’re missing five things.

I think that’s an underrated form of self-reliance.

You don’t have to depend on the store being open right now because your house contains some depth.

And Then a Real Emergency Happens

The nice thing about this approach is that everyday preparedness and emergency preparedness overlap.

The food you’re already rotating is emergency food.

The batteries you use around the house are outage batteries.

The toilet paper, soap, trash bags, medicines, flashlights, cooking fuel, and other supplies you already keep aren’t waiting around for some hypothetical disaster.

They’re being used.

You just keep more than you immediately need.

If the power goes out, a storm closes roads, a supply problem develops, or you can’t get to the store for some other reason, that ordinary household inventory suddenly becomes much more important.

But until then, it still earns its keep.

It prevents those irritating moments when you discover you’ve run out of something right when you need it.

That’s preparedness working exactly the way I like it to work.