What were your best COVID-19 preps?

Josh CentersContributor - May 29, 2020

We’ve had threads on prepping mistakes learned from COVID-19, but I’m curious about what you did right? As for me, I’m pretty happy that I:

• Moved to a small farm outside the city limits with arable land and other natural resources
• Raised chickens, even if they aren’t laying as well as they once did
• Stocked up on disinfectants, toilet paper, and paper towels *just* before the panic-buying started
• Had a 3M respirator on hand
• Started a small salad garden in early March. We haven’t been to a store in three months, but we’ve had fresh salads a couple of times per week.
• Already worked from home and homeschooled my children

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Knowing how to forage. It’s not enough to keep us fed on it’s own, but it reduces the need to go to the store regularly for fresh produce.

 

I already had enough toilet paper and clorox wipes stocked up. Although that wasn’t part of my long term prep stockpile, I’ve always had the habit of keeping one extra full pack at home (and I always buy the largest packs). Came in handy – didn’t have to buy any tp for at least a month after lockdown, and I still have colorox wipes from before.

 

Ditto what Haus Monkey said–I always keep a good stock of toilet paper so that was not a worry.  I did a food stock pile in February and that was the most helpful–did not have to go to the store at all for a while. Now limit my trips to every two weeks but also shop for other people.

Not a prep necessarily, but over the years where I live have worked on developing and maintaining good friendships & relationships with neighbors.  That has been really great.  We look out for each other. One neighbor and I have a little food swap going where I go to a certain store only and he goes to another one and we buy things for each other.  Other friends we leave things we’re done with (like jigsaw puzzles) outside our houses and swap.  So that’s been really great.

 

Hello fellow homeschooler!

I had several bottles of hand sanitizer that I bought during the back to school supply sales a few years ago. It was nice to have enough to share with neighbors. I also had some surgical masks and N95s (forest fires are common in my area and the smoke can get pretty bad).

 

prevention kits to safeguard against the threat of virus contamination purchase for the safe our family

 

There are a few key areas that I think worked well:

• Purchasing products in volume ahead of time – toilet paper, paper towels, tissues, canned food (chili, salmon, soup, etc.)
• Purchasing small quantities of products over time allowed an inventory build-up – pandemic flu kits, nitrile gloves, rice, quinoa, freeze dried food
• Buying in bulk when finding discounted items – hand sanitizer, protein bars, canned fruit
• Stocked up on the following just before the pandemic hit – hygiene products, snacks, Clorox disinfecting wipes
  Member’s Mark Disinfecting Wipes, Clorox bleach, Clorox spray, Kleenex antiviral tissues

 

Closing our airbnb in January.

Gradually stockpiling food, toiletries and cleaning materials.

Making a plan for if someone in the family fell ill.

 

For us:

• I invested heavily into my home networking. I have a mikrotik router and a ubiquiti wifi access point with cat6 ethernet cable. I already worked from home, but seriously investing in my internet was a huge boost.
• I went to grocery outlet (cheap liquidation grocery store) and bought like 50 lbs of beans and rice right before the panic set in. It was really early and well done.
• We bought into a community CSA that was specifically for the pandemic. It was incredible to buy directly from the farm instead of through the broken supply chain.
• Mental Health. I’ve been doing weekly therapy for a while and that continued through telehealth. I also meditate and sit with a men’s group. It makes a huge difference to have a place to clear all that mental clutter.
• We stopped watching TV, and checking social media about a year ago. I really find that it prepared us much more for this disaster more than anything else.
• On the note above: I have a subscription to the economist, and I read the prepared along with a few other sites. Basically I get the news in a weekly fashion and through word of mouth. It’s really made a huge difference for me personally.
• Also I had a bunch of sani-wipes and disinfectant because we have a toddler in the house :-D. It helped for sure.
• Toilet paper wise we installed a tushy last year and we barely use any toilet paper. We do use some, but it’s miniscule compared to what we used to.

 

Best prep by far was financial preparedness, such as saving money and eliminating debt. I can weather my hours being cut at work and while I don’t want to lose my job, if it happens I’ll be ok.

 

I bought 24 N95 masks at the hardware store in January and also got 4 extra filters for my respirator

Stocked up on hand cleanser, toilet paper, clorox wipes 2 weeks before the lockdown started.  Still have not run out after 5 months.

Got three months of our prescriptions just before the government mandated you could only buy 30 days to avoid shortages.  That lasted until this week (mid-June) so you can now get 3 months again so I will ensure I never go below that line

Re-jigged my GO bag and re-stocked other essentials not listed above that I would not normally think about as there have not been any water or power shutoffs in the pandemic (like water purification tablets, water storage containers, watch/camera batteries, solar powered re-charger, first aid supplies etc.)

Forgot to mention that we have concentrated a lot on eating really well for the past 5 months to build up our immune systems to help fight off infections and increased our physical activity to get and stay heart-healthy

 

1) Stocking up on extra N95 respirator masks, unvented goggles, nitrile gloves, face shields, hand sanitizer, pool shock, clorox wipes, and disinfectant sprays, so I was able to give some to several non-prepping friends this Spring,

2) Purchasing a UV-C aquarium sanitizing lamp and other supplies to make a DIY UV-C light box for decontaminating my used N95 respirator masks in order to extend their useful life,

3) Filling in the gaps in my existing year’s supply of food storage to ensure I have enough shelf-stable protein-rich foods on hand, including OvaEasy Egg Crystals, Canned and Freeze-dried meats and fish, as well as dry beans and rice.

4) Compiling a (38-pages long so far, lol!) Pandemic Preparedness List, which I posted in February (in 9 long comments) on a friend’s YouTube channel and also emailed to non-prepper friends and several fellow members of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society.

Zabeth

 

• Already had stores of hand sanitizer, bleach, rubbing alcohol, TP, paper towels, N95s, and 3M respirators/P100 filters.
• Got 3-month’s of all prescriptions. Had multi-week levels of OTC meds for pneumonia-type illnesses (incl. Pulse Oximeter, BP cuff).
• Bought a roll of non-woven meltblown fabric for inner filter on cloth masks.
• Signed up for a CSA and grocery deliveries. (Started out doing once a month grocery shopping—with snowboard goggles, 3M respirator, gloves—caught COVID anyway. Light case (still hellish), but now we’re totally hunkered down, no interactions, no shopping.)
• Stocked flour early and my husband’s been baking up a storm, which we’ve traded for home-canned foods and fresh fruits. Even with COVID I’ve gained weight, dammit!
• Being sick meant more time for research, some of which was for tweaking our go bags (i.e., we live in the Pacific Northwest and even at Level 1, now carry insect repellent cream, SOL cubes, insulated sleeping pads)