Pretend the Power Will Go Out
It has been a very busy few weeks over here. On a complete spur-of-the-moment whim, we decided to plan a trip out of town four days before the airplane departure. Yikes! During the next few days, we had multiple kids activities and then the power went out for over twenty four hours (and didn’t come back on until 3 hours before we needed to leave for our flight).
Needless to say, it was a super crazy week that was completely worth it once were arrived at our destination and were soaking up some sun. This blog post will be a short one, I just wanted to commemorate something that I have never done before prior to an out-of-town trip.
I was prepared.
Typically, the day before we leave town, I’m scrambling to finish laundry, find things, make lists, and get things wrapped up. For this trip, I was shockingly prepared.
First, I had all our laundry done three days before we were to leave. I typically try to do all our laundry on Sunday (if we are home) but it will sometimes trickle into Monday and further into the week. This time, I actually had all of our laundry done on time. This meant, when we randomly decided to take a trip, all of our clothes were ready to go.
This was especially helpful for this trip because our power went out less than 30 hours before we were to fly out. If I had done my usual procrastination and not had our laundry done, it would have been a disaster trying to get clothes ready without any power.
Also, before we leave for trips, I like to have our house semi in order so that we don’t come home to a disaster. Luckily this time I had cleaned up fairly well on Sunday and completed most of my tasks early in the week. This meant that when the power went out, I could focus on making sure we were warm and had food instead of worrying about cleaning up before we left.
I learned so much from our spur of the moment trip. Too many times I have waited until the last minute to prepare for a trip or to get my shit together. If I had done my usual procrastinating, the trip would have started off as a disaster.
From now on, I think I’m going to think of any plan as a “what if the power goes out?” plan. If we have a trip coming up or I’m going out of town for work, I’m going to prepare for it like the power is going to go out for a few days beforehand and I need to be ready before then.
Don’t want to finish the laundry right now? Pretend the power will go out.
Don’t want to clean up the dishes in the sink tonight? Pretend the power will go out.
Don’t want to clean up the hallway? Pretend the power will go out (no tripping in the dark!).
Do you have any tricks to help you be prepared for anything?