Financing Skills

I've gotten a little bit ahead of myself.  You see, I have no money *sadface*

Now, there are some skills that can be learned for no money.  There are some skills I already have. When I said my best skills were research and buying stuff, I ignored my ability to sew, which can be a valuable skill after the SHTF.  Also, I'm learning to cook more from scratch, which does take money for food, but it is in the grocery budget, so I don't count it.  That is a valuable skill that I'm working on, because I hate to cook.  There will, more than likely, be no drive thru meals post collapse.  Most skills, unfortunately for me, require some money to acquire.

So, I must finance my endeavor.  I have a fledgling replica movie prop business in its startup phase, but it is more of a money suck than a money maker right now.  I'm also a SAHM of a toddler, so working outside of the home isn't going to work either.  My only option, sell stuff!

For the first time in my life, I'm putting on a garage sale.  I'm kind of excited about it!  And it really, really needs to be done.  The photo of the 13 gallon totes is all the stuff I have to sell, and I'm not done going through everything yet.  I'm selling about 1 out of every 3 totes of stuff.  I'm a packrat, like my grandmother before me, but an organized one.  Everything is in a tote and the contents are cataloged for easy location.  I didn't want to write what was on each tote on the outside.  No need to advertise what you have when you open the garage door.  I started out with totes A-Z, then some totes have two letters, then started numbering.  I'm at 40+ with the numbers, so I estimate 70 some totes of stuff just in the garage.

Why have I never had a garage sale?  Having just moved from an apartment to a condo, I now have an attached garage for the first time.  Yay!  Most of what I have is brand new stuff I purchased working at a fabric store or clearance at Walmart.  We were married for 7 years before my son was born, so to feed the baby crazy urge, I bought toys and boy and girl clothes from newborn to 5T.  Like I said, I'm good at buying stuff.  I also only let myself buy clothes that were $1 or less.  I spent a lot of dollars.  We don't have a girl, so all of that brand new little girl stuff gets sold.  That and the totes upon totes of fabric and holiday decor from my retail days.  Sigh.  So much stuff I have been lugging from move to move, now to be sold finally.  Being a pack rat feels like a disease, but I'm getting better!

Research

Here is where I will begin.  I have read a large portion of all these books, now to try and put what I have learned to practice!  Included are books for general preparedness, raising livestock, building structures and addressing medical needs, with a couple fiction novels to keep me on high alert.  Books are a thorough resource on a subject, but I also find lots of things I want to try on blogs and websites.  My favorites are rural-revolution.com, survivalblog.com and paratusfamiliablog.com.  I have learned so much from these awesome folks and I've had the pleasure of meeting Patrice and Enola Gay in person!  Great ladies!

Here we go...

Welcome!  I see you found my little corner of the internet...you must be really bored.  I know, it has happened to me alot.  You start out searching for something, then another idea pops into your head, you open another tab and start another rabbit trail.  Before you know it you have 20 tabs open ranging from cloth diapers to nigerian goats to aquaponics, not to mention Faraday cages and 101 uses for vinegar.

That's how prepping started for me.  I don't remember the exact circumstances, maybe it was too much talk radio, maybe I had a packrat Grandma who would tell me stories about the Great Depression, maybe I just love a good zombie movie scenario, but like "Inception", the idea that a something bad was on the horizon planted itself in my little brain.  Then it grew.

At the time, I was a stay at home wifey with way too much time on my hands.  I was into cosplay and sewing costumes, my husband and I went to sci-fi conventions and played MMO games online.  Then the gas prices hit $4.00+ and food started to get more expensive.  I started to think that things in the good old USA weren't guaranteed to stay rosy forever.  I began to do research on the economics of the last 100 years, pouring over the causes of the Great Depression, stories of how people lived.  It occurred to me that there was nothing in human existence that proved you could break the mold of boom and bust.  You can blow the bubbles, but they will eventually burst.  The government/financial sector/whoever has done a lot to manipulate when the bubble will burst, but they can't stop it.

So I started to think, what happens to my family when it crashes?  Oh, my, I'd done it now!  All the questions, the research, the history, as fast as my little fingers could type, I was running all over the internet, gathering blogs, websites, buying books on Amazon.  I was a research machine.  I was going so fast, I had to save web addresses for later because I didn't have to time to digest all the information on a page before I had another question pop up and send me down another search path.

Fast forward to today, I have started my LTS food stores, but I've really only been gathering information and buying stuff.  Research and purchasing are my best "skills", but post collapse, they won't save me.  I've been dancing around it for a while now, but I realize I don't really have any skills that will benefit me post collapse and food storage will only get you so far.  All my research has pointed me to sustainability as the key to surviving whatever is coming.  It is a common theme among preparedness topics, but it was hard for me to get away from the "just store food/gear/books and hide in a hole" mentality.  If you want to eat, sure, store food, but unless you can replenish it, you are doomed.

So, we finally come to the purpose of this blog!  I can buy seeds, but I have a black thumb.  I can milk a goat, but can I make sure it doesn't die?  They say chickens are easy to raise, but I haven't done it yet?  Can I grow enough to feed livestock if the feed store is closed?  If I had a firearm, would I know how to use it?  Time to get to work!  Here I shall post my fledgling efforts.  The time for research is over, time to DO.