Real Life -- Living It

Because we can learn so much from each other, I am going to do a "Real Life -- Living It" post weekly. Melissa was kind enough to do a guest post and get us started. (Thanks for sharing Melissa! You are INSPIRING!)

"My husband and I were married nearly 10 months ago and are expecting our first baby in October but we are both still in college which means that we are in a small apartment with limited space. Despite our possible excuse of putting off emergency preparedness until we are in a house, get paid more, etc we are doing little things now to try to be ready for the unexpected.

There are a few things that we've been able to focus on that have given me more peace of mind. Each week we go through the ads that we receive in the mail and look for any good deals, not a new idea, but it really works. We try to buy cereal for a dollar and stock up on things when they are a good deal. Trying to buy things that are both healthy and a good price means trips to more stores, but it's worth it to us. We found that a few stores in Provo have great deals on produce like Sunflower Market and Buy Low. We go to Smith's because we like their weekly deals and then to Sam's Club for items that are cheaper to buy in bulk.

We recently bought a gently used manual wheat grinder off of amazon and wheat from Sam's Club. I learned how to make bread which took a lot of time but was delicious and now I know that we could actually use our wheat for something. I plan to continue to make it and want to get some ingredients for my food storage that I wouldn't have access to during an emergency like eggs.

We can also do small things like have a small emergency car kit. We put things like extra blankets, water and snacks into it for if we ever need it.

Our solution to the limited space problem is to fill up our pantry with food and then get creative. We have a simple metal frame that our mattress is placed on but we found that there is just enough room for #10 cans. I have also starting putting some things in a short box from Sam's club so that I can actually pull out the items to look at them rather than having to plop on the ground. We also have our big barrel of wheat under our sports equipment in the coat closet. For Christmas we were able to get some stuff for Emergency Preparedness like a small water purifier.

Other things that I've been doing are to learn different ways to help during an emergency. I honestly believe that knowledge is power. I'm taking a first aid class at BYU and loving it because I'm sure I'll have all sorts of bumps and bruises to fix as my family grows.

I know that we will be blessed for our efforts to follow the prophets and it's just so nice to think that if the unexpected does happen to us, then we're more ready."

--Melissa S.