Once you discover prepping, you discover your life changes in ways you never imagined. Once you thought preppers were a little crazy and then you discover that while they are a little crazy at times, they also are ready for almost anything.

You figure that being a prepper is a good thing, but your mind begins to think differently. In a good way, of course, but differently. You began to think of your unprepared friends and family as the crazy ones. Why wouldn’t anyone be prepared? You are taking care of yourself and your family! How can that not be a good thing?!?!

While some of the ways being a prepper changes your life listed below are a bit tongue-in-cheek, they all have a thread of truth to them. You truly do these things and think this way. If you say you don’t, don’t worry. You will.

35 Ways Being A Prepper Changes Your Life

1. If you can’t make it to the grocery store this week, no problem. You could probably skip grocery shopping for a month and no one would notice.

2. Clearance sales have a whole new meaning for you. You might find something cheap for your preps and food stockpile! That means you have more money for the big-ticket items!

3. You no longer feel comfortable sitting in the center of the restaurant or with your back to the door. You don’t want to feel exposed and you don’t want to be surprised either.

4. Going on a road trip to visit family and friends is no longer simply just throwing a few things in a bag. You also make sure you have your emergency supplies and get-home bag too. You know, just in case.

5. Work could really be your home away from home if you need it to be. Between the things you keep in your vehicle and the emergency supplies and food you have stashed in a drawer, you would be fine for an overnighter.

6. When people joke that it looks like you could live in your car, you know it’s not really a joke. You really could live in your car if you need to.

7. You don’t really ever just run into the grocery store. You peruse the grocery ads for the loss leaders to see if there is anything to add to your stockpiles. Maybe the clearance section has some good deals too to add to your pantry. You have a list, but you leave some room in the budget for “extras”.

8. Family and friends come over and think it is odd that all your empty jars are filled with water along with a pitcher or two in the fridge. You just laugh it off and say that dehydration kills faster than hunger does.

9. People may laugh at your book “addiction”, but you know that your reference library is not an addiction. Books are necessities.

10. Free things have a different meaning to you. Free canning jars have become like a love language for you.

11. You talk to your neighbors, family, and friends about being prepared, but you don’t actually tell them what you have on hand. You don’t want them to show up at your door!

12. While people talk about a cabin in the woods to get away from it all, you really want one to get away from it all. On a permanent basis.

13. When your family and friends joke about your cute new hobbies, but you laugh it off too. Your newly learned skills will give you a chance to survive better and save money. You will be able to laugh better being alive than dead or desperate!

14. You are thrilled when your kids want to learn new things that are non-electric and non-technology. You know that the more they can do with their hands and their minds, the better their chances of surviving the real world will be.

15. You take planning to a whole new level. You now plan for everything and every contingency. You have multiple plans for a single thing. People might think you are crazy, but you know better. Being crazy isn’t a bad thing.

16. You take the phrase “two is one and one is none” very seriously. Very seriously.

17. You really wonder if you can have too much fuel stored and how much a portable tank (larger storage) would cost. You really don’t want to deal with lines and fuel shortages if the power is out for longer than a couple days.

18. You look forward to blizzards and anything that could cause a short term power outage. How else are you going to be able to test your preps?

19. While you don’t want an actual SHTF to happen, you wonder what would happen if one occurred. You also wonder how bad it really could be and how you would survive it.

20. You watch Doomsday Preppers with the fascination of watching a train wreck. While you glean some good information from the show, you wonder why (1) someone would be on that show and (2) if you really look that crazy to others. You now know why people stay in the closet when it comes to prepping.

21. You like to take the scenic route home and take note of the time it took to get home. You know, just in case you need an alternate route.

22. You stock up on water filters and purification tablets. You don’t even want to think about what is in the water in the creek behind your house, but you still count it as a water source if an SHTF happens.

23. You may go camping to get away from it all and spend time with family, but you also view it as an opportunity to test your equipment and try some new gadgets out.

24. You view security in a whole new way. You know you need to lock your doors, but you also take a self-defense class, acquire a weapon (or several), put up motion-detecting lights everywhere, lock down everything and wonder what else you can do. You just know that you can do more.

25. You read and watch history. You read and watch about current events. You realize that people will never learn and politicians are some of the most corrupt people on the planet. You also realize that you will never be done prepping because people have incredibly short memories.

26. You have a little money stashed here and a little money stashed there. You have an emergency fund hidden in the bottom of your drawer and change jars everywhere. Just in case.

27. You read Depression-era books and older cookbooks just like the Bible. You try some of the recipes and you really cringe at the thought of eating some of those foods! You view making bread as a challenge as well as making the perfect loaf.

28. When people ask you what you are going to do with all that produce from the garden and you just smile. Tomato sauce, tomato soup, chopped tomatoes, salsa, pasta sauce, pizza sauce, diced tomatoes, enchilada sauce…

29. You watch the end of the world and post-apocalyptic movies and television shows with fascination wondering if it will really be that way or not.

30. You can’t decide if you admire the Mad Max type of preppers or wonder if that is a new level of crazy you will never achieve. What are they preparing for anyway?

31. You begin to take alternative medicines and cures seriously. You think you might experience a time you can not access conventional and OTC medicines and you want to be prepared for that time. Then you realize some of those “traditional” medicines work better than the ones out there now.

32. You hate doing the dishes and the laundry, but you stay on top of them just in case you might not water tomorrow for some reason. While washing laundry by hand is not the end of the world, washing machines were truly an awesome invention.

33. Deciding what you should keep and what you should give away becomes a struggle. You might need that someday. You may never know when you will need that item again.

34. You will buy or borrow almost any book that has prepper or prepping in the title. You might learn something new!

35. You go to bed at night knowing that you can handle anything life throws at you. You are a prepper and you are prepared.

What other ways have you noticed your thinking to have changed since becoming a prepper? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading,
Erica

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