Our biggest prepping fails of 2018

Ye Ole Prepping Fails: Yet another year has passed us by, and like every year we’ve had a lot of prepping successes and failures. 

Our one biggest failure of the year, a broken ankle by Salty, had elements of prepping failure and I’ll get to that in a bit. Most everything else that we’ve had fails on were not nearly as expensive (or painful).

Some fails we have talked about on Beans, Bullets, Bandages and You before, and some are new. One I just learned about a minute ago when I asked Spice to add to this list. 

Let’s start with the obvious biggest prepping fail, my broken ankle

I broke my ankle slipping on ice in mid-October in Missouri. Normally, we do NOT have ice until weeks later, but that morning we did.

Why is this a prepping fail instead of just an accident? Because here at 3BY we consider personal safety preparedness an important part of prepping… perhaps the most important part. After all, what good is all of your preps if you fall down and break your neck?

In my article about this fail, I wrote:

We are 100 percent prepped for ice. I just didn’t look to see the frost on the truck’s windows in my driveway. I simply ignored looking around and engaging my brain.

If there is frost, then our front steps are slick. Every. Single. Time.

I know this, and I didn’t check… I ignored my surroundings, and down I went.

The ignored ice melt was right there, all ready to go since we did our “getting ready for winter” preps recently. 

There’s no excuse except carelessness.

Here’s the whole article if you are interested.

https://beansbulletsbandagesandyou.com/bullets/2018/10/16/prepper-fail-broke-ankle-ignored-prep/

My “I just found out I failed” fail… 

When I asked Spice what our biggest fails were this year, she gave me that “OK, you are not going to like this but I’m going to say it anyway” look.

She told me she thought one of my biggest prepping fails was my decision not only to drive myself to the hospital to get my leg checked out (it’s a 30 mile drive each way), but even worse my decision to drive myself home from the hospital in a boot cast after I knew the leg was broken.

Since she’s off taking a shower right now and I don’t actually know here reasoning, I’ll just hold off and let Spice answer.

Spice: The problem: In the hours after an injury, the pain and disability often get progressively worse due to swelling. Right after he fell, Salty could hobble on the ankle and drive with it, so started off for the hospital, calling me to meet him on the way (I was at work in the town he was driving toward.) 

That ankle was damaged; he didn’t know how much. A sudden movement (like braking hard) might have displaced the joint, causing a massive (and distracting) pain spike, and perhaps ruining his ability to work or feel the pedals. The ride home was not as risky, as he had it stabilized by boot; but still the pain was a considerable distraction and a boot’s not that easy to drive with.

My lesson learned: Tough it out when you have to, but also know when it’s better to ask for assistance.

The ever failing potato tower

Spice’s biggest fail comes from something that we both have been convinced sounds like a great idea, but no matter what we try we haven’t been able to make it work.

Every year for the past several years we have tried to grow spuds in a “potato tower”, and every year we end up with a tiny little crop of sad little tubers that are TOTALLY not worth the effort of planting, watering and maintaining. 

Here’s what Spice had to say about them in “Potato Bins, The Final Chapter“:

I’m going to recycle the wood from the bin I sued for the potatoes and not try this again. Water is almost always a limiting factor here in Missouri, and given how very dry my box was despite some watering all season and a goose-drowner rain within the last week, I think these bins require much more water than I’m willing to give them. 

For me, space is not at a premium but water’s limiting. That seems to make this potatoes from bins a bad fit for my garden. If your restrictions are reversed, maybe it would work for you. My own gardening friends who’ve tried it were never impressed though, so I remain unconvinced this is a great idea.

Sigh. Scratch another gardening idea that looked great when I read about it on the internet…

https://beansbulletsbandagesandyou.com/bullets/2018/08/30/potatoes-bin-saga-final-chapter/

Failure of omission – Gutters at the cabin

This is just one example of something we totally planned to get done… something actually critically important at our bugout place… and yet, another year passes and we didn’t do it.

We need to install gutters for our water catchment system at the cabin. This might end up being critically important one of these days, and yet? We didn’t get it done.

Back on next year’s list, along with a whole bunch of other things we need to take care of. I’ll bet you have several of these fails of your own.

Not selling or parking the pickup truck at the place

One of the things I had determined to do this year was “something about the truck”.

We have a late 1990’s Silverado 2500 4×4 pickup truck (you may have seen it in pictures here at 3BY). We are a two person household with three vehicles. We are paying insurance on three, licensing, taxes, you name it.

The old beast has more than a quarter-of-a-million miles on it, and gets 10MPG on a good day.

We use the truck rarely for truck-like things any more on the highway, and we could pretty much end the expenses by just taking the plates off of it, parking it at “the place”, put a solar battery maintainer on it and let it sit.

Eventually, we could convert Salty’s around town vehicle into a small truck or cargo van, and replace the truck all together.

Instead? We let it sit on the street, paying insurance on it.

Failure to follow through on what’s needed. This is something we have to fix, it’s a money pit.

Fire alarms that didn’t actually go off with smoke/placement

We wrote an article about this one recently, but it was a HUGE fail for us, and it’s also one we think every prepper should check on in their own homes.

Here’s an excerpt from an article we did on fire alarms & detectors:

Where you place smoke detectors matters. They should be mounted on ceilings or at the top of walls, since smoke rises. 

We had an interesting situation in our house just this week. We had one smoke detector for our kitchen and living room area. It is located on the living room side, above the doorway. Our house is an older bungalow, and it has 10-foot high ceilings. The doorway comes down about 36 inches, and we place our smoke detector right above the doorway.

A couple of days ago, we had an “unfortunate apple pie incident” which generated a kitchen full of (rather tasty smelling) smoke. I was sitting in the living room when I started to smell something out of place. I looked at the doorway and saw smoke pouring through the door. Due to the fact that we run ceiling fans year round, the smoke was sucked into the room’s fan area then pressed down. 

What I didn’t hear, however, was the screeching of a smoke detector. The smoke had literally bypassed the area where the detector was setting. Call this a personal SHTF warning message.

Notice above I used the word “had” instead of “have”. That’s because Spice just finished installing a new smoke detector in the kitchen, so now we have one in both rooms. That’s better.

Driving myself home from the hospital with a broken leg (Spice). 

https://beansbulletsbandagesandyou.com/bullets/2018/11/24/personal-shtf-fire-carbon-monoxide/

Fails are going to happen

These are just a few of ours from this year, and we will of course share more as we make them… not that we are trying to fail, it’s just failure is a part of doing, and we are doing a lot.