The Closet Is Prepared To Ride Out The Storm

Would you know what to grab in an emergency?  Let’s take a minute to think about this.

Call me crazy, but I love storms.  I am fascinated by them and their power.   I will literally stand outside and watch them come in.   I’m the dumb one that is holding the camera!

Last night we had a huge line of severe weather heading our way and naturally I was drawn to all of the weather reports and looking and waiting for it to arrive.  They were reporting that it was going to be a long rocky night.  I was not scared, it was more like anticipation.

Storms remind me of the awesome power of God and I do say a prayer for those who may be in danger.  I always make the expected phone calls to my family to make sure they are aware of the coming storm.  I call it “Counting my chickens.”  Once my chickens are accounted for I am great.

After some time and the storms got closer, I began to think about the what if’s.  What if my house did get hit?  Where would I hide and what would I protect.  It was just me and my husband, but there are certain personal belongings I wouldn’t want to live without.  I was thinking to myself that I must be getting old, because of instead of watching the storm roll in, I was preparing.

My master bedroom closet is the safest, most interior room in our home.  It’s always been known to be where we would go.  But this time we were going to have company.  I brought every photo album I had and stacked them in the corner of the closet.  My husband was laughing at me but I didn’t care.  That would be the one thing that would break my heart if I lost.

Now I am envisioning the worst case scenario  What if all that we owned was blown away and nothing was  left standing but the closet we were in?  What needed to be in there with us besides the photos?

As my husband was making fun of me, I went into action.  This was so out of character for me during a storm but this time I had a FEELING.  Try explaining that to a man!  😕

I grabbed a bag and started packing for a possible stay in the closet…

• Flashlights (If power goes out)
• Cell Phone & tablet with chargers (May be our only form of communication afterwards)
• Our medications (Hey we are old, and it would be a mess if those blew away)
• My purse and keys (I sure don’t want my credit cards and ID flying all over the neighborhood)
• A change of clothes (If your are wet and muddy with no house, at least you have dry clothes)
• My old tattered, dogeared, highlighted bible with a million notes written in it. (My comfort)
• Put your shoes on!  It is widely known that having shoes on your feet after a tornado is very important because you will most likely have to walk over debris  when the storm is over.

Now that my bag was full, what else needed to be safe in the closet?

You know those photo albums were not all of my pictures.  Not even close!  My computer was full of thousands of pictures too.  And since I had not backed up my hard drive in a while, I unplugged the hard drive and put it in there too.  Now my husband thinks I’ve gone over the edge……but I have a FEELING!!! 😐

I was feeling better that I had thought to put these things in the closet and began to relax and enjoy the storm.  But it did help me to see that 99.9% of my possessions are not so important and can easily be replaced.  I realized all the things that I considered to be my most valuable possessions, made up the small pile in my closet.  What a sobering thought!

When I got up this morning I realized we did not have to get into our closet one time.   That is a good thing!  I pray that everyone else in the path of that huge storm was safe as well.

Now my closet is back together and my computer is hooked up again.  I now have a tornado list posted to my closet wall to remind me of what is important.  At the first mention of severe weather I go check my list and get ready.

So I encourage you to make a tornado list and post it in your closet or safe place.

Is your safe place a closet?

What would your “life pile” in the closet consist of?  Is your closet organized enough that there would be room for your family to take shelter?