A Mom's Guide to Hurricane Preparedness

Step One: Don’t panic.

Chances are you’re too tired to panic anyway, so instead, try to wrap your brain around the five million things you will need to accomplish in the next few days before the hurricane arrives.

Step Two: Get gas.

Get it now. Right now. Sure, the hurricane has barely looked in your direction, but imagine waiting hours for gas with kids in the car. Enough said.

*Think about taking` your family to a different location to safely wait out the hurricane.

Step Three: Shop for the essentials.

Bread and water are good, but hurricane snacks are vital. You’ll need to stock up on (get a pen and paper ready) Doritos, trail mix, cookies of all varieties, pretzels, Cheez-Its, veggie chips (you’ll need something healthy), and do they still make Combos? If so, get some of those. Some stores have frozen goods half price. Grab some ice cream bars. You can work on those while you wait for the power to go out.

Step Four: Head back to the store because your mom brain forgot about breakfast.

Donuts, Pop Tarts, and Cocoa Puffs (Pro Tip: these are just as good without milk in case you lose power and your milk goes bad) should hold you over for breakfast.

Step Five: Make a quick stop at Walgreens on the way home because you forgot chocolate.

Also, does Walgreens sell wine? If not, you’ll need to make one more stop.

* Think again about getting the heck out of dodge.

Step Five and a Half: Head to Home Depot for last minute shutters, plywood, screws, wing nuts, or other hardware needs.

You may need to repeat this step (four or more times) as the outdoor prep is underway. Hopefully you’re not doing everything alone. If your partner is involved, you may be able to skip this step.

Step Six: Catch up on Laundry.

With the possibility of power outages, it’s time to strap on your boots and climb that mountain. That’s not a metaphor. You’ll need to attack your literal mountain of laundry that has been piling up. Forget color sorting. This calls for laundry triage- yoga pants, underwear and your husband’s favorite shirts to the front of the line. Children’s clothing and things with lingering scents are round two. Last and sort of least: blankets, towels, and the clothes you wish your husband and children would get rid of.

Step Seven: Clean the house.

Just kidding! You can barely find time for that without an impending natural disaster.

Step Eight: Outdoor prep.

Depending on the storm, you may need to board up, shutter up, whatever you want to call it. Move all outdoor accessories into the garage or shed. If you have a partner or someone helping with the labor, this is a great time to let your children distract you. Is that the baby crying? Do your children require immediate attention for at least the next two hours? “You keep going. I’ll be back in a minute. I just have to…”

Pro Tip: The house will be dark from the shutters. Tell the kids it’s nighttime and put them to bed even if it’s 10AM.

Step Nine: Wait.

The house is like a cave. The cabinets are stocked. Time to relax and … Wait! Did you remember to get flashlights? Head back out. At this point it will be a mad house. People are stopping in the middle of the intersection for no apparent reason, the shelves at the grocery store are empty, and is that a fight at the gas station? Traffic is moving at a snail’s pace. Lord, have mercy!

* Chastise yourself for not getting out when there was time. Is there still time?

Step Ten: Get more gas.

You’ve had so many shopping runs that you’re only at half a tank. What if you need to siphon gas for your generator? Did you remember to get a generator? #%^&! Either way, you’ve seen enough episodes of The Walking Dead to know that gas is invaluable. Find the closest station and wait. It may take hours, but if you left your kids at home, consider this a vacation.

While you wait, make a mental list of the food and snacks that you should replenish if the store gets another delivery. After all, it’s been a couple days, Doritos only last so long.

Step Eleven: Finishing touches.

You’re in the final stretch before the storm. Make sure devices and power packs are charged, batteries are replaced or easily accessible, keep a cooler filled with ice and water bottles in case the power goes out and you need to keep your cold stuff cold, freeze some water bottles, snap at the kids for opening the cooler, download important weather apps, replace flashlight batteries again since your five-year-old found them and left them on, check evacuation routes, panic a little, argue with your husband about what still needs to get done, flip the laundry, look for the battery operated storm radio you bought years ago and placed in a safe spot in the garage but have yet to find, answer seventeen thousand questions about hurricanes posed by your eight-year-old, give up, sit down, and eat some of the ice cream since the power could go out in a matter of hours.

During this final step, you will be interrupted at least 27 times by your children’s disagreements and 8 times by your husband asking where something is.

Step Twelve: Wait.

If your eyelid isn’t twitching, then you may have missed a step above. As you wait, check your weather app every five minutes. Watching the media report on damage from prior storms should help build a slow but deep panic that eventually activates heavy stress, embracing you like the Thundershirt you put on your dog a few hours ago.

Pro Tip: Stay away from Facebook. Clicking through the Johnson’s “Hurrication” album will only make you question your decision to stay. You stayed because you’re a warrior (or an idiot). Either way you’ve lost somehow. If the storm hits, you’ll deal with wreckage. If the storm skirts, you’ll have done all of this for nothing, taking years off your life. But hey, challenges build character, right? Open that bottle of wine. You’ve earned it.

Step Thirteen (Final Step): Get ready to begin again (some meteorologists refer to this as the Groundhog Day Phenomenon).

Now that the storm has passed and you’ve assessed your damage or thanked God for a miss, save those remaining water bottles and non-perishables. If it’s only September, you might be right back where you started in about two weeks.