Procrastination is always a bad habit, but maintaining the gear that you would need to make it through a disaster is, well, a recipe for disaster.
I just got over a four-day battle with the flu, and I can’t help but think that the main reason I got into that fine mess in the first place was that I kept putting off getting the flu shot because of my busy schedule. Lesson learned.
The picture accompanying this post represents a slightly more expensive lesson. You should make it a habit every year, besides changing the batteries in your smoke detectors, to do the same for your emergency gear—flashlights, radios, etc. Well, when it came to the flashlight in my car’s emergency kit, which doubles as the flashlight for my get-home bag, I said … guess what? “I’ll get around to it.”
As you can see by the corroded batteries, it’s time to buy a new flashlight. However, better to lose a $10 flashlight to deferred maintenance than a $900 shotgun.
If you’re going to buy gear for your survival, make sure you maintain it regularly. Besides putting yourself and your family at risk, procrastination can become an expensive habit—you don’t want to pull out the aforementioned shotgun and find its insides rusted out at the moment of truth.