Blogs: Anxiety-Free Advice 

This week -October 2026- Europe received an unexpected lesson in preparedness.

Take care of your vulnerable neighbours, the elderly, and those who are ill. In other words: those who haven't prepped. Be creative... we can't stress enough how a creative mind helps. Check your own shelves and make a plan. Shop and eat at unexpected places.  Buy or bring home a few items for those who are vulnerable: those without strong health, transport, and money. What are those unexpected places? Farm shops — often still stocked when supermarkets run empty. Outdoor sports and hiking shops — camping food keeps for years and is ready to eat. Shops that happen to sell some food — the Dutch HEMA, for instance. Even Søstrene Grene has muffin mixes and more. This takes the pressure off the larger food stores, and it also allows them to get their logistics going again. Abroad... if you live close to a border. For instance, German pharmacists sell food. Go out eating! Order your breakfast, lunch and dinner at a hotel, restaurant, lunchroom or tea room. Show understanding for adjustments to their menu — expect shorter menus and be kind about it. Think: IKEA, HEMA and other shop canteens. Perhaps your furniture store has a café? The café of your local garden centre — do check the opening hours; many close on Mondays. Museum cafés — calm, stylish, unhurried. Hospital and university cafeterias — cheap, fast, and often surprisingly good. Library canteens — students know this one. Train station, airport cafés and tank stations — nobody thinks of them as lunch addresses, but they are. Ferry terminals — a mini-cruise with your sandwich. And one thing we would like to add: remember that Dutch tap water is excellent and perfectly safe. SHOULD YOU HAVE PREPPED... In the case you have prepped, now might be the time to take whatever you need from your preparedness cabinet. As soon as the supermarkets are back on track again, gradually restock your supplies. This refreshes your preparedness cabinet, which is a good thing every now and then. Later, when all is back to normal, relist your items by expiry date. SHOULD YOU HAVE NOT PREPPED: THE ART OF BARTERING Bartering is the direct exchange of goods or services between two or more parties, without using money, cash or credit. Talk with your neighbours, family or friends and exchange what you have stored in excess and they can use, and vice versa. Some of us have chickens. Some have walnuts. Some may have apples ready to pick. Use your neighbourhood Signal or WhatsApp group to check in on those who need help.

Let us first look at how important bars of chocolate were for World War II soldiers. These simple bars of chocolate were any soldier's Pocket Ally.

Sprouts are simply seeds in their first days of life: beans, peas, lentils, broccoli seeds, alfalfa, radish, sunflower — germinated in water instead of soil and eaten within three to seven days, tiny roots, shoots and all. In that brief window of growth, the seed transforms: it wakes from dormancy, activates its enzymes, and converts its stored starches and proteins into the building blocks a new plant needs.

Being prepared does not have to mean turning your home into a survival store. It is much simpler than that.

First, please breathe… no panic. Gluten-free preparing is easy. Trust us on that, because we have done it ourselves. Let us first go through the rules of sensible prepping, and then give you some thoroughly tasted options.

When the Lights Go Out & the Water Stays Down

The autumn days are coming. The light disappears a little earlier each evening, the temperatures become cooler, and we naturally spend more time inside our homes. For me, this is a wonderful time for making things.

The problem with the question of what to store inside your Preparedness Cabinet is that there are many options. Handmade Luxury Home will help you decide what you can store best. 

By now, we all know we need to store water and food for 72 hours. We do this to make ourselves—and our country—more resilient. In the event of natural or hostile calamities, we don’t panic. We use our prepped supplies and carry on as normally as possible.

Many European governments recommend being prepared for 72 hours in case of a large-scale emergency. This allows services to organise a coordinated, large-scale response—both geographically and in numbers. But let’s be honest: even with official guidelines (like the Dutch DenkVooruit.nl), it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. We’ve been there too.

One of our neighbours has everything. A beautiful house, two cars in the driveway, a lovely terrace, a pond, a perfectly tidy garden, designer clothes and a dog that required years on a waiting list. It all looks very comfortable. And it is, I am sure.