Two skills of our grandparents that we can use for increased preparedness
We are Marga van der Vet & Paula Kuitenbrouwer, and despite our different surnames we are sisters. In this blogpost we focus on two aspects that we think could be educational from our grandparents' different — home — economy. One is Food Storage and the other is Handicrafts.
FOOD STORAGE
Ever since the emergence of supermarkets — or super stores, in and outside town — our knowledge of and need for food storage has decreased. Why would we store food when our supermarkets always have full shelves? Four seasons per year, 24/7. So why?
For the Netherlands, the reasons are twofold:
Dutch supermarkets have perfected their logistics to the highest level, meaning they have supplies stored for six days. That is two days short of what the Dutch AIV (advisory board for food security) recommends.
One could think... 'Ah well, two days', but it is my experience that troubles only begin after eight days of closed shops. To restart logistics takes time.
The other thought is money. What if our digital paying systems are hacked or down? Do you have enough money for eight days?
Both questions make you long for more grassroots-level resilience: having enough food storage.
For small homes, or homes with very little storage, we advise sprouting and energy bars. We have written about these here:
Sprouting - why & how & beginners mistakes
Energy Bars & Chocolate— in our case gluten-free —. For non-gluten-free options there are so many high-protein and high-calorie bars in supermarkets and outdoor shops. Start tasting them! And then when your family has come up with a top 5, buy them, and replace them before their expiry date.
FERMENTING
We need to apologise for not mentioning before the art of fermenting, pickling and storing food in jars. We have no experience with that. It must have been so normal for our grandmothers, but we have not wrapped our brains around that yet. We need to do a course or self-educate. As we have a rule not to write or advise about things from a place with zero experience: should you, dear reader, be able to write a blog post for us about your fermenting learning curve, we look forward to hearing from you.
HANDICRAFTS
Where there is preparing, there are people, and where there are people, opinions differ. So feel free to proclaim your own Top 5. Here is our Top 5 Handy Handicrafts for Times of Trouble.
OUR TOP HANDY HANDICRAFTS
Here's our list, chosen for usefulness when systems fail — no power, no internet, no shops — rather than charm alone.
1. Hand-sewing & mending — repairing clothes and gear when shops are shut. This includes hygiene & care crafts: cloth pads, bandages, soap making. It also means one can make menstrual pads. In most European calamities (blackouts, floods, cold homes) the first real problem is warmth and keeping your existing gear functional — not making things from scratch. Hygiene crafts (soap making, cloth pads, bandages) are the least romantic skills but the most quietly vital in prolonged trouble.
2. Candle & fire making — dipped candles, wax processing, safe fire building. We think you should already know this skill before calamities strike, and not experiment with it when SOS services are overwhelmed.
3. Knitting & crochet — warm socks, blankets, mittens for unheated homes. Rope work: knots, splicing, macramé — securing, towing. Rope work is often underrated: knowing a handful of knots serves you in evacuation, towing, securing tarps, boat work in floods, and even first aid (improvised slings and splints).
4. Food preservation (bottling, drying, curing) is the bridge between 'household skill' and true self-reliance — and again, have food preservation and SOS preparedness cupboard skills ready before calamities strike. Find out a system — big or small — for a prep cabinet and learn how to keep it fresh. See whether you can do bottling, jam-making, drying, curing — filling a pantry without a fridge.
5. Hobbies like whittling & green woodworking — new handles, pegs, tent stakes, utensils — and basketry & braiding — making carrying containers — and spinning & weaving — cloth, straps and blankets from raw fibre — could come in handily, if only for giving a sense of purpose.
All five activities double as mindfulness practices — calm, hands-on resilience.
Know your Local Risks
Now, let us dive a bit deeper. Research which local calamities your area and your family are more likely to face than others. Then... after having given that thought, gear your top 5 towards that list.
For me it is Urban Heat. I found that out by layering the available risk-analysis maps of my country (https://www.risicokaart.nl/risicosituaties/). Most countries have these risk analysing websites. Add these risks to general risks like having no internet, no electricity, no transport, no food for a small week, and you will be excellently prepared when you take these findings seriously.
Thus for me it is urban heat. After summer 2026, the hottest on record, I am SO aware of this: first it was theoretical knowledge, then it became experience. I wrote a long piece in my agenda with advice that I need to remember in the future.
Work out YOUR local scenarios.
For instance: is it food shortage? Set up a food storage: big or small, both can be done. Learn about food preservation — bottling, jam-making, drying, curing, fermenting (sauerkraut!). Is it woodland fires: always have your car filled up with fuel or electricity and have evacuation backpacks inside your car. Know here your car keys are. Is it flood? It demands a very different response.
Add General Skills
Learn cooking on an open fire / wood stove craft — bread baking in a Dutch oven, slow cooking on embers. When gas and shops fail, firecraft is the fallback kitchen. Buy a small BBQ and have fire starters etc.
Kitchen gardening craft — sowing, propagating, seed-saving. Not always counted as 'handicraft', but it is one: learned, manual, patient. We understand this is a very difficult one. We both had limited success under very different circumstances: me with my balcony garden and Marga with her countryside garden. In fact, you need a few years to see what works and what does not. And even then the weather gods should send you their blessings and keep the insects and snails out.
Regardless your location: an electric blackout / internet down!
Learn some skills that replace the grid and the screen.
- Fire-craft — building and lighting a safe fire, outdoors!
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Handwriting, letter-writing and bookbinding — when the internet is down, communication becomes physical again. Beautifully meditative too.
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Mending and sewing — long dark evenings are exactly when this gets done; also laundry by hand. Marga wrote extensively about her hand–foot-geared sewing machine here.
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Rope work and knots — you suddenly need to secure, haul, tie and repair things yourself, without a YouTube tutorial.
Also think about mindful and supporting crafts: whittling (tool repair), knitting (productive evenings by candlelight), soap making (hygiene without hot showers).
Or — for me — heat (or cold).
Calamity of body temperature. Learn skills that insulate, cool, and protect.
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Knitting and crochet — socks, mittens, hats, blankets. During cold spells without heating, this is literally health preservation.
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Quilting, patchwork and felting — layered textiles are the technology of warmth; felt slippers keep floors-cold homes bearable.
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Sewing home insulation — draught excluders, lined curtains, door snakes. Small sewing projects with outsized effect on room temperature.
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For heat: sewing sun protection — light cotton covers, awnings, shade sails; also water craft: storing and rationing, evaporative cooling.
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Food preservation again — heat waves kill fridges (and cold spells strain them too); drying and bottling don't care about the weather outside or inside.
Do not lose sight of crafts that fit everywhere
If you only have to master three (extra), choose these, because they appear in most scenarios:
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Food preservation — covers shortage, survives blackouts, indifferent to weather.
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Mending/sewing — keeps clothes, insulation and gear working in every scenario.
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Firecraft + candle making — heat, light, cooking and morale in one skill set. But — again — this one is tricky, because fire services will be overwhelmed in almost all calamities. So only when these skills are mastered can one busy oneself with them during calamities.
All the mentioned crafts are slow by nature.
That is what we — The Positive Preppers — aim for:
calm, mindful preparing.
Panic is always short-lived: staying calm always works better.
ADDRESSING ANXIETY (We understand)
It is not a comfortable thing, sitting down to think about floods, blackouts or shortages. Many people avoid it altogether — and who could blame them? Deliberately imagining calamity feels like inviting it in. But here is the quiet truth we have learned ourselves: anxiety thrives on vagueness. It is the unnamed, unexamined 'what if' that circles your mind at night. The moment you give it shape — a plan, a stocked cupboard, a rehearsed skill — it shrinks. Not because the risk disappears, but because you no longer feel helpless. Knowledge is not the enemy of calm. Knowledge is the source of calm. So breathe. Then begin. Small steps, done calmly, are all this asks of you. And most of all, brainstorm with your family and neighbours.
FINANCIAL STRAIN
We understand preparedness asks for investment. We have found out there are at least three forms of investment:
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Money. And when calamities strike: cash. Alternatively, know where you can offer the trade of bartering. Eggs against candles. An hour of education for a lunch. A tin with beans for matches.
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You need space for storing sprouts, energy bars, water, and hobby & skill-kits. This asks for an investment in time for decluttering, small-apartment solutions, or streamlining your prep ambitions with your regular storage.
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Investment in skills: some you can learn yourself, others you would like to be educated on by a professional.
We understand not all of us have spare money to invest in food, space and skills. But you should NOT give up. Preparedness can be done with big and small budgets. Whether you buy board games brand new or at a charity shop; it does make a difference, but it is still the same game. Equally: you do not have to buy fancy outdoor trekking food. Tins with beans work too. And storing the single most important item is water. Luckily, that isn't an expensive commodity.
Still, for many it can be hard, thus here are a few ideas:
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Ask for preparedness birthday gifts: a folding jerrycan, freeze-dried camping food, a mini BBQ, a hobby weaving kit, a chess board. And so on.
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Scour your local charity shop for games.
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Take it slow: prepping takes time. It really does. It starts with one bottle of extra water. If you buy one item — even on sale — every week, you see your prep cabinet growing steadily.
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Give and donate. Should you be able to help others, do so. Donate and give. The preparedness website of the Swedish government says that prepping can't be done alone. A society is not resilient when people do not help each other. Neither there is safety and resilience when you are the only one prepping amongst 100 not-preparers. Thus, help out friends and neighbours. It 'pays off'.
We think this sense of community resilience is something our grandparents knew very well. It was deeply ingrained into the teachings of the church: charity and community. It means you are not safe at all when your neighbour is in deep trouble. It means you have to take care of your fellow countrymen. Although we all carry our own responsibility, have compassion with those who are willing to prep but find themselves limited in resources to do so.
Hyper individualism is a real enemy of resilience.
You can have a dry toilet, but what if your neighbour in the same apartment building have none? (You don't want to know!)
DOUBLE BLESSING
Now imagine: the internet is down. Oh dear. Our phones are down. Oh dear. And the television is off. In fact, we are plunged back into our grandparents' time of sitting around our family table with candles. Reading, playing board games, and going to bed early — perhaps, if it is winter — under three blankets, or all together in one room to conserve heat (nonetheless, keep ventilating to avoid high CO2 levels!).
If a few of these days might happen, you will be so happy with crafting. Because there is one more gift these crafts offer — one nobody expects. Think of how much of our daily comfort now flows through a screen: the evening scroll, the series after dinner, the background television, the quick game on the phone. When the internet fails or the power goes, that whole quiet structure of daily life suddenly vanishes — and with it, many people feel not just disconnected but bored, restless, oddly empty.
This is where the calamity crafts reveal their second blessing
The very skills that carry you through a blackout — the knitting by lamplight, the whittling, the mending pile, the jam simmering on the stove — are also, quite simply, absorbing. They fill the hands, occupy the mind, and give the evening a shape and an end-product, in a way the scroll never truly does.
We — and any other craftswomen and craftsmen — know this well: half an hour of crafting leaves you fuller than half an hour of consuming. So when you practise these skills before any calamity, you are doing two kinds of preparing at once. You are building readiness, yes — but you are also rehearsing a way of spending an evening that needs no electricity, no connection and no screen, and yet leaves you calmer than either. The prepper's cupboard, it turns out, is also a remedy for the empty evening.
Make sure you prep crafts-kits. Have enough wool, wood, tools, paper projects stored. Go to your local hobby, art, or crafts shops and find yourself validated to spend some money there. Whether that is a kit for making paper or dolls, for assembling a wooden aeroplane, knitting a jumper or building a bigger guinea pig cage... buy it, do it, prepare a few projects for your family. (Board games included.)
We hope that you feel happy with our grand-parental advice. :-)
If you have more ideas....add them to the comment section!
Take care,
Paula Kuitenbrouwer
Marga van der Vet
~Your Positive Preparedness Team~
Buy freeze dried foods and high energy bars and -consider- gifting one to a friend who has no budget to prep?
P.S. Years ago, I was in a passionate prep period in my life.
I bought fat loaded dried crackers that had an impressive expiry date. The blocks of dried food were as heavy as bricks. I bought a few to give away to family as Christmas gifts. Later, I asked whether my gift was appreciated.
'Oh yes, sure!....it only took us researching the internet to understand what that gift actually was!'
🙂
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