Preparing for Hard Times: Twenty Minutes to Prep

So, today, I heard a homeowner I work with say he can’t get a job done because he didn’t have the time. I called him on it when he got off the phone because we've been together so long I felt I could tease him a bit. I asked him can’t do it or don’t want to do it? He said, “Really I don’t even have twenty extra minutes in the day for a new favor for his wife let alone some guy on the phone.” So, I asked, “What does your wife want?” He told me, this year she wants to put in a little vegetable garden and that’s a huge job and he had told her he just didn’t have the time. So, when I stopped laughing and rolling my eyes, I told him if he had twenty minutes, he had the time. I like his wife, and if she wants a garden, she should have one.

I told him NOBODY in their right mind puts in a garden in an afternoon. First, they plan a place to put it looking for full sun at least six hours a day and they measure the area and make note of the normal yard traffic and adjust size and shape. Twenty minutes, and you’re done for the day. Next, they ask the wife if this is what she had in mind and show her the area marked out and they change the size and shape. Twenty minutes, and you are done for the second day. He started to smile. By the time I got to cut the lawn and roll back the edges of the grass one day and pull it all out the next, he had caught on. Twenty minutes a day for a small family plot in less than one fourth of the back yard is a HUGE family vegetable garden. The best part was, he could have it in twenty minutes a day.

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Do a little resaearch!Garden‑Plot‑Ideas.png

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It just so happened that I had a few photos on my smart phone and I showed him how I had taken out all the supplies, laid them out, set out several trays of seeds to germinate, marked them and set them in the sun while photographing the exercise for the blog. Twenty minutes! Done! Ummmmmmm! Oops! He didn’t know I had a blog. I told him, Twenty minutes, done!

This is what usually happens to me when I start weeding. I have a front bed that is constantly subjected to the grass being blown about by the neighbor’s kids when they mow. If I don’t get out there and blow off the grass clippings or pull the weeds when they start, it’s a battle I could easily lose. Tired after a long day of cleaning, I get out of the car and tell myself, I’ll give it twenty minutes then I’m inside sipping lemonade, twenty minutes, that’s it. About an hour later, because I like pulling weeds, I feel as if I have only been at it for twenty minutes and that section of garden is back in my control.

Start with twenty minutes and see what you can get done. Break down any daunting job into the next heartfelt focused twenty minutes and the pride in what you can accomplish can get you through it. If you need to repack your bug out bag, unpack it in fifteen minutes, looking over each item carefully piling the items you need and the items you want separately, then start timing yourself to get it all back in there the way it should go in the next five minutes. It's a bug out bag, it should be good to go, but if you have to grab a bag and fill it for a latecomer from what's left in the house, this is good practice.

In twenty minutes you can learn how to swim, loose weight, start a garden, clean your armory, feed the animals you keep, check out the neighbors moving in, the list goes on.