Diminishing Returns – The Ageing Prepper

Diminishing Returns by R. Ann Parris for Preppergroups.com

All sorts of things can reduce our capabilities. Age is a big one, and is forefront of a whole section of the diminishing returns posts. Illness and injury can commonly create the same or very similar challenges.

As with few articles here or elsewhere, this series is going to apply to everyday “normal” life as much if not more than any far-distant possible future we might face. From maximizing time, income, and the resources around us, they’re full of suggestions that apply anytime we’re restricted, and they include preps for time crunches and extra draws on our precious time as well as sick rooms, day-sleepers, and med cabinets.

Specifically for Seniors
Stick with me through this one even if gray hair hasn’t gotten started yet and you’re currently healthy and whole. One, if you don’t die young, you eventually get old. Two, many aspects of aging cross over with illness and injury, and — again — the fixes commonly apply even to those who are “only” facing increased demands on their attention and time.

Have you started getting a runny nose or watery eyes while you’re eating a hot supper? If not, hang tight. God or fates willing, it’s one of the many little goodies coming as gray hair starts outnumbering the rest.

Like many of the little trials, the suppertime sniffles is easy enough to prep for. If we have a well-stocked prepper cache, especially if we’ve prepped to survive a standard cold or flu run, we already have the solution on hand. Just keep some tissue or a hanky handy at the table or carry some around habitually so we don’t have to use our napkins.

Some aren’t so easily addressed, though.

Aging — from our first few gray hairs and creaky joints, through to deeply creased faces and paper-thin skin — further affects almost all the other primary culprits that affect our quality of life and ability to produce and contribute by slowing us down in a whole variety of ways, or sucking up resources in new and interesting ways.

Happily, many of the things that can make aging a little more bearable cross over from being the sole province of geriatric sets, to any illness or injury we may pick up, both now and if A Big Thing disrupts our normal lives. They have particular value for the Daily Disasters we face around the world: just being too sick to drive, losing our jobs or income streams, trying to keep up with animals and kids and gardens while ill, or being “stranded” by various storms.