Often times, like with everything in life, we become complacent with our surroundings and our day to day routines. But with preparedness we must stay motivated and organized or efforts may be in vain. Interesting data from Google Insights shows actual interest in emergency preparedness based on search volume. As you can see in this chart, peoples interest in emergency preparedness spiked around September of each year, most likely due to Sep 11th. Other large spikes occurred at the same time as large news events, such as the spike in 2005 likely due to Katrina and the World Summit.
Live Trend Chart
An important part of preparedness is the diligence and planning associated with it. If you want to stay diligent throughout the year visit some of the links below to help you become more organized and structured.
Other Resources
ZenHabits: Compulsives Guide: Top 12 Organizing Tips
eHow.com: How to become organized, one minute at a time
Organized Home: Tap the power of planners
About.com: Organize your home
MyGoal.com: How to be organized
ezine articles: How to finally become organized
Wikihow: How to be organized
We also notice a spike in January on our blog. People often consider New Year's as a time to get back on the food storage / emergency preparedness bandwagon. I think another reason September spikes is because summer as busy, kids are home, and life gets in the way. But when kids go back to school, parents are able to focus more on important things like preparedness.
I agree with the comment above, another thing is people have more money to spend once kids go back to school. I'm sure its like interent use, over the winter in bad weather people spend more time in front of the computer, they start looking into things and have more time to dedicate to them. Preparedness is a mind set and when you have more time to think, you get more involved in what you were thinking about, its pretty simple. And a new years resolution is another reason people could increase what they are doing if not start period. As money gets tighter the trends could change either way, people won't have the money to spend, or it could go to the opposite and people start spending more on being prepared. It will be interesting to watch.
If there is anything positive that resulted from 9/11, at least it gets us thinking about preparedness. Life is so busy, it takes anniversaries for us to remember the experiences and lessons from the past.
Hello from Russia!
Can I quote a post in your blog with the link to you?
With the failing economy it seems that people are tightening their hold on their money and emergency preparedness is taking a dive. It's really too bad. Anniversaries of 9/11, hurricanes and tsunami's help many to remember to get prepared. I'm thankful for that. :)