Who starts planning for winter??
I have a list of things we do to start planning for winter, I started this 20+ years ago when mom was still in her house but couldn't drive in the ice or snow, a fair weather driver. We would start somewhere in July with going through her pantry and moving all the foods close to expiration to the front so she could use it up or give it to one of the kids, check her stock of furnace filters, Duraflame logs for extra heat or if the power went out, paper goods (no one wants to run out of TP during a snow storm), couple cases of bottled water if the water main broke or the pipes froze, make sure she had a couple bags of snow melt, have the car and the furnace checked, take all the heavy blankets too big for her washer to the laundromat, put on the electric mattress pad, pick up some essentials like cough drops/syrup/medicines, coke syrup, tissues because the time to get this is before you get sick, check the flash lights, buy batteries, go to the dollar store for emergency candles, buy stamps you get the idea. She was older and lived alone and we didn't want her to want or need anything and she loved checking things off the list, it gave her a sense of security and a purpose, complete one thing a week. Now that we are retired and live out in the country surrounded by empty fields we have the same ritual, check to make sure the generator, snow thrower start and gas in the cans and some of the stuff above. No mad rush to the store when the big winter storm is predicted. Who else does this?