That ice storm in February 2021 was a real eye-opener for our family. I mean, we'd dealt with weather before – you grow up in North Carolina, you know about hurricanes and the occasional snow day that shuts everything down. But this was different. We were stuck at home for five days straight, and by day three, the grocery stores that were actually open had basically nothing left on the shelves. No milk, no bread, barely any canned goods. The kids kept asking why we couldn't just go to a different store, and I had to explain that all the stores were having the same problem – the trucks couldn't get through.
What really got to me wasn't just the empty shelves, though. It was realizing how completely dependent we are on this invisible network of trucks and warehouses and distribution centers that I'd never really thought about before. When that system breaks down, even for a few days, everything falls apart pretty quickly.
I started paying attention to supply chain stuff after that, partly because I work in IT and I'm naturally curious about how systems work, but mostly because I realized this was going to keep happening. Climate change isn't some abstract future problem – it's messing with the basic infrastructure that gets food to our grocery stores and products to our local businesses right now.
The more I learned, the more worried I got. Not just about the big picture climate stuff, which is scary enough, but about how unprepared most businesses seem to be for the kind of weather we're already seeing. A friend of mine runs a small landscaping company, and he told me about losing a week's worth of work last summer when extreme heat made it unsafe for his crew to be outside. His suppliers couldn't deliver plants and materials on schedule because their delivery trucks don't have adequate cooling systems for 105-degree days.
My wife thought I was getting a little obsessed with this stuff, and she wasn't wrong. I started tracking weather-related business disruptions the way some people follow sports scores. Floods in Pakistan affecting cotton production. Heat waves in Europe shutting down manufacturing. Wildfires in the Pacific Northwest closing major shipping routes. It's happening constantly now, and most of us don't connect these distant events to why certain products are suddenly more expensive or harder to find at our local stores.
What really drove this home was when our kids' school had trouble getting supplies for the cafeteria because severe weather had disrupted their food service contractor's operations. My seven-year-old came home asking why they were serving peanut butter sandwiches for lunch three days in a row, and I realized I didn't have a good answer that wouldn't terrify her about the state of the world.
I started thinking about what this means for our household budget and planning. We've always been pretty typical suburban consumers – buy what we need when we need it, shop for the best deals, don't keep huge stockpiles of anything because storage space costs money and things go bad. But that approach assumes the supply system works reliably, and that assumption is looking shakier every year.
So we've started making some changes, gradually and without going full prepper mode (though honestly, some of those folks are looking pretty smart these days). We keep more non-perishable essentials on hand now – not because we're expecting the apocalypse, but because we know weather disruptions can make basic items temporarily unavailable or much more expensive. When toilet paper disappeared during the early pandemic, we learned that lesson the hard way.
The kids think it's weird that we have what they call the "backup pantry" in the basement, but they also remember that ice storm, so they get it. We rotate through everything to avoid waste, and having extra supplies means we can shop more strategically – stocking up when things are on sale rather than paying premium prices during shortages.
I've also started paying more attention to where things come from when we shop. Not in an obsessive way, but I'll check labels and try to buy products that are made or grown closer to home when there's a reasonable option. Local and regional suppliers seem less vulnerable to the kind of long-distance transportation disruptions that are becoming more common. Plus, supporting local businesses just feels like the right thing to do when big supply chains are struggling.
The solar panels we installed turned out to be even more valuable than I'd expected for this reason. During that ice storm, we lost power for almost two full days, but because we have battery storage with our solar system, we could keep the refrigerator running and charge our phones. Our neighbors were throwing away hundreds of dollars worth of spoiled food, while we barely lost anything. The financial benefit of avoiding food waste during outages is something I hadn't really considered when we made the investment.
Water security has become another focus. We already had rain barrels for the garden, but now we think about them as backup water supply too. During the summer when our neighborhood had a water main break that took the city three days to fix, those barrels kept us from having to buy expensive bottled water or drive across town to fill up containers.
I've gotten more strategic about bulk buying, especially for household items that don't spoil. When there are good sales on things like soap, shampoo, cleaning supplies, batteries – stuff we're definitely going to use anyway – I'll buy several months' worth if we have space to store it. This isn't hoarding; it's just being smart about inventory management for our household the same way businesses do.
The tricky part is explaining this to the kids without making them anxious about the future. We frame it as being prepared and responsible, like wearing seatbelts or having smoke detectors. We talk about how weather can sometimes make it hard for trucks to deliver things to stores, so it's good to have what we need at home. They seem to accept this pretty easily – kids are remarkably adaptable when you explain things honestly but calmly.
My wife has gotten on board with most of these changes, especially after she noticed how much money we're saving by buying ahead during sales instead of paying full price when we're running low on something. The backup pantry has also made meal planning easier because we always have ingredients for several different dinners without having to run to the store.
We've started buying more things secondhand too, partly for environmental reasons but also because it makes us less dependent on global supply chains for non-essential purchases. Kids' clothes, toys, household items – there's usually a good used option available locally, and if new production gets disrupted, it doesn't affect us as much.
I'm not saying everyone needs to become a survivalist or anything dramatic like that. But I think families like ours – middle-class suburban households with kids – need to start thinking differently about consumption and preparedness. The just-in-time lifestyle where you buy exactly what you need exactly when you need it worked fine when supply chains were reliable. That's not the world we live in anymore.
The financial benefits of this approach have been significant. By buying ahead during sales and avoiding shortage pricing, we've actually reduced our household expenses while building resilience. When the price of lumber doubled last year due to supply disruptions, it didn't affect our budget because we'd already bought materials for home improvement projects during an earlier sale.
Looking ahead, I think this kind of household-level supply chain thinking is going to become normal. Not because people want to be preppers, but because it just makes practical and financial sense when weather disruptions are becoming routine. We're teaching our kids to think this way too – not to be anxious or fearful, but to be thoughtful about planning ahead and not taking reliable supply chains for granted.
Climate change is going to keep disrupting the systems that deliver goods and services to our communities. As individual families, we can't fix the global supply chain, but we can reduce our vulnerability to its failures. Sometimes that means spending a little more upfront to save money and stress later. Sometimes it means changing how we shop and store things. Mostly it means accepting that the stable, predictable consumer economy our parents grew up with isn't coming back.
That doesn't have to be scary, though. Building resilience at the household level has actually made our family life more relaxed in some ways. We're not constantly running to stores for last-minute purchases. We're not panicking when weather forecasts show potential disruptions. We know we can handle temporary shortages or price spikes because we've planned ahead. That peace of mind is worth more than the extra storage space costs us.
Louis writes from a busy home where eco-friendly means practical. Between school runs and mowing the lawn, he’s learning how to cut waste without cutting comfort. Expect family-tested tips, funny missteps, and small, meaningful changes that fit real suburban life.
