Your New Year’s Challenge

When a new year rolls around, a lot of people start talking about resolutions. The truth is that most of those don’t last past February. 

But we know that for you, prepping for the new year is a challenge you don’t want to miss. It’s a promise you must make every year to take stock of where you are right now. This way, you can make sure your household can handle the upcoming events and economic crisis that’s knocking on the door in 2026. 

Therefore, if you’ve been prepping for years, this challenge helps you stay sharp. If you’ve only been thinking about it, this challenge forces you to move from ideas to action. None of what follows requires fancy gear, expensive purchases, or outside approval. It just takes time and a willingness to see your setup as it really is.

This New Year Prepping Challenge is broken into five parts. Each one looks at a different area that often gets overlooked or postponed. You can spread them out over several weeks or tackle them back-to-back. Either way, you’ll learn more by doing these than by reading another checklist.

Check Your Stockpile and Update What You Find

The first challenge sets the tone for everything that follows, because it forces you to stop assuming and truly start verifying.

You most probably feel comfortable knowing you have “a stockpile,” but can you say with confidence what condition that stockpile is in or how usable it really is?

If your answer is no, then you should start with food and take your time. Pull items off the shelves and actually have a good look at their labels.

Check expiration dates and pay attention to how things were stored. Heat, moisture, and pests quietly ruin food long before a date on a label becomes an issue.

Don’t forget about dry foods either – examine them for insects, clumping, or bad smells. Oils deserve special attention, since they tend to go bad without much warning.

As you go through your food, think in terms of meals rather than individual items. It is easy to feel well stocked when you have shelves full of cans and bags, but that impression changes when you ask yourself what you could realistically cook for several days in a row using only what is on hand. This process often reveals gaps that weren’t obvious before, such as missing ingredients or an overreliance on foods you don’t actually enjoy eating.

👉 What My 3-Month Food Stockpile Looks Like

Fuel deserves the same level of attention. Gasoline, propane, diesel, and kerosene all have their own storage challenges. Containers degrade, seals dry out, and stabilizers lose effectiveness. Take note of how much fuel you truly have, how it is stored, and what it is intended to run. A generator is only useful if the fuel supply behind it is reliable and accessible.

Firearms and ammunition should not be ignored during this challenge, either. Even if you don’t handle them often, they still require maintenance. Take the time to clean and inspect firearms, check for signs of corrosion, and look over ammunition for damage or oxidation. Confirm that everything is stored safely but can still be accessed without delay if needed. 

It can help to keep notes. You should create a simple list of what needs to be used soon, what needs replacing, and what storage methods should be improved. That information becomes useful later when you plan future purchases.

It’s also very important to have THIS on hand when starting your checklist for 2026 – click here to see what I am talking about!

Eat Like the Depression Era for One Full Week

This challenge is less comfortable than the first, but it is often more revealing. For one week, you plan and eat meals inspired by the Depression era, using foods that are already in your pantry, especially those nearing expiration.

Recipes from the Great Depression

During the Great Depression, meals were built around what was affordable, available, and filling. Variety was limited, and waste was not an option.

Staples such as beans, potatoes, rice, cornmeal, oats, and simple breads formed the backbone of daily meals. Meat was used sparingly, often stretched across several dishes. Nothing was thrown away.

For this challenge, you create a full seven-day meal plan in advance. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are all accounted for. The plan should be realistic and based on what you already own, not on a special shopping trip.

Once the week begins, you stick to the plan. No grazing out of boredom, no filling gaps with snacks just because they are there.

This approach is inspired by the work of our founder, Claude Davis, a survival expert and one of the leading historians of the Great Depression. Claude has dedicated his life to studying how ordinary Americans survived the hardships of the 1930s, when nearly a quarter of the population was unemployed and families were forced to endure years of poverty and scarcity.

Through decades of research, Claude often reminds audiences that life during the Great Depression demanded resilience and discipline, qualities that are largely taken for granted today. Claude is among the very few experts who understand, in detail, how families managed to survive under those conditions, and the knowledge he has preserved in his work may prove invaluable if the country ever faces similar challenges again.

As the week goes on, pay attention to your reactions. You may notice changes in energy, mood, or motivation. Cooking may feel repetitive. Certain foods may become less appealing after a few days. These responses are valuable information because they show how you might cope if your options were limited for reasons beyond your control.

The question to sit with throughout the week is whether this way of eating feels manageable. Not enjoyable, and not ideal, but workable.

Also, it would be easier to follow such a challenge if you had a well-structured plan as this one:

Why This Matters for Your Prepping Strategy

Food planning often focuses on quantity, but quality matters too. When food choices shrink, stress tends to rise, especially for people who are used to constant variety. This experiment shows you how your household handles lack of options and diversity.

It also highlights practical skills. Cooking from basic ingredients requires planning and patience. Knowing how to turn simple staples into filling meals is an asset that becomes more valuable the longer a disruption lasts. 

Another benefit of this experiment is waste reduction. By using foods that are nearing expiration, you learn what you truly eat and what tends to sit untouched. That knowledge can shape smarter stocking decisions in the future.

Take a Hard Look at Your Home Security

Home security is often treated as an afterthought, addressed only when something goes wrong or when a new gadget catches attention. This challenge asks you to approach it calmly and methodically, starting with observation.

Walk around your home during the day and again after dark. Look at it from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with the property. Notice where visibility is poor and where lighting is inadequate. Pay attention to doors that feel weak or windows that are hidden from view. 

👉 How to Build a Secret Storage for Your Guns

A well-lit approach, a solid door, and a home security kit that could actually alarm you of intruders – all contribute to making a home less attractive to someone looking for an easy target.

However, even a few simple improvements, such as trimming overgrown vegetation or bright lights, often provide more benefit than expensive systems that rely on power. Also, make sure you think about how sound travels around your home and yard. Consider how long it would take someone to gain entry and what obstacles they would encounter along the way.

In the end, the obvious goal is not to turn your home into a fortress, but to spot the obvious weaknesses and use our tested homemade deterrents:

Keep a Bug-Out Bag Ready by the Door

Even people who strongly prefer to stay put should accept that some situations require leaving quickly. Fires, floods, industrial accidents, and mandatory evacuations do not allow much time for decision-making.

So, a bug-out bag should be packed with your physical abilities in mind, especially if carrying heavy loads is difficult. Once assembled, it should be placed by the door where it can be grabbed without searching.

These are the must-have items in your bug-out bag:

• Bottles of water.
• A portable water generator – a must have in your bug-out bag!
• Shelf-stable food that does not require cooking.
• Extra clothing appropriate for the season.
• Medicines (these are the only medicines you need!) 
• Pocket-size first aid kit
• Copies of important documents.
• Basic lighting.

After packing the bag, test it. Lift it. Walk around with it. Adjust what feels unnecessary or burdensome. This process often reveals items that seemed important in theory but are impractical in reality.

Live Three Days Without Media or Electricity

For three days, you live without television, internet, social media, and grid electricity unless medical needs require otherwise.

Without constant screens, time feels different. Evenings become longer. Silence becomes more noticeable. Some people find this uncomfortable at first, while others find it surprisingly calming.

During these three days, you learn what tools you actually rely on. Lighting sources, cooking methods, and entertainment alternatives all come into focus. You may discover gaps you hadn’t considered, such as insufficient lighting or a lack of activities that don’t involve screens.

This challenge also highlights how well household members handle boredom and quiet. Those dynamics matter during extended outages and are truly worth understanding ahead of time.

Take on this challenge TODAY and tell us what you think:

Final Thoughts

You don’t need to finish everything in January. Even completing one or two of these challenges puts you in a stronger position than most people.

Think of it as a quiet reset. A chance to slow down, take an honest look at your survival stockpile, and make improvements while you still can. If tough times do arrive in 2026, you won’t be scrambling to figure things out, because you’ll already know where you stand and what you can handle.

And that peace of mind? That’s what prepping is really about!

You may also like:

I Regret I Didn’t Do This Earlier

3 Things I Learned Based on My Time Working in the CIA (VIDEO)

Guns You Need to Buy Before the Government Bans Them

Why Your Stockpile Might Be Doomed from Day One

The Suburbs Are No Longer Safe. Here’s Why