As we approach another Hurricane season, I’m sharing helpful products from Primo® as part of a sponsored post.

This school year will go down in history as the year of Hurricane Florence. We were anxiously watching the forecast as it showed a Category 4 storm headed directly for our small town in eastern North Carolina.

When you live near the coast, you learn to pay attention to the storm warnings and everyone debates whether to stock up on necessary supplies or evacuate. You think about things like Disaster Preparedness in a way you don’t when hurricanes are something you only see on tv.

While we were debating on staying or leaving, I decided to stock up on the essentials, with water being the first thing I looked for, since it’s the first thing to clear off the shelves and the thing we need the most.

I stocked up on as many cases of water as stores would allow and as seemed reasonable, as well as loading carts full of non-perishable foods. I figured that if we ended up not needing them, we’d still be able to use them all up eventually.

While my boys and I finally made the decision to evacuate to a friend’s house, many of our family and friends stayed behind, especially once the hurricane was downgraded to a Category 2 and then a Category 1. But though the storm hit us as a Category 1, it was an extremely slow-moving storm, which ended up dumping record-breaking levels of rain in our area.

The damage to our area was rather severe. Roads were washed out, homes flooded, and schools were closed for six weeks or more while they were repaired. Even now, almost eight months later, not everything in our town is back to pre-hurricane conditions.

It was a bit of a shock for a town that while it’s near the water, doesn’t tend to see damage like this.

And now we’re almost to another hurricane season.

May is Disaster Preparedness Month and if you haven’t thought about what you need, this is a good time to really think about it and take action.

Batteries, flashlights, food, water –  a plan for where you’d go if you need to evacuate; it’s important to think about it before you’re in that moment where you have to make those last minute decisions or have to deal with the crowds of people trying to find critical supplies. Most of these items will last quite a while, so it’s not going to hurt to stock up early.

In the last storm, water around here was not considered safe to drink at first, so all those bottles of water were helpful. But YIKES – it was not exactly the most environmentally-friendly choice. That’s why, this hurricane season, I’m switching to the 5 gallon bottles from Primo water, each of which saves up to 1,100 single-use bottles from ending up in a landfill.

Though we have a Primo Deluxe Bottom Loading Water Dispenser with Self-sanitization in our kitchen that we use on a daily basis, they also have a manual pump that allows easy access to the water when you are without electricity.

It’s the perfect thing to add to your disaster preparedness kit, though it can be used in other situations – like on the sidelines of a soccer game.

The manual pump is so popular it’s already sold out on the Primo.com website, but it is available on the Walmart website. You can order your Primo dispenser with code WATERGOALS25 which provides for 25% off the dispenser, FREE fast shipping + a FREE coupon will be mailed for 5-gallon bottle of Primo water and another will be in the box when delivered.

Our family likes to use Primo’s Exchange Water, where I exchange my empty water bottle for a pre-filled water bottle, which comes in a sanitized bottle and has added minerals for great taste. Near me, I can do this at Walmart, Lowe’s Foods, and Food Lion, but you can check out their store locator to see what stores offer this near you.

Water tends to be something we take for granted – but not after a storm. Having this Primo manual pump on hand has given me one less thing to worry about this hurricane season.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Primo.