I really liked the post about preparing your spouse but saw one thing missing or at least not stated explicitly. Your spouse needs to know how to do these things and the only way to really learn most of these practical tasks is to do them with your spouse. Binders [full of information] are great but unless you know how to execute all the steps, where all the necessary tools and pieces are and how to use them binders are not going to help much. To illustrate the importance of actually doing something I will relay a recent tale from my house.
A while back I tried to make Spanish rice from the recipe Wifey always uses. Every ingredient and step was there but I didn’t know what a couple of the steps meant. I was able to get her help me figure them out but if she wasn’t here I definitely would not have had Spanish rice with dinner. Now that I know how to do all the steps I could probably look back at that same recipe in a year or two and make it.
That same point could be easily applied to getting the chainsaw ready for the season or making soap or any other task which is done (even almost) exclusively by one spouse. Think of it like an Infantry Platoon. You are probably never going to be able to shoot the M240 like the gunner or program the radio as fast as the RTO [1] but everyone should at least know how to use both of these essential tools. An added benefit of making sure your spouse is at least somewhat familiar with all of the household/ preparedness tasks you do (and visa versa) is spending time together doing productive things. Spending a weekend afternoon doing something together that is normally done alone can sure make another boring chore into a fun day. Also as always many hands make light work. – TheOtherRyan (of Total Survivalist Libertarian Rantfest [2])