As a professional organizer, I am passionate about being organized. I love to teach clients how to find any paper in just 15 seconds. Long ago I learned how greater organization brings greater peace of mind and a better quality of life.

Yet, even I wasn’t prepared for a real emergency. Last summer my husband and I smelled smoke outside our home, and soon we heard the sound of helicopters flying low overhead. There was a fire on our mountain, and it wasn't far away.

More and more smoke filled the canyon, and we realized we might have to evacuate. We had to prioritize in a hurry. First we checked on some older neighbors to make sure they were okay, and then we tried to figure out how we would get Sneezy – our older pot bellied pig – off the mountain.

Even though I knew where all our important documents were, I didn’t have them all in one place. And with fire threatening our home, the papers just were not the priority next to our own safety and that of our precious pet. The papers would have been left behind.

As it turned out, the fire was contained and my husband and I and Sneezy did not have to evacuate. But the fire was a wake-up call. All of our vital information would have burned, because in the emergency we did not have the time to pull it all together.

While helping people to organize their papers, I’ve seen how most people do not have their vital documents and information in one place. After the fire, I realized that I needed to come up with a simple solution for myself and others, and the idea for the Grab-N-Go Box™ was born.

The purpose of the Grab-N-Go Box™ is to give individuals and families the ability to focus on loved ones and pets in an emergency, by enabling them to easily organize, safeguard, and grab in an instant all of their important papers and information. My vision is to promote the peace of mind that comes with having one's most vital documents in place, and to help people safeguard against the devastation of losing everything in a disaster.

The Grab-N-Go Box™ could have been the most important thing we took with us the day the fire threatened our home—after Sneezy, of course!

— Suzan Harnish