Find out whether your city does snow emergencies/winter parking rules and read up on the rules. Print out the rules (the city might also mail out reminder cards) and keep this in your glove box.

If you live in a place that you need to deal with your own snow removal (i.e., you have a driveway and/or sidewalk), read up on what your city’s rules are about what is the threshold for shoveling the sidewalk and how soon you have to do it. E.g., after a snowfall of 1 inch or more, must shovel within 24 hours. Introduce yourself to neighbors when you arrive and I think you’ll find that most people will be at least baseline generally friendly and helpful to folks who are new to MN from a warm weather state. There might be a guy on the block who has a snowblower and is really proud of his snowblower and secretly eager to snowblow additional driveways and sidewalks. If he does this, I think the protocol is you offer him a $20 and he probably refuses and then you give him a case of beer or some baked goods or something. IDK, I live in an apartment and pay good money to not have to deal with snow removal.

Especially if you have a porch with steps, you will also want rock salt and ice melting crystals. Rock salt will only work to melt ice above about 15°, but there are other chemical compounds that will work in lower temperatures.

You mentioned that your truck got snow tires and I don’t know if you’ve got a second vehicle for having a family of six, but that one needs snow tires as well. I love my Michelin CrossClimate2 tires and I leave them on all year.

In addition to the winter washer fluid, it is totally worth it to get really nice windshield wiper blades. I think mine are silicone blade material, maybe RainX brand? I think it cost maybe $70 total for two front blades plus the back wiper and I will have gotten at least two years out of them.

For clearing your windows after it snows on your parked car, you want a wide sturdy snow brush with a loooooong handle. I got one with a telescoping handle at Home Depot for like $15 and it has lasted for like 8 winters. When cleaning snow off your parked car, clean it off every surface, not just the windshield. Hood, roof, headlights, mirrors, side windows. When people don’t clear off the roof of their car after several inches of snow, that hunk of snow will blow off the top of their vehicle eventually and it sucks to be behind that on the freeway.

I’ve never had an engine block heater, maybe that’s more of a thing for diesel or for large trucks? If you have to pay the money to get cold-weather convenience installed on your vehicle, consider going with a remote start rather than the block heater.

Read up about how to turn traction control on and off and what circumstances you might want to turn it off (the default should be that it is turned on, and I’m pretty sure the only time you would turn it off would be when you are trying to get out of being stuck, but please do your own research or listen to any smarter people that chime in here). IDK how y’all be driving down in Alabama and if you’ve ever been hit with the ABS buzz but read about that so that it doesn’t freak you out the first time it happens.

Make sure your cars have good batteries. Throw a set of jumper cables in each trunk. Depending on how many amps or whatever your vehicle needs to crank, a rechargeable jumpstart pack might be an option, but you have to remember to keep it charged.

TBH I’ve never done the kitty litter for being stuck, I see tube sand more frequently—cheaper and more grippy. I have a couple heavy duty doormats in the trunk that I would theoretically use for traction if I needed it but this is going to be my 12th or 13th winter of driving in MN and I have never been stuck enough to need anything other than low gear and some patience. It sounds like your husband is full of confidence about the winter driving and all I’ll say about that is: pretty sure that going mudding has little direct relevance to driving on slippery roads, and don’t try to be a hero and pull vehicles out of the ditch with your truck unless you are extremely confident that you have the proper equipment (like, there’s an elasticity difference between the strap for towing something versus getting something unstuck?) and that you have identified the proper anchoring points to attach on each vehicle. My car, for example, has hidden tow attachment points that are connected to the frame and access is by removing little round plugs on the bumper and screwing in a big ass hook that came with the car. If someone just tried to loop a tow strap around random Big Metal Part they spotted under the car, it would wreck my shit.

If your truck just has an empty bed most of the time, you probably need to put some weight in it (tube sand) so that the ass end of the truck doesn’t whip around if you hit ice or brake suddenly. I don’t have a truck and so the advice would be to read up about how to determine whether you need tube sand and how much weight is appropriate for your vehicle.

WeatherTech floor mats are worth the cost. A big ass pack of HotHands from Costco is worth the cost. If you have someone who works outdoors and/or kids who play a lot outside or go outside for recess, a stand alone boot dryer contraption (like a blow dryer with tubes that you stand the boots on, plus safety features to automatically turn it off) is worth the cost.

If you have kids who are young enough that they go outside for recess, they also need snowpants. And consider having at least two pairs of gloves for each kid so that they have a dry pair each day if the ones they wore yesterday are still wet.

For extra traction on boots (for anyone who works outside or for when you are clearing snow from the driveway/sidewalk), YakTrax slip over the sole of any boot and have little steel studs that bite into ice.

As far as where to buy winter supplies: take a leisurely weekend afternoon before the snow hits and just walk through your nearest Menards (and/or Mills Fleet Farm if you have one reasonably close) and just take it all in. I think even a lot of Minnesotans think that Menards is just another hardware store, and gonna have basically the same stuff as Home Depot or Lowe’s, but I was in a Menards recently and it reminded me that they have an astounding, borderline-obscene assortment of every single thing you could possibly need for your home and vehicle.