Are You Really Ready If The Power Goes Out For A Long Time?

We have all seen these emergency kit lists everywhere. They are in the event of an emergency, all you would need to survive. I think that they are missing a lot.

What if the power goes out at your house for a long time. Do you have what you need? Can you do your dishes? Can you bath? Can you eat hot food? Do you have heat in your home? Can you flush the toilet? Can you do your laundry?

This is what I do. I live in the country of course. I have found I can get by with or without power. It doesn't make any difference to me. I have to work a little harder without the power. But with or without power I still can do all of the things that I need to do.

I happened to think of this because the power was out at my house for a long time today. Due to high winds.

In your emergency kit. You have a gallon of water per person. That is great you can use that for anything that you are going to drink, or make food out of. But, you still need to be able to have water for other things. The first thing that I do when my power goes out is, I get every container I can find, buckets, kettles whatever is handy. Then I put them under the eaves of my house. That is a great place to catch rain water. Do not drink rain water!!! But use it for everything else. If you don't have a good place where the water just runs off of your eaves, then you need to put a board on the roof and then a bucket underneath. If it is winter time then, Go outside and fill all of your container with snow and then bring them inside.

Make sure that you have a cooking source. Here are some that I can think of. A wood stove, a propane kitchen stove, a barbecue grill, a hibachi ( mini grill), a camp stove like a Coleman stove, a fire pit outside, you can make a fire pit by stacking bricks or rocks if it is an emergency and you have not planned ahead. Then just take the oven rack out of your oven and lay it on top.

You are going to use this cooking source for almost everything. You can warm the rain water up in a kettle on your cooking source. Dump it into dish pans and then wash your dishes. One dish pan for wash and one for rinse. You can warm it up and take a bath. Lug it into your bathtub and bath. If you don't have enough water for a full bath then just dump some in a bowl and sponge bath. And of course you can cook anything on it. Even if it is a barbecue grill. Just put the pan or kettle right on and turn it on high.

Now flushing the toilet. It is going to take about 3 gallons of water to flush your toilet. So I just wait until it has to be flushed. Get a big bucket, and put 3 gallons of water in it. Dump all of it really quick into the toilet and this will flush it. Do not dump it slowly, because it won't work.

Laundry, if it has been a long time without power, you are going to need to do laundry. Dump a load of wash into your bathtub. Then put in a cup of detergent and enough rain water to cover it. Let it set over night. In the morning, go over each item with a scrub brush, and swirl it around in the water good. Now drain the tub. Bring in enough rain water to cover it again and make sure everything gets rinsed good. Now ring everything out and go hang it on the clothes line. If you don't have a clothes line, then hang up some rope between trees, or hang it on the shower curtain rod.

Now if it is winter time, you are going to need heat. Once again any of the cooking sources can be a heat source. If all you have is an propane oven, then you need to close off all of the rooms except the kitchen and stay in that one room. If it is something smaller like, a propane camp stove, or a hibachi grill, then decide what room it is going in and close off all of the rest. Even if you have to hang up tarps to keep the heat in one room. Now if your cooking source was a fire pit. You are going to have a problem in the winter, and need to be thinking of another solution.

It is a lot of work, but when times get tough, the tough get tougher!!!!