10.  Your Home without Electricity for a prolonged period of time

 

Well it stinks, but occasionally the electricity can be off for a prolonged amount of time.  During this time there is a dreadful possibility that you will also be without running water.  If you are on city water that is not contaminated by flooding or something worse you are lucky!

 

Without electricity you do have to set up a way to warm water for bathing, cleaning, and cooking.  It depends largely on how many people are involved.  Regardless there are some things you need to do.

 

Refrigerator items – unfortunately they will spoil in a just a day or two without electricity.  Frozen items will thaw and ultimately ruin.  So, start by eating anything that is going to ruin.  If you have meat in the refrigerator eat what you like the best first.  If you have meat or other items in the freezer you can save that a few days longer because it is frozen to begin with.  Cook the best first in case you don’t get power back before it has time to spoil.  My personal rule of thumbs is that meat is good in the refrigerator for 3 solid days.  Of course that is when the power is on and the refrigerator actually refrigerates stuff.  In this case just eat as much as you can as fast as you can.  Make you dog or the neighbor’s dog happy.  Don’t wait until you think it is spoiled to feed it to the dog unless you are trying to poison the dog.  You just have to realize from the beginning that it is highly likely that everything in your refrigerator or freezer is going to be spoiled before you get power back.  UNLESS it is subzero temperatures outdoors.  In that case, don’t hesitate to store frozen foods outdoors.

 

Home heating – you need a way to heat at least part of your house.  If you have a wood heater or gas heater then you are a step ahead of a lot of people.  There are small propane heaters that are safe for indoor use. One is called a ‘Buddy Heater’.  We have one and it works pretty well. If at all possible you need to have some sort of heater on hand along with appropriate fuel.  Don’t try to heat your entire house.  Just heat the space you need for a short time.  If necessary you can even arrange to sleep in the heated area.  Do exercise extreme caution with an unusual heat source especially if you have small children.  By the way, kids are pretty adaptable.  Just put more coats on them and don’t let them hear you complain.  They will follow your lead.  Older kids may be more likely to complain, but don’t set the tone by complaining yourself.  If you must complain go in a closet, stuff your mouth with a sock, and then gripe and complain.  When you feel better go back to the family area with some sort of cheerful look pasted on your face.

 

Do try to look as normal as possible.  You can heat water for washing hands, faces, and even bathing and hair washing.  You can’t use a curling iron without electricity, but can comb hair, brush teeth, gargle for fresh breath, and shave.  You can put on clean clothes as long as you have clean clothes.  There are public laundries if you have to use them but they are expensive.  I would try wearing clothes two days instead of one day to begin with.  Chances are you aren’t sweating a lot so your clothes will probably be fine for more than one day. 

 

Home cooling – as far as I know you can forget it.  If you need air conditioning you won’t have it.  You won’t even have a fan.  (In this case you will sweat and you probably cannot wear your clothes 2 days without smelling like you haven’t changed your clothes lately.)  You also won’t have a fan.  If this is the case try to find a shade tree in your yard and sit there and cry like a baby until the electricity comes back on.  That is what I do.  Seriously, there isn’t any way that I know of to cope with heat and humidity short of air conditioning.  Well, there is one other way.  Go the lake or the creek and camp out until the electricity comes back on.  That isn’t always possible of course.  You can do your best to cool down at bed time by taking a cool bath or even soaking your feet in cool water.  Wet hair at bedtime may give you pneumonia before morning but it will help you sleep cooler.

 

Now, if you don’t have water you have an entirely new set of problems.  That is why you need to store at least twenty gallons of water as a minimum.  It is covered in the camping section, but you can get very clean with just one gallon of water if you pour it in a very tiny trickle. 

 

Hopefully you will be able to get water from outside sources if you don’t have it at home, but you will still have to be very saving with what you use, so keep that in mind.  By the way, it takes about a gallon of water to flush the commode one time.  If you don’t have plenty of water on hand you probably will have to make an executive decision on how often you actually have to flush.  Be sure to save dishwater and bathwater to use as flushing water.  Fill the back of the commode with water and flush as usual; or dump a gallon of water in the toilet bowl really fast.