Acclimatize your family to frugal living

[Kaleva]

It's one thing to prepare and stock for emergencies and quite another to actually live it.

Will a diet of beans and rice suffice for kids who are very fussy eaters?

Can your family readily adapt to crapping in a garbage bag lined bucket?

For entertainment, does your family enjoy playing board games and other 'old school' games?

It may be a good idea to do some practice runs every so often and find out what works and what doesn't for your family.

[Squinch]

1. You know I love your frugality posts as they appeal to my miserly little heart, but

crapping in a bucket?

Nope. I'll let the apocalypse take me. Or get a nice covered chamber pot.

[Hortensis]

2. Oh, boy. Really good questions. #1's a big one.

I have read that some people, especially children, starve because of food aversions, old or new ones developed in times of trouble. It's not common, but some just shut down and refuse to eat. Definitely something to be researched by anyone with fussy eaters.

As for waste disposal, for me the first big thing would be to make sure toilets weren't used after water was no longer available to flush them, not one lapse. I'm perfectly ready to turn into an adaptation nazi upon demand, whatever alternative we set up not negotiable.

Entertainment issues didn't occur to me, beyond no light at night, because we're empty nesters with lots of books, garden, nearby fishing, etc., etc. But absolutely! It's all too easy to imagine families falling apart over entertainment withdrawal and long hours without normal ways of filling them. Serious issue...

[Kaleva]

3. Sudden withdrawal from routine and comforts...

may turn a manageable situation into a time of hell. Especially if one has to deal with fussy kids, adults with special needs or immature adults.

[Rorey]

4. Flushing

I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Our water was from a well. If the power went out, there was no water because the water was pumped out of the well with an electric pump. When we were worried about an outage we'd fill the bathtub and laundry tubs with water to use for flushing the toilets. We'd fill up every receptacle we could find in the kitchen with water for drinking and cooking.

Of course that's just a short term fix. If there was a long term outage one wouldn't want to waste precious water flushing a toilet. I just cringe to think about the grossness factor of using a bucket.

As someone who has lived through a lot of power outages as a kid, I can say that the darkness can be a very depressing thing, especially by that third night. Now I've got sort of a hoarder thing going on when it comes to flashlights and solar lights. I guess the trauma as a kid has affected me more than I realized.

I also have a solar powered emergency radio. We're so used to noise these days, and that silence when the power is out can be awful.

[Kaleva]

5. I plan on building a waterless toilet in the basement..,

this summer. I'll edit this post later when I'm on my laptop to add a link.

[dembotoz]

6. How did humanity survive before smart phones

Folks in Puerto Rico r still with out electricity...I can't fucking imagine.

[Rorey]

7. We're pretty spoiled

I went down to basic cable a couple of months ago when our bill went up to around $170 for cable and internet. I'm still feeling sort of deprived, even though we've had awhile to get used to it.

If I leave and forget my phone, I almost always turn around and go back and get it. I mean, am I really THAT important that I have to be accessible at any minute of the day? I'm not a doctor. I'm not a lawyer.

I'd like to think that I would fare well if we lost electricity for a length of time, but the truth is that it would be very difficult. We're just too spoiled.

[Hortensis]

8. You bet. We've lost our power for a day, two days

because we're rural, and in short order I'm irritated by being inconvenienced and within a couple hours feeling deprived and wondering when it'll come back on. And we have bottles of water in kitchen for drinking and in the powder room closet for flushing when the power goes off, typically the first issues to arise, so we're better off than most.

A really easy way to identify some issues would be to turn the breakers in the breaker box/fuse panel off for a few hours or more and see what happens. Won't take long to get the first insight.

Food and water is all we have some decent prep for. Other stuff? My husband doesn't take it seriously, and I'm neither tecchy or thorough, and we keep using some things. Duct tape's supposed to have whole pack of uses, but I recently noticed the rolls bought on sale and stashed on my emergency supplies shelf in the basement are down to one. I think my husband must have been giving it away. Pretty sure he hasn't used it to reinforce his shoes, tape his broken glasses together, seal doors against flood and heat loss, construct an emergency shelter, create a sling for a broken arm, etc. But now I know to hide it.

[dembotoz]

9. U go thru duct tape binges

Just buy more tape

[Hortensis]

10. Are these binges something we can discuss in public?

The issue of how to do without our usual entertainments has been raised.

[dembotoz]

11. could lead to a sticky situation