Acclimatize your family to frugal living

[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.