Back to Basics "Again"

Some of us have lost it and some never had it to remember.   What am I talking about? 

Last week when we had a hurricane came through and we lost power, we also lost our communications.  We were communicating with our family during the hurricane to see how everyone was doing. After the power went out for a short period of time we still had cell phone service but then that stopped.  We could not text or call or receive either.  During the strong winds and hearing bumps and things falling around us I realized that if we needed help we could not call for help.  Everything was dark, everything had stopped except for the wind and heavy rain.

Then I realized that I no longer knew my family's phone numbers. I have them in my address book and in my phone,  but I do not have them memorized as I once did before cell phones.  In the past we memorized the numbers and dialed up who we were calling.  

I asked Charles if he could tell me phone numbers of our family and neither he nor I could recall more than just the area code other than a couple of people. 

I asked Charles, "What do we memorize today?"   We decided besides identification and recipes, there is not a lot at all. 

Many trees went down with last weeks storm and many streets, roads and highways were closed after the hurricane. People had to stay home until road crews could clear the roads. 

After we realized we no longer had our family phone numbers memorized we realized that we could no longer address an envelope without looking in the address book. We have always had an address book but in the past we knew those addresses without looking once we had sent a few letters to that person. 

What changed is email and text so we hardly ever send a letter.

Today we never know what to expect, if we lost our phone and had to borrow a phone to use could we call someone with our memorized numbers?  How many phone numbers do you have memorized?

 We never put in numbers to make a call, only to set up the information the first time.  we just scroll for the name and push the button to make the call. 

We are not memorizing like we did in the past and this is not good.  We have decided to go back to putting in the numbers when we call someone and see if we can get this information put back in our memory.

We have been very busy cleaning up storm debris from the hurricane, we had to saw our way up the hill to get to the cottage and the power company had to come and pull new lines from the road to the house.

This gave us a lot to think about since we seem to have more disasters today.

We decided it is time to do a reset here at our home, a back to basics "again", 

We need to take water storage and usage very seriously today. Each of us alone cannot stop the changes happening today and need to be proactive in how to prepare our home for the what if's for our family.   Water, food, shelter and proper clothing for the climate we are in. 

We are getting close to the end of this year 2026 so Charles and I are going to end our 1942 studies to concentrate on working out how to navigate the changes we have facing us today.  We will continue to live a very old fashioned life.  We are going to set aside our history studies for now and take parts of the helpful information that we have learned from our studies which starts late 1890's to the end of 1940s.  

We are going to use some of our life experiences during 1950, 1960's and 70's when time was still old fashioned before computers and internet started changing our world. 

There are some hurdles to get back to basics today but it does not mean that we cannot. The life our ancestors lived does not exist today, we cannot go back in time but we for sure can resemble the good parts of the past, the parts that made sense. 

How much has changed depends on where we live because we have large cities, suburbs, communities and rural areas.  We do not know yet how high our cost are going to get and many people are now getting maxed out.  This is when we start dropping services, subscriptions and anything we can, except for the very necessities and use as little as possible. 

If our finances are stable everyone must think what if they are no longer stable, we need to save what we can now. 

Gasoline and fuel are very high now, some of the rural areas are now at a disadvantage because many of the carriers have stopped their delivery to some remote locations due to high cost and other challenges.  It reminds me of the old movies where they got in their wagon and made their journey to get supplies to bring back to their farm.  

It also reminds me of a post I did this year on January 7th, 2026, I will find it and post the link at the bottom of this post.  It was where rationing was getting really difficult in the 1940s and gasoline and fuel was being rationed, people, not the government, put their heads together to solve delivery issues when there was not enough gasoline to make their deliveries and they parked their cars and trucks and went back to horse and wagon. They did this for several years during and a little after ww2 until things went back to normal.  Brilliant!  

We have done several electricity studies and learned how to keep up with our kilowatts used. We still have possible changes we can make to keep the electric bill down because we had such a hot summer we needed our air conditioning a lot this year.  Maybe this winter we can figure out if there is anything we can do about keeping cool for next years summer. 

For heating, we will go with heating ourselves verses heating the house, this means our pets too. They all have sweaters and special pet heating pads which they love. I think they were sad when we put them away this summer. We will drain our pipes when needed so the pipes don't freeze.  We have a special cut off valve we had installed a few years ago and this was a good decision.  We cut off and drain just outside our front door in only a couple of minutes.

It is too expensive for many people to live a life keeping all of our rooms toasty warm during the winter.  There are things to do to keep these expenses down.

This past week we started doing a water study.  I have a concern with our water supply because we have had several attempts in our country to take down our municipal water supplies by hacking into their systems.  Many people across the United States are facing water crisis and we should not ignore this, there are things we can do and should.  At the least we should store what our government recommends, this is the least we can do but their recommendations are just to stay alive, not be comfortable.  There are things we can do to be somewhat comfortable during a water shortage or outage. I prefer to be comfortable.

There are other concerns such as those that are living with wells and there are low water tables or other concerns that come with well water.  Learning to reduce our water use is a very good thing to do. 

This above was taken when our Elizabeth was a baby, she is turning 16 in a few weeks.  

Our temperatures are starting to drop and the price of our heating fuel has become almost too expensive to purchase. We did go ahead and purchase part of our heating fuel, we know that by cutting other expenses that will add up to affording more fuel. 

We have an all electric home and the reason we use part electric and part fuel is so we can control where we need our heat.  The fuel heater puts out more heat and we can use it where we need it. 

 If you live with a water bill like ours with the sewer charge based on the water you use, this is another way to help you with your higher expenses.  It is not a lot of money but if you do this with everything it adds up to use for something needed.  

I like the glass dispenser jars people use for picnics or large gatherings and they use them for Lemonade and cold drinks.  These make good water vessels for running water.  If there is a water outage, or you are just trying to keep the water bill down, these get set up where our sinks are or makeshift sinks.  I set mine on a towel and let the spigot hang over the sink and voila! running water.   I refill when necessary with the water I have stored in a two gallon bucket. 

I do not want a lot of water bottles on the counter, just one at at time so finding a place for the extra, a place where these can live will help a lot with keeping the home organized while using different water sources. 

I am learning to use measured water when I use water straight from the tap.  Do the math when washing dishes, how much water is needed to wash and how much to rinse.  Letting the water run can use much more than it seems we are using and that is just flowing down the drain. 

Also check your faucet and through the seasons and time how long the hot water takes to get to the tap. Catch that water for other purposes. 

This will change depending what time of year it is, how warm or cold the pipes are but make some kind of chart and start saving the extra water for flushing the toilets, cleaning, watering plants, adding water to the pet bowls, cleaning the pet bowls, save it for laundry water. 

It is shocking how much water just flows unused down the drain when family members take showers and the first cold water just runs down the drain. That water could wash a load of laundry.  We measured our shower water the other day by reading our meter and then taking a regular shower and then reading the meter again.  

This is where math comes into our water study. 

We built a new back to our wash stand and put a shelf on to hold a water jar with a dispenser. 

This is in our small hallway.  If there is electric the small lamp works, if no electric, the solar bulb works.  If there is no running water in the house, this wash stand works with running water from the water vessel with a spout.  We can wash our hands brush our teeth or even bathe here.  We keep a bucket to pour off the waste water. We have other areas in our home that have wash stands for private bathing.  You can make up a cleaner and put it in a spray bottle to clean your washbowl in between uses.  We have jars of rinse water and old rags we use to wash the washbowl. In the cabinet under the washbowl. 

These are helpful when you have only one bathroom in a house or a large family.  Each person could have their own washstand with running water. 

It is important to be able to clean the washbowl  so extra spray bottles are helpful to be able to clean.  

We also can take a full bath standing in our tub by dipping water from a bucket and pouring the water over our body, soap up with our soap and rag, and then pour water over us to rinse off. We get very clean this way.  We can easily heat that water with a kettle on the camp stove or the electric kettle. 

Charles knows how much water it takes for him to take a bucket bath and I know what it takes for me.  When I wash my hair it takes more.  With bucket baths I have washed my hair by pouring the water over my hair standing in the tub but in winter it is warmer if I wash my hair at a washbowl with my robe on.   Again we do the math, we try and find out how much we need.

We do not have to do these things, we have running water but we need to be comfortable how to do these things if there is a water outage from any kind of reason.  There seems to be a lot of storms, floods, droughts and fires these days. 

During our water study last week,  Charles cut his arm outside and was bleeding, we needed fresh running water and our medical kit so we had to refigure saline and canned water for other needs. This is an ongoing study as we figure things out.  We also realized we need to keep more distilled water on hand.  I started reading more information how to distill water, how to make saline.

Don't try to do the study while in the middle and after a Hurricane. 

This is our modern corner.  This is an electric kettle and a portable icemaker. We do not have a icemaker in our refrigerator, we hardly ever use ice. Sometimes ice is helpful in an emergency. 

Either of these can run on electricity on our small solar generator.  The ice can keep medications cold during a power outage.  We are not diabetic but our neighbor is and his medicine needs to be kept cool.  At times we have had antibiotics that need to remain cold and if it is terribly hot and no power we can make ice packs to stay cool.

The kettle is to boil water to wash dishes or take a bath and also runs on our small solar generator. We also have  a gas generator but we have never used it and have had it stored for years. Our solar generator recharges very fast in the sun so we always use this.   

We have learned that our items we have to use for emergencies can be used all the time if we want because they save on our electric and we need to stop thinking just for emergency and incorporate some of these things for now.  This will help towards food costs. 

We did not buy these things all at once, we did over several years by saving the money by not spending. The ice machine is nice to have because it makes ice fast and can be turned off as soon as you have the ice you need.  Ours starts making ice in about six minutes.  The first drop of ice the icemaker makes are small cubes and each drop it does has more solid cubes. They quickly get to normal size.   There are many types of these on the market now.  If the power is out we can put the ice in a small cooler, if the power is on and we want to make ice we can put it in the freezer. 

Consider to store extra water to make ice. 

When you start figuring out how to set up for outages one thing leads to another, this happens when we actually set aside a few days to work it out how to do this. 

There does not need to be a disaster, outage or anything at all to do these things.  If you want to save money, go back to basics. 

The U.S. government recommends to live prepared and even gives suggestions how much water we need and such as that.  However, this is an extremely low amount.  We found out that their amount that is suggested on the site will not be comfortable, there is so much more water that is "needed".  Pet water, our two dogs and two cats drink a lot of water. Things happen and clean up needs to be done, there is no water to spare to even wash our underwear.  

Their suggestion is enough to keep us alive but we would need more for any kind of comfort.

When we started measuring how much water we would need we realized that we have to find a water source because it is going to be very difficult to store water for an outage much less a long term outage.

We want everyone in our home to be comfortable when there is an outage, or even when we are just trying to cut back everything we can to adjust for the higher costs.  

We need to get our mind to settle and think simple. How we do things when the sun is up and letting light into our house, think about what our generations before us did have and did not have.  When they did not have running water what was their source and how did they get it to their house. 

This picture speaks for itself.

If you are using solar lights and such as that, build a cart so you can move it to follow the sun.  We can heat water from the sun, if it is inside of a water vessel or something dark it will heat quicker. 

I am suggesting is we set our home a new way to navigate our way through the time we are living where our food costs, gasoline, fuel, clothing, insurance and medical and housing are much too expensive.  

The water study has just begun.  There is a lot to figure out and I am hoping that we all can work together to figure out how to find water, how to use little water but remain comfortable.

Along our water journey it will help us figure out other things that we can change.

These are daikon radishes we grew, we are learning how to capture more rain water for our garden. One change is we added hanging baskets over other vegetables to grow some vegetables and so the water that drains out of the hanging  baskets drain into other plants below. 

Collecting our water is helpful but when there is a drought we need to reduce inside water use so it can go on the plants.  Saving and using rinse water from inside is something else that is helpful.  This is another reason we use castile soap.  

Then there is what do we do when we have a good steady rain.

We also need to consider how much water we need for cooking if we are going to keep our home as comfortable as we can during an outage or just using less water. 

Flannel bath towels can be used to dry off after a bath.  Flannel was often used in the past.  Some countries call a bath/face cloth a flannel as well. 

Flannel bath towels dry much faster than terry cloth towels and they also take less water to wash.  I have plans to make two flannel towels for Charles and two for myself. The thing about flannel is to get 100% flannel cotton without finishes or repellants because it needs to be absorbent.  

I always keep laundry bars on hand for hand washing laundry.  If the laundry is especially dirty I will add some washing soda to the water.  

Laundry is a big part of the water study.  This past week Charles and I have measured our washing machine water for the wash and rinse cycle by reading our water meter.  I can hand wash with less water and actually get the laundry cleaner.  However, sometimes I need the washer to do the work for me.  It is especially empowering to hand wash laundry, my mind is happy when I do things the old way.   When I have less energy I can at least manage to hand wash the whites, the dishcloths and towels, socks and such as that.  

Many times we wish for things that other people use and then later on realize that a rise in cost came with having that item.  Hand washing and line drying laundry does not use electricity or the expense of the appliances.  

We all need to keep emergency water, how much will you need and how to store it is important.  We cannot bathe if the buckets are in the tub. 

For our recent hurricane I set our water buckets in different parts of the house.  When I mentioned the water study on the forum before the hurricane I mentioned the buckets.  After I posted that  I realized I said three gallon buckets but then realized these are two gallon buckets.  I put some in the tub, some in the kitchen and some in the half bath until I could figure out where we will store our extra water.  

We started using these buckets because I could no longer lift five gallon buckets.  We have had bad experiences with storing bottled water because the plastic bottles and gallon jugs can split and leak which happened in one of our closets. These are nice strong buckets.

It took only part of the day to realize that we would need to use a composting toilet during a water outage because it would take much to much water to keep flushing toilets.  

If you do start water study,  please let us know how that is going up in the forum. If you find a water source let us know what that is. 

I hope that many of you will experiment with ways to store water, and use less water. 

I hope that Charles and I can find a water source that is nearby.  We do collect rain water but that comes from our roof and has debris from trees. We do have a water filter that we can use and we have a way to boil our water if the power is out. We have water purification tablets, life straws and we do keep the regular bleach on hand for emergencies.

Everyone needs to learn how to live through power grid and water emergencies.  Never think this cannot happen.  My goal is to have our emergency items merged with our regular items in a way that helps a emergency situation not so hectic. 

Here is the link below to the post I did about what people did during ww2 when there was serious gasoline rationing. 

https://gdonna.com/living-like-the-past/while-i-can/

I hope to see you in the forum and lets talk about your ideas and experiences with emergency water or your water usage.  Some of you that read here live off grid so your experience will  be helpful. 

Up at the top of this post I mentioned how we realized we no longer had our family members and friends phone numbers memorized.  How many phone numbers and addresses do you have memorized today? 

There are plenty of other things we can talk about as well as long as it is not politics.  

Grandma Donna