During the recent power outage, I felt like I was the only person on the block taking the outage as seriously as it could have been. It was an outage during a time when the power company was short-staffed. It could have been really extended.
Somehow, I was the only weirdo on the street using the grill to heat water. The people in this area are all at least 20 years older than my husband and me, and they all seem to have backup generators.
It sounds like everyone’s doing yard work, but they’re not.
I don’t have a generator, so I’m camping… Sort of.
I usually do dishes everyday so they don’t pile up, but the kitchen doesn’t have a window. Can’t do dishes? Screw that. I hauled all the stuff outside this morning and did dishes on the porch.
I have fond memories of reading The Boxcar Children, and l I took a note from them. I scrubbed all my dishes in cool water (since that’s what I had), and carefully dipped them in boiling water I heated on the grill.
I also heated water on the grill for my coffee and cooked. Thankfully, after a while (a day and a half), the lights did come back on. That was great, but I did learn some things.
I found out that I love the propane grill. It has on/off knobs and cooks a lot like my electric oven. In a situation where I can’t get propane, however, I need to be able to cook on wood. Also, I definitely want an outdoor kitchen. I kept having to lug things in and out during the outage.
Natural Light! We need more of it! Windows everywhere!
I also decided that I want to practice making my own lighter fluid. In theory, I can grow corn and sugarcane, although I need to practice that, and I can make lighter fluid out of those.
I think I need milk goats. If we need cheese or oil, milk goats would be an easy way to get it. Plus they would clear brush, and if we can officially buy that 7-acre property, we’ll need that.
With all this being said, I want a generator. I don’t want to use it all the time, but for running the deep freeze and doing laundry, it would make life easier.
Frugal Treehugger 