Preparation for Power Outage in a Nutshell

You want WARMTH ! Layers of clothes. Hot Hands products.

You want LIGHT! (Solar devices are the BEST!)

You want a means of cooking or warming your food, and you want comfort foods. (canned soups, ravioli etc.) Hot chocolate. Mac N Cheese.

Power Outage Fun

During a power outage, you can just say you are "unplugged." ...and you can still have fun..the old fashioned way!








During a long term power outage, our charged devices (iPad, iPod, iPod Touch, Smart phone, Kindle, Android, etc.) will eventually run out of power. Consider the old fashioned ways of occupying your mind or of entertaining yourselves.

Have games, puzzles, books, drawing paper, crayons, etc. You will only be limited by your imagination!

This is why you want light...so you can see to play your games, ready your books, draw your masterpieces.

Musicians in the family can play their instruments! (If they are non electrical.) A harmonica would be a good thing to have in the home. And a guitar. Or Ukulele.

A recorder is easy. Create a jugband. Sing. Make up songs. Write.

Becoming unplugged won't be all that bad! I can be lots of fun!

Portable Stoves

One day last October, I was in San Diego walking down a sidewalk near where some Mexican landscape workers were sitting on the ground around a portable stove, laughing and talking and cooking their tortillas.

Now this was eating in style! No cold sack lunch for these guys! Just the wonderful aroma of cooked corn tortillas and whatever else they had. (I did not linger to see.) I want one of those I thought!

And sure enough, I did get one at a swap meet, 2 months later, for 20 dollars. The fuel cartridge -butane -was 2 dollars. Now I am ready for a long term winter power outage. I can cook anything on my portable stove! These little stoves cook as well as your own kitchen stove. One burner at a time is all I need, how about you?
I found an even cheaper model on amazon.com.....

Deluxe Butane Burner Stove & Free Case
by Smart Chef

Price: $13.30 Check it out!

http://www.amazon.com/Deluxe-Butane-Burner-Stove-Free/dp/B000BVC4NY

The Power Went Out And....

The house instantly became pitch black dark! But...

I was ready and fearless!

I looked out the window..the neighbors to the back had lights. I went to the front door and peered out. Complete darkness in all the homes across the street. No street light.

I went to out bedroom and got our three solar lanterns and brought them into the kitchen. There! Great! Lots of light! But I sure hoped the electric company would fix the problem soon.

I love our lanterns! Here they are...lighting up the kitchen during that power outage.

(Now you don't have to have SOLAR lanterns: my folks have lanterns that look almost exactly like this, but they are battery operated and sometimes they forget to check the batteries and get caught during a power outage without light. Usually, though, they are fine ready and the lantern is ready and handy.)


I had light, but I had a problem. Our gas oven stopped working! I was baking a turkey breast at the time...about 11:00 at night during the week before Christmas. Why did my oven stop working? It is not an electric stove. True. But the thermostat is electric...and so when the temperature of the oven dipped a bit, the thermostat did not kick in and the oven slowly got cooler.

I started to wonder when the folks at the electric company would get this straightened out.

Wait! Maybe they do not even know about this problem in our neighborhood. I called 9-1-1 (ON OUR LAND LINE because our cordless phones were not working) and told the gal that this particular neighborhood had no electricity. She said they knew about it.

My turkey breast had another hour and a half of baking/roasting....and I did not have any idea when the power would return. If it would not return for four or 5 hours, I would be in trouble.

I needed to get this meat cooked. I couldn't very well take it out of the oven and put it in the refrigerator. I decided I would relax and read for a while.

First, though, I turned off the computer and the power strip it is connected to.

Then I called our neighbor across the street on my cell phone (which was working!) and took a solar lantern over to him to use. He had a flashlight but welcomed the lantern, which he could set on a table and it gave off more light.

I then sat down and caught up on some reading and waited for the lights to go back on.

After 45 minutes, I began to think of that turkey breast again.

The best possible thing I could do, I thought, is to grill it on our outdoor BBQ grill. I went outside to the back patio to see if we had some charcoal. We did. Good! Next step, get the grill and clean it up and get it ready.

As I started to do that, the lights came back on! Yes!

I was set back a little that night and got to bed at 2:30am (had to finish cooking the turkey breast, then cool it off enough to refrigerate it.)

I was so glad I had those 3 solar lanterns! And that I could share one with a neighbor..and that someone out there (some electric company employees)knew how to get the power going again.

Solar Path Lights Save the Night

Do you have some of those solar path lights that you can buy individually for about 3 bucks (or more) and then stick them in your lawn? All day long, these items collect solar energy and when the sun goes down and it is dark, they light up quite brightly! If you need a light, this is a good reliable source...doesn't need expensive batteries:the sunlight is free of charge(so far!)

What I like about these is that they are carried easily from room to room, a solar torch, as it were. Here I am carrying mine down the hall in the darkness. It surely lights my way.


I use it to illuminate the pages of the book I am reading. It does a great job.

Great Use of A Dollar Raincoat

I may have told this story already, but here goes:

This is me one summer at the crest of a hill on a freeway (actually, this is at "the point of the mountain" in Utah...between Provo/Orem area and Salt Lake City.)

What happened is this: It was raining, and a very busy Friday afternoon (this was the day Michael Jackson died 2 years ago)and we got a flat tire. It was the tire on the left side of the car, so it was quite dangerous for my hsuband to be changing that tire, with his backside jutting out into the oncoming traffic on the slick road. I was thinking: I have to warn the cars to slow down as they crested the hill. So I put on my bright yellow raincoat from the 99 Cents Only store that I had in my Car kit. And I stood there with my arms holding the coat out so I would be more visible. I also was praying no one would hit me/us. Our daughter took this picture of me with

her phone. The hard part of this whole thing was that before my husband could jack up the car, he had to remove from the car of the car all the heavy granite slabs he had just purchased! This rain coat must not have had a hood (I can't recall)...not good. I should have been wearing a rain hat!!!

The main point of this post: Have a bright colored raincoat in your car!!! If it night, you can use it many ways. You can wear it so you can be seen (if you have to get out of your car at the side of the road)and not hit by other cars whizzing past. You can wave it over your head for a distress signal. It will keep you dry if you have to walk or work in the rain.

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Keeping Warm in your Cold House

Frosted Window Panes! You think you are cold???? Is there 1 and 1/2 inches of ice on your inside window?

Do you have a nice warm bed with flannel sheets and lots of blankets?

Dealing With the Cold

Here are 2 stories from my life that may enlighten you to the fact that you can survive well if you have no heating in your home/room.

Story Number 1

This goes back to the late 60′s. I was a college student living at home (Central Wisconsin-often the "coldest spot in the nation today" as the radio announcer often told us) and my brother left for the navy. I inherited his bedroom and for the first time in my life, I had my own room. The bedroom was upstairs, across the way from the attic door, which was actually a curtain hanging in the doorway. The attic’s ceiling was just the wood underneath the shingles of the roof. No insulation. In my new bedroom, there were no heat vents coming in from the basement furnace. I lived in this bedroom for 3 years, through all seasons.

This bedroom was my schoolroom for learning how to cope with extreme indoor temperatures. Before I describe my experiences in winter in this room, let me mention that there are 2 kinds of people in this world: people who are usually hot, and people who are usually cold. I am usually cold. I wear a sweater when it is 80 degrees.

In this bedroom, during the month of January and usually half of February or more, you could see your breath! Any time of the day. Frost, as well as being on the outside of the window, was on the inside of the window and usually 1 inch thick or more. We had 3 windows on the west wall. You could not see out the window for all that frost. We never tried to chisel it off…more would come the next day if we did.

Well, I had to sleep and sleep well because I always had early classes (that started at 7am) to walk over a mile to (there are other stories!) This was my strategy:

First I made sure I had flannel top and bottom sheets on the bed. And then I made sure I had at least 5 blankets on the bed including 2 heavy wool army blankets . My pajamas were actually thick sweat pants and a thick sweat shirt with insulated (thermal underwear) top under the sweat shirt. I had thick hunting socks on my feet and a thick knit cap on my head. I can’t recall if I had mittens on…probably.

Now, here is where my brilliance shows up: I jogged in place for 10 minutes or so..until my blood was going strong, my heart was beating fast , my muscles were all working and I was generating a lot of heat. Then I would jump in bed and cover up! The heat from my body would quickly spread to the flannel sheet below me and the blankets on top of me and soon I would be in dreamland…not caring if my breath was visible and the ice on the windows increased through the night.

So do not be dismayed if you home is unheated during a power outage in winter. Just dress warm and do some heavy exercising periodically to keep you body warm. You’ll do fine.



Story Number 2



I am a pansy compared to my former neighbor. She was a single mom, had 5 kids at home, and lived across the street in a big 2 story house. For 3 winters (maybe more) there furnace was broke and never repaired. They could not afford it. So how did they keep warm? They just wore their coats all day and all night. They got used to this and were fine.

What we learn is this: We can survive in a cold house. Be grateful for the walls and roof to keep the wind out, and bundle up with extra clothes, jackets, sweaters, etc. Have on hand a nice thick knit stocking cap for each member of the family and heavy socks! (go to the hunting section of Walmart or sporting good stores for the best socks!) And have some fun exercising.

Another tip:

Use your Sterno stove or propane stove to make hot drinks of herb tea, hot chocolate, hot prune juice (this is a favorite of mine), hot broth, etc. This will comfort and warm your chilled bodies. You will survive and you will have some good stries (like me) to tell your children and grandchildren.

Thanks for logging on. Remember: If you are prepared,you shall not fear. ~Joan Hulihan