Skip to main content

Storm Prep

With hurricane season fast approaching, I need to start my annual preparations by inventorying our nonperishable food, batteries, pet food, medicines, etc. and have my guy test our generator and get an extra tank of propane for the grill. My new thinking after experiencing the flooding in 2022 is to boost our food stores so we can hunker down for longer periods of time if we have to. All the country roads leading out of our area are prone to flooding out, plus they're getting old now, so there may be times ahead when the roads become impassable.

I'm thinking in addition to bottled water I might invest in a few five-gallon storage containers. We fill buckets and the bathtubs whenever there's a storm approaching, but if our outside well pump gets wiped out we won't have water for days or weeks, and there's never a guarantee we can drive out to buy some. I'll also have to freeze more bottled water now that we have the chest freezer to keep cold (I freeze the bottles and use them liked bagged ice because there's no mess or leakage.)

Around the house we've installed light bulbs with their own power supply, should the electricity go out for an extended period. They're good for about six hours, but we won't keep them on except when we have to at night. We have a fairly endless supply of flashlights, and little light-switch style LED lights mounted in the bathrooms. I also like to put together a little basket of toiletries for the guest bathroom in case our neighbors who don't have generators need to use it. Sometimes after a storm the cleanup is hot, sweaty work, and just being able to take a shower is really nice.

Last year we got through the two storms that came just fine, and I'm not worried about doing the same this season. I just like to prepared way in advance and then stay that way so I don't have to run around in panic mode when a hurricane tracks in our direction.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.
Post a Comment
Read more

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.
Post a Comment
Read more

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to...
Post a Comment
Read more