1. Get everyone showered.
Sounds too unimportant to mention - until you've had no hydro for 2 days and you start to feel really grubby. Doesn't do much for morale. We've had no water at times for varying reasons - winter storms, lightning strike, broken well - and the kids are the unhappiest about the no-shower situation moreso than everything else. Maybe it's because the heat and food can be dealt with (we always have heat and can open a can of food) but there's nothing we can do to get a shower once the storm is here.
When we lived in town for 1.5 years we could still run all the water in the house but the hot water only stayed hot for about half an hour but in the country, ALL of the water will run for less than 30 seconds and then we're done.
2. Do your dishes. Another seemingly unimportant thing until you go through every last dish in the first few days of no hydro and can't wash a single one. Would be good to have them all washed and then use paper plates, etc. as they can be thrown into the fire.
3. Get all of your laundry done and put away. Another seemingly unimportant one until you have nothing clean left to put on and you find yourself and your whole family looking for your cleanest dirty shirts.
A lady on YouTube mentioned this along with the dishes idea and the comments underneath were, as usual for YouTube, pretty vicious, indicating that no one ever has dirty dishes in their sinks or on their counters. Bull!! Most people have some dirty dishes - somewhere! At least any house I've ever been in - especially if there are teens, toddlers or anyone in between.
4. Flush the toilet! Wow! This one will really sound stupid and miniscule but it's something that we always had to deal with - kids not flushing the toilet. Suddenly we're without hydro and knowing that we only get to flush that toilet a few times, we have to decide how long to wait before flushing it the first time. Better to start out with it empty but that's not something I could get through to my kids. Listening to other mothers, I know that their kids were the same so I'm thinking that it must be universal child behavior. If you don't have kids or your kids never do this, consider yourself lucky and ignore #4!!!
5. Fill the tub (or pails) with water. I've heard this mentioned numerous times before on YouTube, blogs, TV but never an explanation as to why. I just pictured someone getting desperate to be clean and jumping in regardless of how cold the water was. But it was mentioned on Anderson Live that you need that water for flushing the toilet. You could do that with pails of water, also.
We sold our 2nd farm to old-order Mennonites. Part of the deal was that we would take everything out of the house that was modern -light fixtures, light switches, hydro outlets, pumps and everything else - except the toilets. (They wanted this stuff gone and would burn it or take it to the dump.) They kept buckets of water beside the toilets for flushing and I guess we can do the same.
6. The usual - fill up any container possible with drinking water and store in fridge. Have lots of bottled water stored and ready.
Need to change or improve---Well, since my kids have outgrown the I-don't-have-to-flush-the-toilet-because-someone-else-will stage, that's not a problem anymore but having every dish and all the laundry perpetually done is not so easy. I just need to get the kids to stop drinking all the bottled water. I refill my water bottle repeately and I'd like them to do the same.
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