Let's hear how Saturday went?

ooh I have a question about today's challenge. It says "water got cut off because you couldn't pay the bill" We're on a well so we have no water bill, do I still have to go without water today? :big grin:

Only way we'd have no water is if the well pump failed or if I go advanced and have no power, which I will probably do. (but I can't do the no gas in car thing because I have to take my daughter across town for the Kommen Race for the Cure and that's too important to skip)

I have question about internet except for the challenge if we have other things to do can we use our library internet for those things?

This one I know about. Have BTDT - used library for internet (internet free there, library free). Fun activity for us (son when he was little - and myself) was a lovely walk to the library (which was a reward for son for good behaviors) and choosing appropriate books. At that time because internet wasn't popular then and also because son was VERY hyperactive there was no question of internet access. Other fun activities included a trip to the museum (also free) and especially to the children's room. Also walks in the park, visits to the swing set. Even a walk into and through a florist/landscaper display - literally taking time to smell the roses.

Nowadays - were I to have no electric, gas it would be chilly - but still survivable and I would get plenty of sleep for sure! However I do have candles although I think I want to get a kerosene lamp for sure! (burns brighter than a better smelling oil lamp). Concerns I have re kerosene lamp have to do with 6 kitties. Re little ones - ummm - kerosene and oil lamps as well as lit candles and young children - are NOT a good combination for sure! And because littles haven't grown up with them they don't really know not to play around with them. Very scary situation that!

Water is tough - VERY tough! And of course on this one I flunk - because I forgot to renew my supply from when the plumber shut off everyone's water to work on plumbing upstairs. Urgh!!! Guess who needs to put in a new supply!

Fun things here? library for sure, a children's museum about the same distance from here, a park a block away - very pretty with flowers. Also on Friday evenings a band concert about 4 -5 blocks from here. Saturdays - farmer's market. Also - for littles - baking with mom, friends over, camping in a "tent" (think blanket draped over a couple of chairs) in the living room. Use of imagination on any of these items - up to and including imagining a space ship journey to a treasure hunt or even a scavenger hunt at home and in the yard. Creating any of a variety of crafty ideas with the neighborhood kids and for adults a quilty afternoon, decorating something with fall stuff, putting by any remaining garden produce (which reminds me.....), doing a nature walk, nature sketches. And the list goes on and on........

Well I thought I would do the challenges to see how prepared I was and failed immediately! On the first day I ran out of diapers and since I have two in diapers I was not going to go a week without them! How embarrasing! I mean I can make a loaf of bread from scratch but I don't have diapers. Well I am going to try to jump in anyway even though, I have already failed.

I like this day. We have 110 gallons of water in our garage, so we should be OK for the day. We never had cable, and the cell phone barely rings (and since DH is on a scout campout, there won't be any calls comign in!), but internet could be an issue for me!

I almost exclusively make my own bread, with freshly ground wheat. It's AMAZING, and I found the best recipe that's 100% whole wheat (no white flour) and it's not crumbly, and holds up great for sandwiches. Of course, if my power's off, I can't bake in my oven, so I guess I could try to bake in the gas grill. That should be interesting.

I can take my kids to the park for a picnic lunch. They'll enjoy that. Wait, no gas....well, we can walk to the school playground for the picnic then.

Whew!

We'll all be gone most of the day-- hubby out of town, kids at work, me at church (funeral/rummage sorting), so having plumbing/water would not be a problem if ours was off.

Re: having water shut off because of non-payment-- here, at least, they have to investigate the cause and give several "warnings", and one missed payment would not get it shut off; this would give a household time to fill up bathtubs and barrels, if nothing else. If it is a financial problem-- there are agencies that step in to assist. More often, such cases have been seniors or foreign-born residents who forgot or didn't know how to pay the bill-- again, there are agencies that step in to help them take care of their bill (set up automatic payments, show how/where to pay, have a friend/relative notified if future payments missed). More likely, the loss of water service would have been due to the city shuttiing off the flow because of problems in the pipes-- we had to have ours shut off because the flow meter/shut-off valve broke a couple of weeks ago; a few times, we've had outages for the whole neighborhood because of the city working on something and/or damaging the pipes.

If we had to stay home: right now, have 1 1/2 55gal barrels with drinking water, plus 2 1/2 5gal bottles of filtered water and our Berkey filter was filled last night. Still have ~ 1/2 a plastic trashcan full of "watering water" (catches rain when we have that rare and blessed event). It already has plant food in it, but in a real emergency, we could use it for flushing toilets. One of the two toilets is a low-flow with the air "flush"-- it doesn't refill a tank after flushing, just the bowl, and this is ~ 1 1/2 G.

Re: cable, etc. I don't watch TV anyway, so this isn't a problem for me. Cell phone-- I have one, but rarely use it. Maybe get a call once or twice a week, and use it to make calls less often than that. Kids have battery power for their video games and laptops, if they want to use those. I can read and/or do crochet-- beading if I have good light (if I didn't have to be a t church today, I would be setting up a table outside to bead!).

Bread-- too hot to be baking, even if I were home to do it. I still have plans to try solar oven bread baking, but haven't got around to it yet. We don't eat all that much bread, anyway (except if it's "hot out of the oven"!)-- rice is the family staple. Have almost 50# of wheat, though, if we want to make flour (and have the electricity to grind it)-- and if we run out of rice, the "wheat berries" were declared "OK" by hubby and kids.

this will be an ok challenge.....
Power out, no problem -Generator for now and then to keep fridge, freezer going, plus if need for some other items..septic pump,breadmaker and such...but has never run a full day or such...have enough gas for about 5+ days.......
being on a well (like ZooNana) I would have water, but will play like the pump or such is being fixed , so water out of the storage .......
Lunch and Dinner, will be vey easy
Lunch- sandwhich with chips/fruit
Dinner- caesar salad with chicken strips
snacks- fruit, crackers, veggies with dip .....
for fun...mmhhh, well I live on an Island in the Great NorthWest....taking walks, fishing for dinner(bank or with neighbors boat who like company, now and then), or like now, take the time to re- organize or sort the house...
also I would be able to go online, either on base(MRW) or liabrary....or even my neighbors wireless.....;-0

Aside from the whining from my husband about no TV today. We will live. We have planned a walk around the neighborhood. And breaking out the game box that I have been building and working on. I hung up sheets on the clothes line and put some across the top and we now have a huge tent fort to play in. Going to take our nap out side today in the tent fort. We have plenty of water on hand and lots of food storage. We will not go anywhere today. We even broke out the out door solar shower and outdoor potty. My 3yr old thinks its so much fun to go potty outside. This has already been an adventure with the pop up potty tent. Well its almost lunch time and the bread dough is just about ready to go into the outside oven (We have a fire pit cooker that we built). We are going to try and make bread in the dutch oven on the fire pit. I will let you know how it works out. Good luck everybody.

Well everything is time related. We have incomes that will not stop unless the federal gov collapes. Hubby not playing along so TV stays on. We have plenty of gas to keep atleast 1 generator running to use on frig, freezer, & cooking appliance (with limited uses) for at least a month. Keeping gas would be the major priority. We have plenty of food & other nec. for a year with conservative use. My husband loves to hunt & fish, so meat is no problem(he has plenty of ammo put back). We live in the country so can cook over open wood fire for most things. Now for making bread. I don't know if many of you realize without power your oven will not work. We have a few options, but I have not tried them. Nu-wave counter top oven & lg electrical roaster, but both require electricity. Now a dutch oven would work in our smoker with wood collected in the woods next door. I have never made a good loaf without a mixmaster. That would be a big problem, but I quess with practice I could manage. We have no children at home, so to intertain ourselves, after working to catch/make food we have several boardgames & card games. I love to scrapbook & have plent y of supplies for a quiet a while. My husband loves to work outside most of the time. During hard time in the past my husband has hired out as handyman, yardman, or any other form of manual labor so we always had some kind of income. We have lived one winter with only 2 fireplaces to keep warm & a hotplate & microwave to cook for 7 people. The washing machine brokedown while my sister & her 2 boys were visiting. How many of you have hand washed bluejeans for 9 people in the bathtub. Not an easy task I can tell you, but possible. So depending on the time we are without income I think we can do a pretty good job of surviving. I do have disablity insurance which I recommend that everyone have. Esp with any loans you make. It can save you from lossing your house or car.

We have some water bottles, so good for a day on that. Although I do have 2- 55 gal drums in gargae that won't help us out when they are empty. Been meaning to fill them for a few months. We can walk to our activity tobight but my husband has to work so he has to us gas. the bread is easy. we normally buy but do make bread occationally. And we don't have cable anyway so not a problem. The hard part will be the cell phones. We don't have a home phone so would they count as our home phone? I will try really hard not to us it.

Jessica if we share recipes I would like your bread one Please.

Hopefully I will be prepared for tomorrows.

If you have a favorite bread machine recipe, you can use it to make bread "by hand" (the other way doesn't necessarily work, though). I've used a couple (don't have a machine), and except for making only one loaf, they were fine.

Personally, I rarely follow a specific recipe when in a "bread making" mode.... If your proportions are approximately correct re: flour to liquid (so you have a workable dough), and the dough rises, you'll do OK. Might not be wonderful, but it'll be OK.

Forgot to address several other areas. We have a pond so water is no problem. I have put back some drinking water, but the pond can be filtered & boiled it needed. We have a seware treatment plant that would have to be placed on the generator. We cann't get any TV without cable, but we have over 2000 DVD's as long as we have gas & generators we can watch many different types of shows. If this was winter we have 3 portable propane heaters that work pretty well. We also have 3 portable space heaters we can use.

I am somewhat prepared for this one.

Unfortunately big problem NO WATER. YIKES. SO I will not be able to go without water.

I do however don't have cable so no problem. Can walk to library for internet access. We already don't have gas in the car so that works too. We also have a pay as you go cell phone and both hubby and I only have less than 10 mins left on them so will not be using anyways.

I went down to make the bread earlier and I don't have years currently looking for a non yeast recipe for bread for sandwich making.

I have a question though if we are not doing the advanced challenge can we watch movies? My in laws and i are in the middle of a Harry Potter Marathon so they were wondering?

For fun activity I had just read in a magazine about this fun activity is to walk around and try and find the shape of letters in weird places. So we will be doing that today if we have time. Today';s a tight schedule making the big dinner that was supposed to be last night. Than hubby has to leave for work by 5:30 pm and I am leaving at 6 pm for stake conference

I was raised for this challenge. I spent my childhood poor. So everything on that list has happened :).
See I knew I was so poor growing up for a reason.
I remember walking a mile to the pay phone to call my dad. I remember filling up water at the neighbors house because we didn't have any. and then having to heat the water on the stove for a bath.

So for today, I dont have any water stored right now so that one is not going to work. But where I live the water company can not shut off your water for non payment, they simply put liens against your home.
Something about sustaining life utility lol.
so we are going to try and do everything else but the water thing

Wish me luck as I go tell hubby no cable for today :)

This day is going well so far. We went to watch our son run for CC for school. It is a nice day so doing things together outside will be fun. We don't watch TV so that is not a problem. Our daughter is reading a book while I am writing this. I have started trying to make bread this year as a goal. I have not mastered it yet but my family has not complained yet. Can I use a bread machine or is that cheating? Our cell phone gets bad reception. The joke is that we never have a bar when we need one. We can still use the house phone, right?
My family is realizing that we have had to deal with a lot of this already. Life happens. It has helped to hear how others deal with the challenges. Thanks for doing this.

Today hasn't been so bad. Lucky for us, we just filled our 4 55 gallon water drums a few days ago. We also have stored bottle water. As far as the toilet goes, we have a portable camping toilet with a storage of plastic bags, baby wipes, Lysol, and TP. My kids really wanted to use it, but I told them it was only for "real emergencies' and we just couldn't bury the used plastic bags in our yard.
This toilet can be such a lifesaver. We were in a situation once during a huge ice storm, that the city's water power was threatened and the water suppy would of been powered off if generators weren't brought in by the military. The whole city was devastated and w/o power for a week and if it weren't for the generators we would of had no water also. We managed to survive for a week w/o power, but it would of been extremely difficult if we didn't have flushing toilets.
I bake bread a few times a week anyway so that is easy. We don't have cable and we can walk to the library for internet use. Cell phone use is a little more difficult since my husband is traveling and he usually calls a few times during the day.
I am looking forward to a quiet afternoon with my 6 kids playing games and being outside.

I wonder and I don't want to wander to far of topic.....did you ever had someone tell you that you have an Hoarder Disorder, plus of other names.....?
Few years back, a neighbour called me that and a few other things, plus they even went as far to bring me business cards from doc. , to tak care of this .....I'll kept it friendly but also knowing that they would be oving soon.
How do you all feel when ppl make remarks of homemade breads, prepareness and such ...?
My friends and family call me The Country Feed Store but they are happy and glad that they always can count on me, in either having the needed item or be able to pull some item off (like made from scratch cup cakes and such)......also if the need ever would arise, we could last quite a while pulling all our resources together ........

There are a few people at work that made jokes about my food storage. But there are a few like minded people there. They a county like use & at least have a small stockpile saved. Mostly to get bargens or so they can made fewer trips to town. But most fokes at work sure like it when I bring in homemade items. Question, neighbor just brough over a bag of sweet potatoes. I did not buy them. I can use them for dinner tonight? I am starting some bread without my mixmaster. Wish me luck.

Today is actually doable for me! It's my everyday life (except for the water issue). We have no cell phones, cable, and are almost always on empty as we're students and broke. So yah, we did the Farmer's Market, threw some ingredients in the bread machine, and now we're off to the lake (biking distance for us) for a day at the beach with a picnic. Should be fun. I do wish I had more water, as we're good for today, but that's about it when it comes to flushing (who knew toilets used so much!).

Okay, I am passing the water part of this one. Two weeks ago my pump went down and we were without water for real for 5 days. I found out how much water it takes to flush a toilet, and we had to wash everything in the sink, by hand and we reused wash water alot. As for the cell phones, internet, etc., I am doing that part, only getting on to check what our challenge was (I actually guessed it would have something to do with this today), to respond to you and then I am getting off. See you tomorrow!

I am not doing the individual days part of the challenge, just the 7 day "don't spend" part (although dh did have to go out today and buy some things - we had only just got back from holiday yesterday {Friday} and had some obligations to meet). Even though I'm not doing the daily challenge I did want to comment on what I have found so far - I've noticed people saying they didn't have this or that - I want to add our lack in - worm tablets. I know, gross. One of my children presented me with this problem last night, and took the last tablet we had in the house, but that left the other 6 of us that need to take them too. (Dh did buy some today.) So that is something that I think should go into storage along with the other meds - I have a number of things but didn't think of that one!

I'm hoping to do the daily challenges with my family on different days, after planning it out with dh. It won't be a surprise to us (unless dh takes over and tells me when the days will be) but still will be a good exercise.

My notes about today's challenge:
1. It's hard to pour water from a 6 gal container that doesn't have a handle on the side. I poured part into a jug with a bottom spout to use in the kitchen, and part into a jug for the one bathroom with a low-flow toilet. (and part onto the floor. Ooops)
2. Without cable, I get exactly ONE channel. (PBS, and they are having a fundraiser--saying how much the economy has impacted them, so hey, they are participating in the challenge too!)
3. Went to the library for fun activity (Bonus: used the bathroom!)
4. Do you know how long it takes to wash dishes by hand when you are trying to conserve water?
5. Hoping for the best on the bread. I'm assuming only the water is turned off so used Cuisinart to mix/knead. so far so good. I'd also be interested in the bread recipe mentioned above.
6. Church conference this eve, so lack of internet not much of an issue. Hey, they have bathrooms there too...

I would say that food storage is VERY different from hoarding. I have known someone with this disorder. They do not just store necessities, they are unable to throw ANYTHING away, including their garbage.

This has been an emotionally draining on me. I didnt think it would take a toll this way, but it could just be because I am already emotional because of my hormones. Here is how we have worked out our day. We woke and checked the site. We turned off all the water in the house (except for our new students bathroom because we cant just throw this on them and they are gone for most of the day anyway), and are solely relying on our water storage. We had LOTS of dishes left over from last nights big dinner (and we even got part of them done, but with so many people here, and new students, we werent able to get them all completed). We opened up one barrel and started to get water out of it. We are keeping watering cans in the bathrooms and by sinks full so we can wash our hands. We have a tracker in the bathroom and after every 5 people using the bathroom, we will go in and fill the tank, and flush, and start over. We brought water up to put in the fridge for cold water as well. We filled a pot with water and boiled it to do dishes with... one sink with soapy water, and one with rinsing water.

We turned off our cell phones, and I started making bread for tonights dinner. I already made bread a few days ago, however, we had something planned for tonight that wouldnt cost any money that we are doing outside of the home. We are having a block party! haha Someone else is providing the grill, and we were going to take steak for just our family, but decided on hot dogs instead because if we were in a tight situation, we wouldnt use steak (it might already be gone anyway), and we have a surplus of hot dogs in the freezer. So, the bread I am making is hot dog buns!

It has been a busy day too, because we have been making lists in order to get more organized here in the house, and working on some of those things as well, letting the kids play with friends, and taking a nap. ;)

As far as cable, we dont have that anyway, and havent had it for 6 years... hubby lost his job, and we had to cut things out, and that was one of them. I never went back to it, because honestly, as much as I would love to watch The Food Network, or let my kids watch The Disney Channel, we got along without them, and I didnt want the temptation back.

I will let you know how the rest of the day goes. :)

Today brought our family closer. I could use more days like this one. There is so much to do as a family without having to spend money or rely on TV or video games to amuse you. We need to remember to take the opportunity to spend time together. Do things like get outside and go to the park, play board games or even remember that there are people to help all of us if we just ask. Thanks for doing this challenge, it puts life into perspective.

Today i wasn't able to do our fun activity out of the house and hubby did have to make a run to the store for some supplies for his birthday on Monday. So Oops poor planing on my part. That is something to think of though to have that stuff available not only for company but meals for birthdays and such as you can't control when things are going to get tight. Although I did not use water from storage because I have none. I was very conscious as to when I used water. It was also amazing to look around and think of the things I take for granted. Like there has not always been running water and I am so thankful that I live in a time where I can just turn on faucet to fill up jugs for storage or just turn on faucet. I would of hated to live in the time where you had to hike to go get water from a well. At the same time maybe having to do that would help me lose this weight. HEHE

So today was a eye opener and how much I really do have even though I am still struggling.

I had a hard time while making bread. I automatically started washing my hands I don't know how many times. That was a hard one for me. I should have had my husband turn the water off to the house which would have made it easier. Bread turned otu really good though!!!

I was able to do everything EXCEPT keep my husband from watching the BYU game. Sorry, he used the cable.

I REALLY missed running water. Yeah, I have tons in bottles, but that isn't as convenient. Internet too, I would REALLY miss having that disconnected!!

We’re used to the economic crisis situation. DH was out of work for 6 months last year. If it weren’t for my food storage I don’t know how we would have made it through. We’re still playing catch up. One good thing that came of that was DH respects my “hobby” more and doesn’t roll his eyes anymore when I come home with cases of food or whatever.

There was no problem losing cable TV, as we don’t have it anyway. I didn’t need my phone today, so that worked out too. It was too cold to go do anything outside. We live way too far from town or friends to go walk anywhere for an activity.

Our water can’t be turned off for non payment, because we have no water bill, we’re on a well. But, we won’t have water if we lose electricity, because the well pump won’t work. Our well has a 500 gallon storage tank, and we can use that water, but it won’t pump out without electricity either. If we need that water, we have to climb down in the well house and bring it out by hand. We live on 5 acres out in the country, so things are a bit different out here.

We’re often without power here, usually from thunderstorms, but sometimes during a blizzard. We lose power 3-4+ times a month during the stormy season. So we’re pretty used to dealing with that. The year before last we were without power for 4 days during a blizzard. We have a generator, and when the power is out we use it, mainly to power the fridge and freezers. We only turn it on every few hours, so we save gas. (we have gas stored just for that)

We have plenty of water stored in the house for drinking, washing and flushing. When the power was out during the blizzard mentioned above, we melted snow on the propane fireplace to use for flushing toilets. Now for toilet flushing we have a 55 gal water drum in the master bathroom. It has a round wood piece on the top and we cover it with a table cloth, so it looks like a piece of furniture. When we need to use it we attach a siphon pump and direct a hose from the pump to the toilet. Just pump a few times and the water goes right into the toilet. I came up with that idea after being tired of dragging buckets and being unable to lift 6 gal water containers into the bathroom.

When you’re using carried in water to flush toilets, make everyone put their toilet paper in the trash instead of the toilet. Because your using less water to flush it’ll have a hard time flushing toilet paper down, and that can cause a problem, ask me how I know.

I was pretty sure we couldn’t do the no water and no electricity thing today, because we have a family member staying the week with us, and he already thinks I’m insane. Fortunately, he decided to go visit some friends in town, so we ended up being able to participate. This worked out another way too, because he dropped my daughter off for the Race for the Cure on his way, and I didn’t have to use our car for it :)

I wouldn’t have been able to use the solar shower today. We had a cloudy, rainy day and the solar shower wouldn’t have heated up. So it’s sponge baths for us instead. I have a pot of water out on the grill side burner heating up now, to do dishes etc. I honestly forgot how long that takes to heat up outside in the cold. I probably should have used the turkey fryer and its pot instead. I need to figure out how to figure how long those propane tanks will last for things like this. Anyone know how to figure that out?? We’re eating on paper plates because I refuse to do more dishes than what’s needed to cook the meal when there’s no water.

It worked out well needing to bake bread, because the oven helped warm up the chilly house. Since we have a propane stove/oven, we can still cook when the electricity is out. When we bake bread we have to make some regular bread and some gluten free bread. (or should we call it a gluten free brick since most times gluten free stuff comes out more like a brick than bread) My daughter was happy, because I haven’t made homemade gluten free bread in a while

The kids love lights out days, they get to play with their wind up flashlights (man that noise gets annoying after a while). Right now they’re keeping busy playing with my Tupperware. (who says kids need toys?)

Let's see...water wouldn't be an issue for us. We do have culinary water that we pay for, but we also have two flowing wells on our farm. My kids don't seem to think that they ever need to flush the toilet (I think I'm going to start charging them every time they forget!), so today I just quit reminding them to do it. My inlaws run two different outdoor oriented businesses and therefore have port-a-potties that we could use if we needed to (they live just down the road from us). As far as doing dishes, we don't have a dishwasher so I always do them by hand and today I just tried to fill the sink less than I usually do. We have LOADS of water stored downstairs but I took the easy way out and pretended that I was using stored water. I didn't use as much as we have stored. I don't have a cell phone so that wasn't a problem and DH is gone hunting this weekend but his work pays for his. I did let my 3yo DD watch TV so I could clean up my house without as much distraction (I know that didn't contribute to us spending time together) and my other 4 kids helped clean up (with MUCH persuasion!). I can't decide if I'm going to be good and try to stick to the challenge and let them have showers tomorrow or if they'll do it tonight.
I was already planning on making bread today so that turned out to be a bonus. We make bread 2-3 times a week and I'm working to make sure I have enough supplies in storage to last for a year. If we didn't have power we have a really cool old wood/coal burning stove that I use as a decoration, but it really does work and we are already set up for it to be vented outside.

Also, I don't think of food storage as hoarding either. I think of it as saving TONS of money. Two of our local grocery stores are having case lot sales this week so I totalled up what I needed to get our storage up to a years supply. Between those two sales, buying beef and pork from two of our neighbors, what I canned and stored from our garden and farm and stocking up at the cannery I will spend about $1500. The only things I will have to buy on a regular basis are milk, eggs and fresh fruit and some veggies. I know families that are smaller than mine who spend that much in just a couple of months and eat a lot of processed and unhealthy food. I think of food storage as wise shopping and it would save our family in the event of any of the challenges we have had this week.