Water...can't live without it.

Well this past weekend I had a real eye opener. We have a well that supplies our water and it was having issues, we lost water Saturday and did not get it back until Monday afternoon. For 48 hours we were with out water and it was not a good feeling. We went through what water I had stored, which was ten (10) gallons rather quickly, it was all gone before bedtime Saturday night. Then we went looking for more. Because the county is laying new water lines everyone’s water had been brown so they had bought up just about all the water. Needless to say we had problems finding water.

By Monday afternoon my house was full of unhappy campers and I realized real quick that the suggested one (1) gallon per person per day was no where near enough; especially when you drink more than a gallon of water a day. My husband works outside and usually drinks two (2) gallons of water a day himself. We hardly ever have sodas in our house we just don’t drink them. By Monday afternoon we were all physically ill. We were sick of sodas, and sports drinks. We wanted water we were craving water. It is not that we didn’t have water, over all we bought something like twenty (20) gallons this weekend and then refilled the empty bottles at a friend’s house, but it was the fact that we knew we could not have it anytime we wanted it. We were all grumpy because we could not get showers, we could not flush, dishes piled up even though we used paper plates and cups, dirty clothes couldn’t be washed all in all we were miserable.

So the lesson learned is the meager one (1) gallon a day that is suggest to be stored per person is no where near sufficient. So I am working on a new storage plan for water. I will need clean water for cooking and drinking, bathing and brushing teeth. However, I can use rain water or gray water for flushing. My clean water will need to be stored in clean, odor free and BPA free containers. The flushing water will be stored in garbage cans outside. I am purchasing the large rolling garbage cans that have the lock down lid. This water will be used only for flushing the toilets.

If you have animals like we do don’t forget to store water for them. We had to share our water with a dog and two cats.

Needless to say I will not be caught like this again.