What is self-sufficiency?
If I asked you what self-sufficiency is, what would your answer be? I asked that very question on my personal page and on my facebook group last week. These were some of the responses I got.
“To have all that you need or the ability to do/make/get all that you need for the task in front of you.”
“For us it means trying to supply as many of our own needs as we can ourselves. Feeling good in knowing what’s going in our bodies and on our bodies. It’s been a 6 year process getting to where we are now and we try to be more self sufficient and sustaining each year.”
“Growing and raising what I can to feed my family, learning the ways of canning and preserving foods, not relying on outside sources (having the knowledge and capability to survive if the shtf).”
“I would like to be able to build a Life that Circumstances can not disrupt. This is Independence and Self Sufficiency for me. And to not shop in the wet cold of Winter.”
” Being able to survive from the resources available in your immediate community (100 miles or less). This includes not only goods but skills and relationships. None of us can have all the skills we need, but we can find people in our community with different skills and goods from the ones we have/produce and thus not be at as high of a risk if our national infrastructure (food delivery, communication, etc) is damaged.”
Whatever your definition, self-sufficiency has many facets.
In order to be truly self-sufficient, there are a lot of systems that you have to have in place. The great thing is that each system in itself is doable with some ingenuity, sweat equity, and sometimes additional finances. There are ways to keep those finances to a minimum in most cases when you apply more ingenuity and sweat equity.
So today we’re going to look at five of the basic systems of self-sufficiency. These are not all of them and none of them will be discussed in great depth. That being said, with these five systems in place, if an emergency were to happen, you would be in a much better place. Let’s talk about each system from a short-term (two weeks or less) perspective.
Self-Sufficiency System 1 – Water
Water is the most important system that we have to have in place since we can only live 3 days without water.
According to Ready.gov, we should store 1 gallon of water per person per day. So what does that look like for your family? Take the number of people in your family and multiply it by 14 for a VERY basic 2 week supply.
We have seven in our family, so 2 weeks worth of water for our family would be 98 gallons of water.
This is actually not too hard. 98 gallons of water would be less than two 55 gallon barrels. I purchase my barrels from a local dealer for $40 each. They’ve been used to transport consumable liquids, so I have to clean them out and fill them, but barrels are the easiest way to store that much water.
If you only had 2 in your family though, that’s 28 gallons of water. You could purchase five 5-gallon camping water jugs and a case of water bottles and you’d have enough for your family for 2 weeks of barebones water usage.
Self-Sufficiency System 2 – Sanitation
Along with drinking water, your body is going to produce waste – even if you don’t eat for a couple of days, so making sure that waste is taken care of is high on the priority list.
If we are only talking short-term, the solution is pretty easy. If you’re looking for something fairly ‘ready-made,’ you can purchase a 5-6 gallon bucket, a pop on a portable toilet seat, heavy duty trash bags (we double these when we use them for this purpose), kitty litter, and hand sanitizer.
You can generally get 5-6 gallon buckets for free at your local bakery! They get frosting in these buckets and most often throw them out. If you go to the bakery in some of your local grocery stores and ask them for buckets, more than likely at least one of them will give you buckets for free.
How the system works – take your bucket, put two trash bags down into it. Pop on the portable toilet lid. Fill a bowl with a good deal of kitty litter and put a 1/2 c measuring cup in it. When someone comes in to do their ‘business’ once they are done, they will scoop out 1/2 c of kitty litter and drop it in the toilet. The kitty litter will help absorb both liquids and the odor. Once you finish either wash your hands using a 5-gallon camping water jug or use hand sanitizer.
Self-Sufficiency System 3 – Cooking
Being able to cook without electricity is right up there between, that would be a problem and I’m pulling my hair out and almost ready to eat it I’m so hungry.
Fortunately, there are different options for cooking, several of which you may already have. Double plus.
Gas Stove
Do you have a gas stove? If you do, then you have a way to cook on the stove top even if you don’t have electricity. If you have matches – and you should have – then all you need to do is to turn on your burner, strike a match and set it to the gas. This lights the gas and you can cook just like normal!
Grill or BBQ Pit
Another short-term option is your grill or barbeque. Most meat can be grilled even if it’s winter. We lived in Erie, PA about 1 mile from the lake – talk about lake effect snows in winter! It didn’t matter if it was -40 below, my dad would grill. He would pull the gas grill right up to our sliding glass door. He would open it up, turn on the gas, and close the door. Once it heated up, he’d open the door again and throw on the meat quickly. Then he’d close the door again. When it was time to flip the meat, he’d do the same thing. Yes, us kids would yell each time he would open the door, but we had meat grilled out even if was really cold.
There are several other ways to cook.
Solar Oven
The of the most well known is a solar oven. Would it be easier to purchase a solar oven? Of course, it would, but if money is an issue, you can make your own for next to nothing!
Butane Stove and Saratoga Jack
Another option that you would likely have to purchase is a duo of a butane stove and Saratoga Jack. We talked about this duo in a previous post here. That post also has other ways to cook during a power outage.
Self Sufficiency System 4 – Lighting
We recently had an article on lighting your home without electricity here. I include it in this part of the discussion though because it’s one of the most important systems that you can have in your house. If it’s wintertime, depending on what time of winter and where in the US you live, you could have as little as 8 hours of sunshine per day. That leaves you in the dark up to 16 hours per day. That’s a long time in the dark if you don’t have a way to light your house.
Let’s again start by talking about things you may already have in your house.
Fireplace
Are you lucky enough (or you determined enough) to have a fireplace? That’s a great place for us to start! Depending on the kind of wood you get a fireplace will keep the light at an acceptable level for you and your family to do basic tasks near the fire. You get the extra benefit from it of heating your house. As long as you have a source of wood, a fireplace can keep at least that room visible for hours on end.
Candles
Even if you just have mood lighting candles, these can provide at least a minimal amount of light by which you can see to do specific tasks. Having some extra candles on hand would be helpful if you keep in mind that you’re trying to get through two weeks.
Oil Lamps
In my opinion, this is the bread and butter of being able to see without electricity. They are fairly safe and beautiful. Lamps give off plenty of light, and they are VERY reasonably priced.
If you need to in a pinch, you can even make your own olive oil lamp as I show you how to here.
Flashlights
These really are most helpful in an emergency of a very short duration because they would require a lot of batteries. I wouldn’t depend upon these in a two-week long power outage except getting from one room to another in the dark.
Solar lights, lamps, and lanterns
These are where you need to invest your money. Yes, they won’t charge if it’s rainy, but they can be used over and over and over with no additional input of funds.
My favorite solar lantern is called a Luci light. It is an inflatable light that can be deflated and stored flat so that it doesn’t take up a lot of space. It also gives off a good deal of light.
I also like the option of keeping solar lights in my yard and if the power goes out, then I can bring these in a house and put them in a vase to light a room.
Self-Sufficiency System #5 – Entertainment
This one (#5) was a hard one to choose. I sat down and wrote out all the systems that I could think of that need to be in place if ever a societal altering event happened. I came up with 24 different systems!
There are so many important topics to be covered like showering when there’s no power. What about how do you do laundry? Should you know how to garden if something big happened? Absolutely! First aid and health and hygiene are integrally important!
So why did I choose entertainment? Two reasons. I chose entertainment because I have five children. Having my children go crazy for two weeks because we’re without power isn’t an option. The second reason I chose this one is that it’s so easy to overlook entertainment! If you have to choose knowing how to easily do laundry seems so much more important than being having items to keep ourselves and our children entertained even in the smallest way. I think if we were without power that we’d find out real quickly how important keeping our kids occupied is!
Books
Do you keep reading books on hand? Books that your children actually WANT to read? I have one “odd’ child who loves to read about electricity and plumbing. Maybe you have a child that hates reading fiction but loves reading biographies. Make sure that you keep books on hand that your children actually enjoy reading.
This is one of the easiest things to get for free or next to free. Books can be found at garage sales, thrift stores, used book stores, libraries sell off older books, and many other places for next to nothing.
Games
If your family doesn’t play games together, shame on you! Seriously though, games are a great way to build camaraderie within your family. It is also a great way to pass time and to have fun together. Even if it’s just you and your spouse, having games that you can enjoy together is important.
I’m not a huge game player, but I’ve found a game called Pandemic which a friend of mine and I play on a regular basis. I enjoy it and look forward to getting a chance to play it with her. How much more would it help to have those around if you have a family?
Like every other aspect of preparedness, I would highly recommend you play games together as a family now so you can figure out what works and what doesn’t. It wasn’t until we started playing games together on Sunday evenings that we realized that our youngest child (six at the time of this writing) doesn’t like to “be on someone’s team” and not REALLY participate. He wants to play a game that he can really play by himself for each turn. My older children, though, like to play games that require reading.
So what did we do? We went to a mom and pop game store and told the owner, “We have 5 children ages 6-15. Our six-year-old isn’t reading yet, what games work well for all ages?” He was able to point us to two games right off, and both of them have been a hit in our house ever since. In case you’re wondering, we purchased Tsuro and LCR.
Videos
There are just times when you have to put a video in just for some mental quiet time because it’s about the only thing that keeps your kids from fighting continually? You too? Yea.
But, you’re probably saying, Karen, if we don’t have electricity, how are we going to watch a video? Ha! I’m one step ahead of you! This cost a little more than some options, but I purchased a portable video player, rechargeable batteries, and two solar powered battery chargers. Yes, the screen is small so five children will be huddled around it, but a video is a video and will generally keep my children satisfied!
Coloring Pages/Books
This past Christmas, I purchased “adult coloring books” for each of my older children, and they have been a hit with most of them. I purchased a couple kid coloring books for my youngest. Keeping these on hand can give you hours of inexpensive entertainment.
If you don’t want to spend money on coloring books, you can find free coloring pages so many places online like here, here, and here just for a few. You pay for paper and ink this way, so it may be six to one, half dozen to another, but it is an option.
Art Supplies
Another option similar to crayons is having other art supplies at hand that children can create with. whether these be chalks, paints, pipe cleaners, foam art cut-outs, glue, construction paper and others. I would also suggest having books which direct them in how to use the various art supplies. This will give your children ideas while working within the confines of what types of supplies you have.
Related to art supplies is fiber. I have two daughters who take after their mother and they love to knit and crochet. Having yarn on hand for them to be able to immerse themselves in would be incredibly helpful.
Sturdy toys
I don’t know about you, but we keep a decent sized tote of Legos, Lincoln Logs, trains, and other sturdy toys around. My fifteen-year-old son will still play Legos and my eleven-year-old son will still pull out the Lincoln Logs from time to time, but my six-year-old son will play with any of them. Having these things on hand makes a lot of difference when you need to keep children entertained.
Like I said earlier, there are so many more systems that need to be in place if even just a two week power outage struck, but this at least gives you something to chew on and process and decide how you would handle at least these five fundamental systems and start getting things in place to make sure your families are taken care of if anything should happen.
So what about you?
After reading this, what you feel like “I’ve got this!” What do you feel like you never even thought about before? What do you need the most help with? Which one are you excited to get started on?
