6 Ways Create Water Storage for Emergencies or Long-Term Use

Recently, I hopped out of bed and headed to shower only to find ice-cold water.  And all of us know that when it comes to showers, an ice-cold shower is as good as NO SHOWER!  So that was problem #1.  Problem #2, I hadn’t had a shower the day before because we’re in the midst of moving.  I had started offending myself the night before so not showering the second day in a row wasn’t an option.  Now, fortunately, I had the option of going to someone else’s house to shower.

That was just TWO days without a shower.  How would your life be if you had NO WATER?  Yea, that would be more than a slight problem, huh?  The interesting thing is that most of us don’t drink enough water, but we use water to wash our bodies, wash our hands, wash our clothes, wash our dishes, wipe down counters, flush the toilet, to cook with, and the list goes on and on.  Creating long-term water storage is important.  Honestly, it’s more important than most anything else that you can do.

For emergency use, the Red Cross suggests storing one gallon of water per person per day.  Folks, for my family that’s 210 gallons of water storage for one month of minimal water usage!  That’s a lot of water to store.

So how can you create water storage for convenient emergency or long-term use?  Here are six ways.

1.)  Water Bottles

While “long-term” water storage may be a bit of a stretch here, water bottles when rotated through are perfect for emergencies.  If your water goes out, this is a perfect way to ration out water throughout the day.  We buy our water bottles at Costco.  It runs us less than $3 for 40 – 16.9 oz water bottles.  You can’t beat that price.  If you are careful with your water bottles at four per person per day, one case of water bottles would last one person for 10 days, of course, that’s just for drinking.

2.) Water Bricks

I have purchased 4 water bricks.  There are some definite water storage pros to these.  Holding 3.5 gallons of water these are easier to carry than larger 5-gallon containers.  The handle is easy to use. These also stack, making them wonderfully easy to store a bunch of them. This is the perfect size for doing dishes at the end of the day if you know your water usage issues are short-term.  We learned this when we were without water for three days at the beginning of this year.   The downside is that the hole which you pour the water out of is larger, but I found out they now make a spigot for it so that it’s easier to dispense smaller amounts of water.

3.)  5 Gallon Water Containers

When we were without water for three days at the beginning of last year, we used this as our ‘water faucet.’  It was perfect.  We set it up at our kitchen sink, and the spigot made it perfect to use to wash our hands after using the restroom.  It is for five gallons.  We didn’t even use the whole thing over the course of the three days that we were without water.  The downside is that it is heavy.  5 gallons of water weighs about 40 pounds.

4.) 55 Gallon Water Barrels

We keep four of these in our house.  It gives us about one month of water before we would have to find another source of reliable water.  They are great for large quantity water storage.  This is a HUGE plus in my book with a family of seven.   The whopping 440 pounds (when filled) is quite a downside though.  All of that means that you have to empty these to move them.  Guess what?  When we moved.  UGH!  We had to drain them before we actually moved them.  The other downside to these, if you are ordering them through Amazon or any other company that I’ve found is they are cost prohibitive at around $100 per barrel.  I have found these on my local Craigslist, though.  They were $40 each – a significant savings.  The downside is that they had had food in them before, so I had to clean them out before storing water in them.  Definitely look for alternate places from which to purchase these if money is an issue for you and you don’t mind a little elbow grease.

5.)  Water Bob

These are not meant for storing water on a daily basis.   If, however, you are concerned about an EMP or if your location is prone to hurricanes, or other natural disasters, then this is a wonderful way to create emergency water storage at the last minute.  These each hold 100 gallons of water in your bathtubs!  This is a truly genius way to handle your potential water needs.  The downside to this is that these are one use, and if you fill them and don’t need them, then you’ve wasted them.

6.)  Specialized 160 gallon water container

I have to admit upfront, I don’t have this yet, but it IS on my list of items to buy as we have the ability.  I plan on purchasing two of these.  They stack 2 high and are only 7.5 feet tall when stacked.  This will easily fit in our basement and give us more space for storing other things.  So this is awesome on saving space, but the downside is that they do cost.  I believe the investment is a good one though, one I plan to make in the not-so-distant future.

The amazing thing is that I’ve just scratched the surface of ways to store water.  There are many others.

What About You?

How many people do you need to be storing water for?  What were your plans for water storage before reading this article?  What are your plans for water storage now after reading this article?

There are links in this post.  Some of the links are affiliate links.  Some of the links are not.  My promise to you is that I will only recommend the most economical version of the best quality of items to serve you. These are the items that I buy for my own family.  You can feel free to use my affiliate links, of which I will get a small amount in compensation, or you can choose to search out your products on your own.

This is a republication of a post that originally went out in March 2018.