by Todd Hicks

Created on: July 30, 2009   Last Updated: November 18, 2009

Do you ever experience a power outage that only affects a small amount of people and usually lasts up to a few hours? It is an inconvenience but you probably just brush it off for the most part. Can you imagine what you would do if local power lines were hit by lightning or covered with ice, causing you and hundreds of thousands of others to lose electricity for several days?

My household used to only endure an occasional brief power outage. That was the case until 2006 when hundreds of thousands of people in Missouri and Illinois lost power in July and November. Our household was out of power for eight days during the summer outage and three days during the winter outage. I will now share the methods for disaster recovery we used to cope with our catastrophe.

Always keep some fresh clothes on hand. I rarely wear muscle shirts but I had to start wearing mine as our summer outage dragged on.

Improvise to wear clean underwear. It might be okay to wear shirts and pants two or three times without washing them; however, you cannot do this with underwear. If your power is out and you do not want to travel to a laundry store in an area that has power to wash your clothes, wash your underwear by hand using hot water and soap or detergent. After you wash clothes in a sink or bucket, hang them up to dry.

Preserve your perishable foods. If your power is out during the summer, put meats and dairy foods inside a cooler or special bag that has ice in it. If you do not have electricity during the winter, place your perishables inside a sealed hard plastic container on your back porch.

Do not let yourself die trying to sleep without air conditioning when the temperature is over ninety degrees. If your bedroom windows are raised high at night and it is still so hot that you doubt you will wake up from sleeping in such heat, sleep in a room that has a good breeze or sleep in the basement.

Be prepared for the dark. Keep a flashlight or lantern with good batteries handy. Some people use a backup generator if you decide to do this, take the necessary safety precautions.

How can you cook without electricity? You may cook on your stove by using a lighter or match.

Make adjustments to your routine. If you wash the dinner dishes, come home early enough to eat dinner and wash the dishes while there is sunlight so you will not have to wash dishes using a flashlight.

Let these disaster recovery methods be your guide for enduring a long period when there is no electricity in your home!

Learn more about this author, Todd Hicks.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.