Home guide
A week without power.
How a normal household eats, stays clean, keeps cool or warm, and sleeps when the grid is gone for days.
One page. Read it here, save the image to your phone, or print it for the fridge.
A twelve-hour outage is an inconvenience. A week is a different problem, and it has five parts: water, cooking, temperature, light and waste. Here is how to handle each one with what most homes already have, or can get cheaply.
- 1
Water first, every day
- One gallon per person per day, more in heat
- Fill everything while pressure holds
- The water heater tank holds drinkable water in a pinch
- 2
Eat the fridge, then the freezer
- Day one: fridge food
- Days two and three: a full freezer thaws slowly
- Then the pantry
- 3
Cook outside
- Grill, camp stove, or a fire pit
- Never indoors, not even the garage
- One pot meals save fuel and water
- 4
Keep cool without AC
- Blinds shut by day, windows open at night
- Lowest floor, wet cloths on neck and wrists
- Check on older neighbors twice a day
- 5
Keep warm without heat
- One room, doors shut, everyone in it
- Layers and blankets, hats indoors
- No gas stoves or grills for heat, ever
- 6
Light the house
- A lantern per room in use, headlamps for hands
- Solar lights from the yard brought inside
- Candles only on a plate, never left alone
- 7
Keep the phones alive
- Power banks, then the car, then a power station
- One phone on at a time if it is tight
- Texts over calls
- 8
The toilet question
- Flush with a bucket of non-drinking water
- If water is off too, bag-line the bowl, tie and bin
- Hand sanitizer at the door
- 9
Stay clean
- A basin wash does the job
- Wipes for the days between
- Dishes in a tub, rinse in treated water
- 10
Protect the food you have left
- Coolers with ice, open once a day
- Anything above 40°F for two hours gets tossed
- Dry goods in sealed bins
- 11
Protect the house
- Unplug the big electronics for the surge
- Locks and lights matter more when it is dark
- A neighbor knows if you leave
- 12
Keep a rhythm
- Work by daylight, rest by dark
- One check of the outage map morning and night
- Kids and routines hold the week together
Water, cooking, temperature, light, waste. Solve those five and the week is just long.
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