Water storage

Storing water is a very important part of preparedness that seems to intimidate a lot of people. Admittedly, this also intimidated us and we weren't really sure how to start. Our house doesn't have a lot of storage, we have two closets, both of which are not original to the house, and a very small kitchen.  We decided to tackle our water problem by breaking it down into 3 steps:

1. Decide where to store it.
2. Store enough for a seasonal power outage.
3. Store non-potable water for the garden and other uses.

Once we had a mini plan, water storage seemed a lot more manageable and we were able to get started.

Step One

As previously mentioned, our house is small and does not offer a lot of storage space, so we had to get creative. I walked around the house and tried to find small, unused spaces that were dark to store water. I had read online were people suggested storing flats of water under your bed, but that wouldn't work for us since our bed is so low to the ground. That bummed me out until I realized that there was another bed! The crib! Baby's crib has a ton of space underneath it and it was just sitting there empty behind the worlds cutest crib skirt*. So there we had it, a place to store a small supply of water!

Step Two

It's recommended that you store one gallon per person per day of water, two gallons/day for nursing mothers and pregnant women. Since I'm nursing Baby and we also have Pooch to consider, we decided to store four gallons /day to cover our families needs. While we live in a mild climate we do get a storm every 2-3 years that knocks out power for a few days and we'd like to be ready for that eventuality. We decided to start with a 3 day supply and purchased 12 gallons of water to put underneath the crib.

Step Three

The last three summers we've been under drought conditions and in light of that we decided to get two 55 gallon rain barrels and attach them to our gutters at the rear of the house. I trolled craigslist for about a week and found some that were in our price range and then Papa set them up once they'd been delivered. Our house is on a slope and the future garden is slightly downhill from the house so between that and the stand that Papa built for each one we should be able to use the hose connections on both barrels to water the garden. Both barrels filled up after our first decent rain and so now we're looking into getting a cistern to divert more water into.

So there you have it, our first small steps towards an emergency water supply. What does your water storage plan look like?






*I rescued this bed skirt from a friend, they were throwing it out because it had a tear at the seam and they were upgrading their daughters twin mattress to a full. I sewed it back together and pinned it to fit a crib and voila! Free adorable ruffled crib skirt!