{31 Days} Intentional Living – Day 30

Find the rest of my {31 Days} Intentional Living series here.


Yesterday I talked a bit about food storage, and how I need to work on that because all I have are dry beans and no way to really cook them.  I was thinking more about the dry beans, and how they are a great storage food – because they will last for quite a while.  And then I realized that I should start thinking about water.

We are on city water.  We have never lost water service for an extended period of time.  The only time that we had an issue was a few summers back when they replaced all the sewer and water lines in my neighborhood, and even that was only for several hours in the day.  FEMA recommends that you have 1 gallon of water stored per person per day.  For 2 weeks my family of 4 would require 56 gallons of water.  That is supposed to be enough for drinking and hygiene, but what about for cooking?

I’m not entirely sure how much water I use when I am cooking dry beans, but it seems like a lot.  First I soak the beans, then I rinse them, then I cook them.  I could obviously reduce this by cooking the beans in the same water I used to soak them originally, but it is still more water than what we had stored.  I’m sure a lot of people won’t be thinking about dry beans – a lot of people store canned beans which perhaps I should think about.  But, then I thought about making soups and pasta and oatmeal.  A lot of foods that we store would need water to cook them.

So what would be more appropriate than one gallon per person per day.  I think that two gallons would be better and three even better than that.  However, storing that amount of water would be kind of crazy to me. Making sure that you have it changed every few months, is this what people do who are preppers?

I was thinking more along the lines of figuring out how to purify the water that we could find.  I have read a lot of great things about Berkey Water Filters.  I haven’t used one before, but it is something Matt and I have talked about getting regardless of losing power and needing an alternate water source.  There are some crazy things floating in our water these days…and it is more portable than the 168 gallons of water I’m thinking we would need for a couple weeks!

What do you do about water security?  Is it something you don’t think of because it is always there?  I know a lot of people around where I live have wells, and when the power goes out, so does the pump.  Some have manual pumps as back ups, or ponds that they take water from.  Do you know what your options are?

Linking up at the Barn Hop, Hip Homeschool Hop, Backyard Farming Connection