In some places, electricity isn’t an assumption. There are brown-outs, black-outs. In Costa Rica we had many fluctuations in power, but usually for under an hour. Child’s play.
In the village where we lived in Guatemala, they had their own definitions for brown-outs and black-outs that weren’t wiki listed. Brown-out were when the electricity was terminated on purpose, whether for repairs, political leverage, or to reduce electrical loads to prevent a blackout. Blackout was used for unintentional breaks in power caused by natural disasters like flooding, mudslides, lines down from unstable poles, car accidents, or alien craft flying too close to the wires (yup, two people said so). Maybe why even the wiki won’t touch this definition.
Whether caused by floods or aliens, life in the dark must go on. Here are some things we did during our dark days.
Darkness-prep
First, if going powerless is new for the family, it’s good to do some mental and physical prep before the curtain drops. We don’t want screaming children running into walls when the dark shows up.
Electronic items from flat screens to phone chargers should be plugged into a good surge protector bar. Stock up on those. We had one in every room, and two in the family room.
If your kid doesn’t have a cell-flashlight, make sure they have the regular kind by their bed. Have alarms that are phone or battery operated because they’ll still need to get to school on time. Teachers do not care that the electricity went out last night.
The best light source for extended blackouts is a headlamp. With those you can read, play cards, wipe your butt, actually do things with your hands without holding the flashlight in your mouth or under your arm (which sometimes end up in the toilet). These come in a range of prices, but are worth it if you have a long haul of living in darkness.
Have water to last a while. I always had seven five-gallon jugs on hand.
Have canned food to last for a week or two if you like being extra prepared (that’s me).
Have a stash of emergency cash on hand. Cash machines don’t work without power.
Have disposal dishes if you need to conserve water for more important things. If you can’t wash dishes, it’s not just the smell you’ll need to deal with, it’s the scavenging bugs.
Have a barrel full of rain water and bucket to flush the toilet. We have resorted to using good water to flush toilets when the smell starts getting nasty and we’ve run out of the other.
Many people say don’t use candles because it’s a fire hazard, and too much smoke will gather in the house. We usually use one in the family room, where we are all sitting. That way you can babysit the candle. It’s a great calming mood-setter, and you won’t accumulate large amounts of smoke in the house with only one. We toast mini-
marshmallows over it. It’s a fun blackout activity.
During the Dark
Turn Stuff Off
Turn off all tv’s and lights that were on. That way if the electricity goes on in the middle of the night, you won’t have to go around turning everything off, including the lights in your room. The red light on all the surge protectors will come on when you are live again.
Food Stuffs
If you have frequent blackouts, don’t stock up on things in the freezer or fridge. One idea to keep what food you do have in your freezer from thawing as quickly is to freeze ice cream gallon containers filled with water, leaving room for expansion at the top. This block of ice will help keep food frozen for a short amount of time, and will serve as the ice in your cooler if you decide to go that route later on. Of course if you don’t open your fridge or freezer door during the blackout, your food will stay ok a little longer. If you have intel that the black/brown out is lengthy, throw everything in a smaller cooler to keep it for a little while longer. We had many blackout buffets, where you just start eating whatever will spoil first. Luckily ice cream is usually the top of this list.
Shower Nomads
Once, we had a three week brown-out pipe repair in our neighborhood. For the first while, I washed the girls’ hair in the backyard by warming up water on the gas stove and pouring it over their heads in the backyard. Eventually, we needed more complete showers. We started rotating around friends’ houses who had power, to have showers. We called ourselves the shower nomads. More and more people heard about our situation and would say, “Hey, I hear you have a shower list, you can add us!” Got to the point that we had a 13-house shower rotation and counting. Either we had a bunch of great friends or we were looking really raggedy.
Get Your Powerless Party On
My kids love blackouts because we made them fun. The lights went out and two seconds later they want to start the ice cream buffet and break out the marathon-games. They became skilled at hamping, camping with some the comforts of home. For dark-outs we had glow bracelets and necklaces to put on us and the dog. We would spend time outside. Stars are brighter during a blackout. It was eerily quiet outside. We’d lie in the grass and enjoy the silent twinkling heavens and have night picnics. We’d play cards or other games. That’s when we got out the lengthy epic games like Carcassonne or Horse opoly. We rotated music sources using ipods, cell phones, laptops. We made teeny tiny s’mores over candles with miniature marshmallows and chocolate chips.
Once we knew better what to expect and were prepped for both needs and for fun, dark days were always memorable.