What I learned when the lights went out in San Diego

I just paid $24 dollars for 12 quart-sized cardboard containers of water. WHAT??? The Bargain Queens paid that? WHY?

I paid $24 dollars for those 12 containers because I was in San Diego a couple of weeks ago when the south western section of the country lost all power. I was lucky enough to be in a hotel that was prepared for emergencies. They had a back up diesel generator that kept lights on in the hallways and a flashlight for each room.

I was with a group of some of the calmest and “go with the flow” people in the world – unschoolers. The kids had a major pool party until the sun went down and then had get-togethers in the hallways until the staff told us we had to go into our rooms. There WERE some people who were trying to sleep.

Even though there was a laid back attitude toward to the power outage; there was an underlying concern about what would happen if the lights didn’t come on in a timely fashion.

This is not a doom and gloom piece, it is just a “hey, are you prepared to handle a couple days of power outage?” I learned that my answer was “no.” And my major downfall was my lack of water.

It’s not like I haven’t thought of this. I have. Come on, I live in the land of yearly fires and feared earthquakes. We all have emergency bags. Bargain Babe put her emergency kit together for $22. I am always on the look out for items for my emergency kit and have found items at a yard sale, a flint fire starter at the Army Navy store, 99 Cents Only Store, and an estate sale.

A few years ago, I purchased eight 5-gallon plastic water containers and stacked them in my garage. Later I discovered a pool of water forming on my concrete floor. I was soooo glad that I had stored these in the garage and not somewhere that would have received water damage. Asking around, I discovered that many people have made this same mistake. Plastic water containers start to leak within a year. Plus the plastic starts to leach into the water.

The human body can last for quite some time without food, but will start to feel the effects of no water within a day. Water is an essential part of anyone’s survival kit.

Knowing that water is an essential survival kit item and then having my recent experience with a power outage, I realized that I was going to have to bite the bullet and spend some money on water that is packaged in a way that it will store to a long period of time. So, when I saw these quart sized containers, I grabbed them.

Did I pay too much? Comparison shopping online has proved that what I paid is even or cheaper than most places. Will it be worth it if I ever need them? Absolutely!