Do you have a hurricane heading your way? These ice block, lantern and sandbag hacks will help you hunker down for the storm!
Hey, y'all! Last month Hurricane Irma passed through and wrecked havoc on the Sunshine State. She pummeled The Keys, beat up the Tampa Bay area, and poured down on Orlando before she tore up my hometown of Jacksonville. My family was forced to determine if we would hunker down or evacuate. We prepped our homes for both options as we anxiously watched the weather forecast to help us make our decision. At the end of the day, we all decided to ride out the storm.
Hurricane preparation takes a lot of work. Neither evacuating or hunkering down are a pleasant experience, both will require a ton of patience and countless trips to the store. Last month I shared an article called How to Prep for a Hurricane to help give a rundown of some of the things you'll need to do to get your home ready for the storm.
If you plan on hunkering down, you should be prepared to be without power for at least 72 hours, especially if you are in a mandatory evacuation zone. You'll need to ensure you have plenty of food, water, batteries, and a first aid kit. I created this handy dandy checklist to help you get all of the supplies you need to weather the storm.
All of the surrounding stores were wiped clean of necessities. Bread, water, canned goods, batteries, flashlights, lanterns, sandbags, ice, first aid kits, generators, and gasoline were all hard to come by. Luckily, we were in pretty good shape when it came to supplies but there were a few things we were lacking and couldn't find; sandbags, ice and a lantern. We would have to improvise!
Ice
Ice was a simple fix. I pulled down alllllllllll of our plastic storage containers and filled them with water. I tossed them in the freezer to make ice blocks. These are extremely handy if the power goes out. They can be used to keep your food cold in the fridge and freezer, keep things iced down in a cooler and can even be used for drinking water once they have melted.
Sand Bags
Did you know that each part of the city is sectioned off into different flood zones? These zones indicated how likely the area will flood during a storm. We live in Zone A which is the most prone to flooding. We have a dry creek bed in our backyard that rapidly fills during hurricanes and tropical storms. After our summer showers, our backyard is filled up with little "lakes".
Whereas some counties will give out free sandbags, others do not. Unfortunately, I live in one of the counties that do not and all of the local stores sold out of sandbags as quickly as they could restock them.
When we couldn't find sandbags, my gears started turning and I came up with a brilliant idea! We hopped in the car and headed to the Dollar Tree where we picked up bags of kitty litter for $1 each. I placed 2 bags of kitty litter into a grocery bag and tied it off. Next, I flipped the bag over and tied a second grocery bag over the bundle forming a DIY sandbag. We put these near our entryways to help prevent water from coming into the house.
You could use this same technique with flour, sand, sugar and any other heavy bagged item.
Lantern
Somehow we have only one lantern. We'll definitely need to invest in more as we expand on our hurricane kit. Most people don't consider how dark your home gets during a hurricane. This is especially true if you've boarded up or put up your hurricane shutters! We didn't feel the need to board up this time (although we keep plywood in our garage just in case), however, we did close all of our blinds when the storm rolled in. The picture below was taken mid-day during the storm in a room with two very large windows.
Pardon the mess while I show you my lantern hack, we had to move furniture away from the windows and bring loose items inside so the library was a hot mess.
Tada! This hack involves a jug of water (which you should already have on hand for the storm) and a headlamp that we use for caving when we are in Central America. I simply strapped the headlamp onto the gallon of water and turned the lamp so that the bulb was facing into the jug. When we turned it on it gave off quite a bit of light and we were able to see once the power went out. This is also a great hack for camping!
Be sure to pin this post of later! You'll regret it if you don't! Give me a like on Facebook or follow me on Twitter for more tips, tricks and hacks. See you next time!