Catching Rain

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     Once upon a time, I spent a fortune for a Shade Canopy so I could set up at fairs and arts & crafts events for my sewing and embroidery business. It was a good shade canopy and served me well. Then one weekend, I went out to an event in early March. It was cold and windy. The children and I sat in our truck, no customers had come for the hour that we were there. We were FROZEN and miserable but we stayed because the director of the event promised a big turn out as soon as the sun came out. (It was 8 a.m.) Final straw happened when a huge gust of wind flipped up my Shade Canopy, spun it around in the air, and slammed it on the truck next to me. It bent one of it's legs to the point that it could not be used anymore. Luckily, the vendors in the truck it landed on were very understanding and helped me wrangle it back together enough to pack and and transport home. We were defeated... 
     Since that day, I have tried to come up with ideas to use my 'slightly bent legged' canopy. It cost a small fortune and was in really good shape otherwise. Over the summer, we popped it up to shade our sugar snap peas from the harsh afternoon sun. It was a little off looking; it does not open fully because the bent portion is above the side post that pops it into place. It worked though. 
     This winter, the tarp that goes over the open end of the chicken coop kept lifting up and allowing wind into the chicken coop. They have a large nesting area that is completely enclosed, but, I still wanted to keep the cold wind out. One day, Zoey helped me lift the canopy up and over the coop. The legs of the canopy fit perfectly around the screened in coop, holding the tarp nice and snug. People that have come over have laughed at me, but I do not care cause that sucker WORKS! :D 
     A few weeks back, it rained. Suddenly the canopy's tarp was weighted down with all of the rain it had collected. It also became more comical looking. BUT, it also gave Zoey an idea! 

     She came running in one cold morning and said, "Mom, I need some empty gallons!" 
"Why?"
"I'm going to collect the rain!"
     I followed her outside with a few empty water jugs to see what her excitement was about. The top of the shade canopy had collected the rain from the night before and formed a large pouch. She had already pulled out a big chunk of ice that had formed on top of it. Then she explained she wanted to fill up our empty water jugs with the rain water so we could water our house plants with it. Zoey said, "It will save us money!" Smart kid. 
     Although the water was near freezing temps, she filled all 5 gallons up by hand. (You have to love her working attire of pajama bottoms and Croc shoes! It's a homeschool thing :D )

      She has suggested we put in a water catchment system. I would love to water our summer garden with the rain from winter and spring, but right now it is just not possible. Our house does not have gutters, and our only source of catching rain is my shade canopy. I am very happy to have finally found a good use for it!  Tonight it is raining. We have saved up TONS of empty gallon jugs to use. 

     So you have an easy and inexpensive water catchment system? We would love to see what others are doing! 

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online. 

Washing Clothes The Old Fashioned Way

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    There are so many pictures, it was hard to choose which ones to share with you all! We really had a good time doing this project. It was hard for me to keep my hands out of the washtub. So hard, that at one point my daughter told me, "Get your own laundry!" We are currently on the look out to get our own washboard. 

Here is why:

• A typical top loading washing machine uses 40 gallons of water. That is roughly 20 cents a load.
• Washing on a cold/cold setting costs about .26 cents a load in energy.
• Laundry detergent per load is about .10 cents per load for a lower costing brand.
• Total cost for washing a load of laundry is around .56 cents. 

That does not seem like much, but, my family of 4 washes about 10 loads a week. 

• .56 cents per load
• $5.60 for ten loads per week
• $22.40 a month
• $291.50 a year

What it cost us to hand wash a load: 

• 6 gallons of water is about .03 cents total
• no electricity used 
• Fels-Naptha Bar was $1.49. I cut about a 1/5 of it off, melted the crumbles, and used part of the bar for scrubbing the stains. Most of it still on the 1/5 piece we used and I can't imagine we used more than .03 cents worth. 
• Total cost for washing a load of laundry by hand is around .06 cents

That is a .50 cent difference PER LOAD! So how much would we save by doing all of our laundry by hand?

• .06 cents per load
• .60 cents per ten loads a week
• $31.20 a year

     Now compare $291.50 per year vs $31.20 a year... WOW! Will we be doing all of our laundry by hand from now on? Well heck no! Nobody got time for that! But, a few loads a week by hand will still save a significant amount of money. I am not even factoring in the amount saved by hang drying clothes vs machine drying. At this time, we already hang dry our nicer 'leaving the house' clothes. If we started hanging most of them to dry, that would incur even more savings! (But, we will do that comparison at a later date!)

So no more wait! Here are our photos and 

steps to washing clothes the old fashioned way! Enjoy!

 

     Our Fels-Naptha bar. That is how much I cut, and how much was left when we were finished. Good possibility we used less than .03 cents. We put the crumbles into a small sauce pan with water and melted them down. This mixture was added to the wash tub.

Our Set Up 

She chose a nice shady spot under the tree in the front of our house. The tub is actually sitting up on top of an empty milk crate so she would not have to bend over as much. 

We needed a table for the soap dish and hangers. We never use a clothes line and clothes pins. It is easier to put clothes on hangers and then hang them up under our tree.

All Ready!

 Agitating The Wash

 Her First Shirt

(Yes, she is using her chin to hold the washboard while she is scrubbing. The board was not long enough to secure itself between the sides of the tub. If we get our own washboard, we will either buy a larger one, or have Dad help us rig something to it to keep it in place.)

 The concentration in her face is amazing!

     She is now finished with the washing portion. As she washed, we placed the clothes back into the clothes basket. If you couldn't tell, she really concentrated on getting the clothes as clean as possible. Scrubbing, using the bar soap, looking, turning, and scrubbing some more. She was completely serious! 

At one point, I told her to smile so it looked like she was enjoying herself. I got this look instead and a response of,              "Mom, are you serious?               I'm working here!"

On to rinsing her clothes! 

 Agitating The Rinse Water

 And Wringing Them Out

Hang Drying

 And She Is Finished!

     Why do we hang our clothes in a tree? 

     Well, we just do. When we moved here, we had a trailer house and I hung clothes in the laundry room or off of the front porch. (I am cheap and really don't want to spend the money on setting up a clothes line.) When we built our house, we put laundry room in the kitchen. There is no room to hang them in the kitchen/laundry room. (Big house with tiny living quarters and a large garage area. But that explanation is for another post.) 

     Instead I have hung them from a large cedar tree in the front yard. At first, I thought the sap and bugs would get all over the clean clothes, but we have never noticed any problems. If the weather will not let me hang them outside, I use the bathroom and inside of the garage. All options work great. But I have gotten off topic... Back to my daughter washing her clothes.

How did my daughter like washing her clothes 

the 'Old Fashioned Way?'

     Well, she is on the fence about it. I think she enjoyed it, but she does not want me to know. My theory is, she thinks if I know she liked it, I will have her do it regularly. I asked her if we did it together, would she want to do it again. Her eyes flashed gleeful and with a smirk she said, "Maybe..." I think someone is tricking me on how much she liked washing the clothes. 

What do you think?

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online. 

Water Filtration

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     Every Survivalist/Prepper should know how to filter out muddy water to be drinkable! My daughter wanted to see if she could take water from the mud puddle and filter it. First we youtubed some videos and researched 'Water Filtration For Kids' and found lots of good info.  Then she went outside and got water from the mud puddle she had splashed in all day. This is what it looked like:

     Not a very pretty sight! I asked my daughter what she thought we should do next. She wanted to see what it would look like if we waited. Her theory was if our soil samples from the Soil Sample Project settled and cleared the water a little, than maybe the same thing would happen if we left the muddy water sit for a little while. So we waited. 

      After just one hour it settled quite a bit, but, we wanted to see if it would clear up on its own if we let it sit overnight.

     It did not completely clear. She saw a slight separation in the jar about mid way.  I asked her what she wanted to do next, and she decided to wait. 

      In 48 hours the super fine dirt had settled in the bottom of the jar on top of the other dirt. At this time, my daughter got out her science journal and documented what she observed. We decided we would wait to see what would happen next. Unfortunately, we had to make a sudden trip out of town and had to leave our project where it sat in the bathroom window.  My daughter had worried about her project the whole time, 'Momma, it was already starting to get green!' We came back 2 days later to this...

And that really does not look to bad until we got close up and really looked... 

 You really can't tell by this photo, but the film actually looked... FLUFFY....

and what the heck was this? 

She decided to filter it anyways. 

The first filtration she tried was to pour 

the water through coffee filters alone. 

This is what was removed.

This is what she ended up with. Not too bad! :)

     She looked at me and said, 'But can we drink it?' I didn't know! But I highly doubted it! So back to Google we went to do some research. We found out you need something to kill out the tiny micro organisms and bacteria that might be living in it. We decided to try the rock, sand, and activated charcoal method. She cut a 2 liter bottle in half and placed the top of the bottle upside down and into the lower half. Then she placed coffee filters into the bottom and layered the charcoal, rocks and sand. 

     It seemed the more we filtered it, the more yellow it became. The one on the left is our filtered water. The one on the right is water from our tap. HUGE difference in color. AND it smelled like pee! Why would it smell like pee? We consulted a group I am in on facebook and they asked what kind of charcoal we used. Well.... apparently all charcoals are not the same, and the charcoal we were supposed to use was activated charcoal, not Daddy's charcoal he makes us grilled pork chops with. Whoops! It was suggested we use bleach to kill out any microorganisms and bacteria. 

Now that is better! We did not try to drink it. The whole pee smell thing completely ruined it for us. (and honestly, I was not sure how safe it would be. Can't risk my baby's life in the pursuit of survival.) 

SIDE NOTES:   More research is being done to figure out how to be able to take puddle water and make it drinkable. That was the whole point in the first place! An observation my daughter made was we ended up with a fraction of the water we started with.  She was amazed at the amount of water that was lost in the process and came to the conclusion that the coffee filters soaked up too much of the water to be useful. Did you notice my daughter was not in the pictures doing the project? That is because she asked if she could 'document' the project on her own this time. :) My baby is a researcher and knows to document! 

Love this topic and want to see a little of what we researched? 

http://pbskids.org/zoom/activities/sci/waterfilter.html

Preppedandprepared.com is no longer available, but you can still find PK on her own You Tube channel. 

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online.