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How are you doing with your New Year’s resolutions? Have you accomplished everything and are ready for new ones? Pull out your resolution list, dust it off, set it aside and get a new sheet of paper and write “Goals for this YEAR” on the top. (It doesn’t matter that we’re five months into the year. ANY time is a good time to set goals!)
Now I want you to write one thing and one thing only on your paper – “Get enough water stored for my family.” (Don’t forget your pets.)
This of course means that you will need to get your calculator out to figure out how much water you will need for everyone to stay hydrated. Remember the calculations? Of course you do! Two gallons of water per person, per day for a two week period.
If you have a family of four you will need 112 gallons on hand. Before you gasp and think, “No way can I store that much!” – think again. That is only one 50-gallon barrel, seven 7-gallon jugs and 25 2-liter bottles. That combination of water containers will actually be a tad more than you need, but as you can see, it is not difficult, and it is lifesaving.
If you don’t want to do the math to figure out how much your family will need, I’ll do it for you. Besides, your time would be more productive if you spent it filling the water jugs up with nice, fresh, cool, clean water (I’m writing this as I am drinking a tall glass of nice, fresh, cool, clean water).
Each person in your family needs to have 28 gallons of water on hand. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if you rounded that number up to 30, but for this purpose I’ll figure out what you need based on the 28-gallon figure.
one person – 28 gallons
two people – 56 gallons
three people – 84 gallons
four people –112 gallons
five people – 140 gallons
six people – 168 gallons
seven people – 196 gallons
eight people – 224 gallons
And so on, and so on, and so on…
Larger families might want to invest in more 50+-gallon drums than most, but who would you withhold water from if you didn’t have enough to go around? If you have enough water stored, that won’t even be a question that you will have to ask. Getting your water stored – now that is a resolution you want to keep!
Do you still have your list of old resolutions? Good, set them aside for a few more minutes.
Now, if you are an over achiever, I want you to write one more resolution down, “Purchase a good water filter or the items to construct my own water filter.” See? It is going to be easier than ever to keep these resolutions!
If you weren’t lucky enough to have somebody love you enough to have already given you a water filter for Christmas, you will definitely want to make sure that you follow through with this one.
Now is when you will need your old New Year's resolution list. At the bottom write in, “Purchase a generator and/or a safe alternative fuel source for the safety of my family”. This way you can make sure that you have at least one thing you can accomplish on this list. Now put it in an envelope and seal it up and write, “Resolutions and Goals for next year”. After all, you were just going to have to repeat all of the goals from last year again in this year, so give yourself a year off from trying to lose weight, exercising more, and following a budget.
This will end up being your first guilt-free year – all you have to do is store water and buy a water filter. You can do it!