today's tip

Today's tip meets all three of my criteria. It's lean because it is low cost, it's green because it reuses, and it directly deals with being prepared. As I was dragging my recycling buckets to the curb this evening, it occurred to me that the easiest way to have stored water for an emergency would be to simply reuse my milk and soda bottles. Since the "recommended" water for emergencies is a gallon per person, per day, and you should have a two weeks supply on hand, plus extra for washing, and pets, that's a lot of water. Buying it, it can cost $1.00+ a gallon for the cheapo grocery store brand. It took 3 of us about 45 minutes to wash and refill the useful milk and soda bottles.It reduced my recycling from two full buckets to 1/2 a bucket. We rinsed the bottles with a little white vinegar and then plain water before filling just to remove any trace of the original content. we only filled them about 3/4 of the way to the top, because we are going to store them in a crawl space where winter freeze is a possibility. And we all know water expands when it freezes...(physics class?...chemistry?...well, we learned it in high school sometime...) Now a few more weeks and we should have plenty of emergency water stored...cost?....whatever your water company charges per gallon (or the energy costs to run the well pump if you have well ) Way cheaper then purchasing water.