by Cheryl
(Portland, Oregon, USA)
I constantly look for info on the web for inexpensive tips. You can use any old cooking oil (don't throw out that rancid olive, peanut, or other vegetable oil - save it) to make oil lamps. (Cut up t-shirt material works best for wicks.) They can be made attractive and stable by adding colored stones in a bottle or burying a bottle in a bowl of them. Add food color and/or scent. A large bottle has water in the bottom and oil in the top. I save my old perfume bottles for this and use the metal caps for snuffers. Pool Shock made with SODIUM (not magnesium) hypochlorite makes MANY gallons of bleach for purifying water. Takes up a lot less space than liquid bleach too. A drinking water filter system can be made from layering 2 sizes of rocks, and a layer of sand in a 5-gallon bucket. Add bleach and boil the water before drinking. You can make an efficient Hobo Stove to cook on out of coffee cans. It uses very small amounts of wood to cook with. I am working on an idea to catch extra rain water (besides with a filtered gutter to a rain barrel) by mounting an umbrella upside down in a bucket and am making paper fuel bricks out of shredded catalogs, magazines and obsolete computer books. (Probably not acceptable for any use except an emergency because of toxic waste, but hey - they're free and easy to store.) Look for the complete info for these on the web. Search for "disaster preparedness", "survival" and also "backpacking".(Am I the only one that feels like Noah sometimes? My family thinks I have "gone overboard".) Happy preparing, everyone.