Backup Heat and Thrift Store Finds

While visiting a nearby town with our eldest son to get his driver's license renewed, I was able to visit my favorite second hand store. Owned by a friend of ours, the store looks small from the front, but is home to a multitude of vendor spaces that offer everything from books, to candles, to antiques, to repurposed furniture. I always enjoy our visits there and more often than not, I find something of interest. During this past week's visit I found a beautiful brass candlestick holder for our youngest daughter and a pack of 15 taper candles. We always find fair prices at this store, but the price for these items was fabulous - $3 for the brass holder and $2.89 for all 15 candles!

A fabulous find at the local thrift store.

While at the store, I overheard two ladies discussing the current heating situation for many families in the neighboring state. A natural gas pipe was ruptured, leaving tens of thousands without natural gas in their homes (see article). One of the ladies mentioned that after five days, her son's family was still without heat.

As we go into the winter months, please be sure you have some form of backup heat. Even a few hours without heat in cold weather can cause the temperature in your home to drop to an uncomfortable temperature. Too long without heat in freezing weather will lead to a more dangerous drop in temperature and can cause water lines to rupture. Speaking from experience, broken water lines are not fun. 

See our blog post titled "Preparing for a Disaster - Where to Start" for tips to help you prepare for the unexpected. I added the article to the website as well for ease of reference. See here for the website article.

In light of the current situation, I am highlighting a few easy options for emergency backup heat. While these will not heat your whole home on their own, they will help heat a room and keep you from freezing. 


The links below are affiliate links. When you make a purchase through the links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. 



Mr. Heater Buddy Indoor Safe Heater 4,000 - 9,000 BTU






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Water Glassed Eggs & Homemade Butter

Image
I love to experiment with new recipes, different methods of preservation, and ways to avoid waste.  Here are last week's efforts: Water Glassing Eggs  I finally tried water glassing eggs this past week.  I read about this method of preserving eggs a long time ago, but I needed to get unwashed farm fresh eggs in order to try it AND I needed to have enough eggs on hand to not cut us short in our weekly egg usage (we eat a lot of eggs throughout the week). Last week was finally the week. I got the pickling lime I had been saving for this purpose out of storage, picked out the cleanest unwashed eggs I had purchased from some friends down the road, and preserved 18 eggs in a gallon sized glass jar.  I followed the instructions from The Prairie Homestead, which can be found here . Why preserve eggs in this manner? Since we do not have our own chickens, we rely upon a couple of friends having extra eggs to sell. I wanted to preserve some eggs for those times when we cannot get them fresh
Read more

Fried Daisies, Yarrow Tea, and DIY Rose Oil

Image
We had a lot of rain last week, which "dampened" my forays into the woods to forage, so I spent some time on the website better organizing it and adding another article.  We now have a DIY project section and an article on jean quilts. Click here to see what is new! In spite of the damp weather, I spent a bit of time outside and picked enough to fill the dehydrator.  While I collected several kinds of plants, here are the ones I focused on this past week:   Oxeye Daisies I collected oxeye daisies mainly to dry for tea, but they are also wonderful to eat.  They can be battered and fried, much like fried mushrooms.  We have tried both a sweet and a savory batter for these and have enjoyed both. As with any new food, be careful to avoid these if you have an allergy to other plants in the asteraceae (daisy) family.  One of its many uses in tea is for coughs accompanied by an excess of mucous. Oxeye daisy is said to decrease mucosal secretions and calm inflamed tissues. It reporte
Read more

Garden Report - 10/9/23

Image
Last week I spent a bit of time tidying up the garden for fall. I gave my tarragon and mint their last trim for the year.  I bundled the bounty and hung it in the attic to dry along with some dill.  I had three nice bundles of orange mint, two smaller bundles of tarragon, and one of dill. I also filled the dehydrator with borage, winter savory, oregano, and mullein. I gathered some seed from the nasturtiums, dill, cilantro, and calendula. I then picked the ripe tomatoes and pulled the onions. What did well in our garden this year? Our tarragon produced very well. I think this was my third or fourth cutting of this year.  I am pleased we have enough to share with the girls and a couple of friends as well. The orange mint I planted last year also produced well as did the dill, pepper plants, and the nasturtium. We were pleased to have a nice crop of potatoes, too. The potatoes produced well for the 3 foot by 3 foot area we planted (we were following the square foot garden method).  I lef
Read more