by Beks
I never go grocery shopping by myself with the little guy but decided to try it out on Wednesday afternoon rather than wait until the weekend for hubby’s help. I gave myself a huge pat on the back as I was able to complete an entire week’s worth of grocery shopping.
Then came Thursday’s power outage.
I had purchased mostly dairy and meat products… the very things you need to throw out after a power failure.
I practically cried on Friday as I threw out the precious contents of the refrigerator.
We’re living on a really tight budget since I’m off work for 3 more weeks so I can’t go out and replace anything I bought. Soooo….
looks like we’re living off canned goods and pasta this week.
Thankfully, our box freezer in the garage was locked and held it’s temp. We were able to keep our frozen stash of discounted turkey meat and chicken. Whew!
Beks is a full-time government employee who enjoys blogging late into the night after her four kids have gone to sleep. She’s been married to Chris, her college sweetheart, for 15 years. In 2017, after 3 long years working the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps, they paid off more than $70K and became debt free. When she’s not working or blogging, she’s exploring the great outdoors.
Hurricane Irene knocked out our power for 5 days. We had to throw away the contents of our fridge, and 2 freezers!
I know that you already pitched the stuff….but it probably would have been ok. If it was still cold or frozen, it was fine.
Do you have any coolers? If you would have gone out, gotten some ice, and put the stuff in the cooler, you might have been able to save some of it, or at least had it so you could have used up some of the dairy / meat items before they went totally bad.
Moneybeagle is correct; get a cooler and a bag of ice from 7-11 or whatever convenience store is near you. Put the cheese, butter, milk, meat, etc., in the cooler and try to open it sparingly. We lost power for 24 hours with Irene and our stuff was fine.
Sorry you had to throw things away; just consider it a lesson learned for the next time.
Oh, and for the record, the only people I know that panicked when we had the earthquake were the people on the radio and tv. However, tell us a snowstorm is approaching and then you’ll see panic!
Does anyone you know have a generator? Perhaps for future you and a few neighbors or relatives can purchase one as a group. If you pass it around and take turns cooling down your refrigerator and freezer every few hours you can get by for days and days.
During the east coast black out years ago (and dozens of blizzards over the years) we’ve limped along with ours. We rotate our appliances and the pump for the well (so we have water) and as long as we have gas we’re fine indefinitely. Even in the winter we make sure we have our propane tanks full so we can cook outside. We start with the most expensive items first in case the generator fails. Eating really well during a power failure take a bit of the sting out of it! We have a fireplace and woodstove and a stock of dry firewood at all times. In the dead of winter we won’t be warm but at least we can keep the house above freezing and avoid ruptured water lines.
Money beagle and Mar – No stores were open to sell ice. The outage closed everything down.
Mysti – hope all gets better over there!!
JMK – our neighbor offered us his but we left to go to my parents house. We thought the power wouldn’t be out as long as it was.
Aww… 🙁 I’d be upset too! So sorry! Happy that your deep freeze was ok at least!!
Oh, yikes! I knew the outage was widespread, but our stores are usually open, albeit on generators. We have started freezing big blocks of ice on our own (in old soda bottles or milk jugs so we can use one or two in the refrigerator and leave the others in the freezer to try to keep them cold if/when the electricity goes out again.
Mar – I thought they would have been open as well but we couldn’t find one. The radio reported 2 grocery stores 30 min north of us still open but they closed shortly after the report. There was even a hospital shut down because the generators didnt work for an hour. I guess San Diego isn’t ready for emergencies.
We once lost power for 5 days and my mom had just bought a bunch of meat. When she filed a claim for the roof damage, she also filed a claim for the food that had to be thrown away. You may want to see if your homeowner’s policy covers that.
For the future…try keeping recycled plastic containers (juice or milk) filled with water in your box freezer. That way when the power goes out, you have block ice for both the fridge and the freezer. I actually freeze bottled water in the plastic jugs so we have drinking water. This has saved my groceries many a time since I live in the country and we are LAST to get power back on. The ice blocks work great when you go camping as well. No need to buy ice.
In my neck of the woods you can put in an insurance claim for lost food due to power outages – but, I am not sure about scheduled outages.
Susan – Fabulous idea!!
Joanna – I would but we already have a claim on our record from the lawsuit so we are leary to make any more.
Do you have a gas stove? My thought would have been to do what our medieval ancestors did to keep meat good to eat for days: make a stew and just keep it cooking on a simmer indefinitely.