Living in the uncertain world that we live in, one of the things you may want to do to prepare yourself is to lessen your reliance on electricity.

If you go ahead and start thinking about this now, you’ll already have a lower need for the nasty stuff (electricity).

And then if the day arrives when you don’t have electricity, you will have less adaptations to deal with, fewer worries.

Natural Daylighting

The sun! Wow! It’s like a lamp, but free!

I happen to be a fan of natural daylighting. I try to arrange the house so that we take advantage of the free light we need to see by during the day instead of being required to have lights on in the house.

Curtains

Going hand in hand with natural daylighting is the appropriate use of curtains or blinds.

Lots of folks have blinds on their windows, which are always in the same position – closed – whether its day or night.

What I want to say to these folks is “Hey! There’s light out there if you’d just let it in.”

Curtains can help you regulate your indoor air temperature during the cold season AND the hot season.

We leave our curtains open during the day in winter to let the sun, which is at that time of year low in the sky, blast straight in, warming up the house significantly.

In the hottest days of summer, on the other hand, we use white curtains over the windows and keep them closed during the day so that the curtains will reflect the light and heat back, keeping it cooler indoors.

Appropriate Clothes

Its cliche, I know, but some of us reach for the thermostat when the temperature gets uncomfortable, and others of us adapt our clothing choices.

In winter wool will keep you cosy, toasty warm at a much lower temperature than you can imagine. And will keep you more comfortable than synthetic clothing.

That’s because wool breathes – and it radiates your heat back to you.

In summer, lightweight fabrics made of natural fibers will keep you coolest. I know – some of you wear jeans ALL YEAR LONG. I’m sorry, my friend. Jeans are not for summer. At least, not for summer in natural conditions, when you don’t have energy hogging air conditioning to cool the air.

Hard Flooring

So let’s say the electricity goes out for a month. You’ve got carpet. Dang! Vacuuming is impossible. That carpet is sure going to get dirty.

On the other hand, if you have hard flooring such as linoleum, cork, hardwoods, etc, when the power goes out you can still sweep, and you can still mop.

Guess what? You don’t have to wait for a month-long power outage. You can switch to a less-energy intensive flooring now if you want. Well, maybe not right now. At least finish the article first.

Line Drying Laundry

When I was growing up, my next door neighbors had an outdoor laundry line. I found this odd. In my house, we used the dryer.

I thought nothing more of it until I found myself living in Paris, France, years later, in a teeny, tiny apartment. If I wanted clean laundry, I had to go to the laundrymat, which turned out to not be my favorite place to hang out.

I discovered that I could wash my undies and socks in my sink and then let them dry. My first attempts of this I just used a chair to hang them on. Later, I did as the parisians do and got myself a drying rack – which I still have and use to this day, thank you very much.

Now I have a real laundry line, and in the dry Utah weather, clothing dries really quickly on the line. On really hot days, it only takes a few minutes – I kid you not!

Arid climates are certainly the ultimate place to take advantage of a laundry line, but that doesn’t mean you can’t dry clothes on a laundry line in humid climates.

I even gave this a go – and was successful – in the damp Pacific Northwest.

Dryers use a lot of electricity. And when you think about it, in summer, when the hot weather will dry your clothes fairly quickly for you anyway, when you use an electric dryer, you are just making it hotter, sending out more hot air.

Laundry line drying. Give it a try. It’s old fashioned cool.