At the start of this month I was medically retired from the military and started my final bit of leave before being officially out. For the past year me, my wife, and my parent have purchased 80 acres and been slowly building our dream home on it. The idea was that it would be mostly ready for us to move in at the start of this year, but things came up, and we ended up not having any utilities hooked up when we finally got to Oklahoma. Because my grandparents live in town we had originally planned to live with them while we waited for everything to get hooked up.
Personally I had no problem living without utilities but I didn't want to put my wife and son through that. To my surprise my wife asked if e could just move out to the house and start building even though we didn't have any utilities. I was impressed and after trying to paint as clear of a picture of what it would be like and making sure she knew at least a little bit about what she was getting into I agreed. Interestingly a few days after we moved out southern Oklahoma was hit with a bit of bad weather and a snow storm followed by an ice storm over the course of two weeks which made things very interesting to say the least a good bit of time and energy was spent trying to stay warm which was somewhat challenging because my house is currently a 40x60 barn with no small spaces to heat up.
We primarily used a propane heater, and camp stove to heat with along with well made wool socks, cold weather clothing, and plenty of blankets to at night. During the day manual labor was the best and easiest way to keep warm and there was plenty of it to do, also when the sun was up it generally helped keep things warm, also in Oklahoma a great deal of cold comes from the wind chill so having four walls cut down on that significantly, and because the building is insulated it did generally say around ten degrees warmer then out side.
We also used a propane camp stove for cooking. Because the house is such a large space carbon monoxide poisoning wasn't really a concern, but if it was the end of days I don't think I would have relied so heavily on propane products, especially the heater. The stove would use a can ever three days or so, but the heater was burning through four-six cans a day if ran constantly and two if it was just used at night. (which is what we generally did) in all I think we went through around 60 of the green cans of propane before getting power hooked up.
For water we used cases of bottled water for drinking and cooking, then aquatainers (highly recommend them) for everything else. Currently we have a septic system hooked up to a toilet but still lack running water so we are using a 150 gallon water tank to fill up the aquatainers that we are using to run our toilet. Which brings me to human waste.
Most of the time until yesterday we used a five, five gallon buckets with a toilet seat attachment for all of our sanitation requirements, we would empty it every two days into a slit trench where it would then be buried. We made sure to no stick any toilet paper or baby wipes with the waste products, they went in the trash separately. One big thing I've noticed is how much water a toilet actually uses, ours uses 1.9 gallons for solid waste and .7 gallons for liquid waste, which doesn't sound like much but really is when your actually having to haul and move all the water your self. I love having a toilet, and would really miss not having one but in an extreme emergency where water was having to be conserved I would go back to the bucket method.
On sanitation of the buckets I found (my wife refused to mess with them other then making a mess in them) that it was best to dump them and then while everything was still moist rinse it all out with around a gallon of water to get all the solid things out of the bucket so much as possible. Then we used bleach and UV light to disinfect the buckets and remove any smell, the buckets were used in a rotation so each bucket would sit in the sun for around 10 days before being used again.
With bathing we cheated somewhat, we have family in town that we could visit every few days for a shower which was nice, though one week we were so busy we didn't have time and went six days without a shower, for those periods baby wipes were awesome, I personally wiped my self down once a day just to get the grim and dirt off while keeping the smells down. (A long day of hauling fresh felled trees, or putting in water lines works up a good sweat.) For hand washing we would use baby wipes first to get all the gunk and dirt off, then hand sanitizer to kill off any remaining germs, personally I have tons of little cuts all over my hands so it wasn't always fun but it worked well.
One of the biggest things I took away from this whole thing is the true meaning behind why people call things modern convenances. Power, running water, internet, and sewage are all things that make life faster and easier, without them everything takes a lot more time and energy. Want to poop? That means a three foot deep hole, and hauling a bucket full of waste. Want warmth? That means hooking up all the propane tanks in the cold, waiting for everything to prime and set up, (which takes a bit in the cold) or starting a fire, which means building a correct one (a skill many don't have) collecting the wood, and then getting it and keeping it lit. Want to get clean? You gotta strip down in the cold and get to scrubbing.
Also we really did get to live farmers hours, we got up with the sun because we could see and work plus it was warmer, then we all loaded up in bed as the sun went down because it was starting to get colder and our light was gone. The day before we got electricity my wife actually mentioned that she was sad to see it go, it is kind of a nice simple way to live. There isn't really much midnight oil being burnt because working by flash light isn't practical, and waking up with the sun is nice and very scenic. Having said that our first night with power we all sat down on the couch and watched a movie together after the sun was down which was a very nice way to end the night.
Overall the experience while hard has been very enjoyable and provided some interesting insight into what life is like with a family and no utilities. While it wasn't exactly what would happen during a long term disaster or something of that nature because we could easily go into town for anything we needed or wanted. But I think it provided a neat way of testing things.
Most importantly as a family it's given us a really big appreciation for everything we're working towards and all the benefits of modern civilization, while at the same time helping us to enjoy and respect the old ways a bit more as well.
If anyone has any questions feel free to ask.
My personal experience living without utilities for a month
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