Learning New Life Skills

Sep 2008 Issue

by Danielle Ellis

Splashy headlines now in vogue proclaim what is be coming increasingly obvious: the world we know is going to change, and perhaps sooner than many of us are ready to admit. But what do things like “peak oil” and “going green” and “the coming economic collapse” mean in our day-to-day lives?

The most important skills we now hold dear involve running lives based on technology. Mastering our personal universes often means electronics: keeping in touch by phone and Blackberry, keeping entertained with an MP3 player or iPod, entertaining kids with a DVD or video game.

Multitasking extends to house work: start a load of laundry, start the dishwasher, vacuum the floor while the other machines are working; switch the laundry to the dryer, start a new load in the washer and catch up on work or socializing or the online family calendar for a few minutes until it’s time to extract your freshly-cleaned items from all the machines.

A Fragile World

But what if this all changed? What if the power went away one day and we suddenly found ourselves in a 19th century world? Do we have the skills to live in a non-electrical world? Do you know how to wash a family’s amount of laundry by hand? Do you have a way to hang it dry without a dryer? Do you have board games and books to entertain children without electricity? When your clothes wear out, can you fix them with (gasp) a needle and thread? (I must confess, I have been buying extra basics off clearance racks to spare myself as much sewing as possible!)

Southern Nevada is particularly vulnerable to this problem. In our isolated desert, we rely on electricity to run our water. That means that an extended power outage would leave us without water to drink, bathe, or even flush our toilets. Want to cook some food from your food storage? Do you have a way to do it that doesn’t involve your oven, stove or microwave? Can you keep your family warm in the winter without utility-generated hot air blowing from your house vents?

The day I realized what a fragile bubble our “modern” world is was an eye-opening one. I suddenly saw what I had never seen before: that without working electricity, the way we do everything goes bust. Air conditioning? Fans? Lights? Hot showers? Any plumbing at all? Well, they’d all be gone. And there are so many reasons they could go, from economic troubles to natural disasters to man-made calamities.

A Matter of Time

I am suggesting that the time has come to learn to take care of ourselves in new, “old-fashioned” ways. Dust off those skills learned in Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts and campouts of yesteryear. Find the oldest relatives in your family, or perhaps befriend a senior citizen at a care center. Take them a plate of goodies and ask them how they did things during the Great Depression. Find out what commodities and skills were most valuable. See if they can teach you some of those skills. I recently came across some online videos (search “Depression Cooking With Clara”) in which a spry 91-year-old great-grandma prepares the dishes her family ate during the depression while she talks about how they got by. She’s charming, and the lessons are invaluable!

Prepare yourself before any trouble comes and enjoy the peace that comes from knowing your have followed prophetic counsel to “prepare every needful thing” to take care of yourself and those you love.

Basics First

Remember that the most basic needs are (1) air; (2) water; (3) food and (4) shelter. Do you have a way to purify air if that’s an issue? The most immediate concern would be for those with breathing issues like asthma or needing oxygen, closely followed by those with severe allergies. A biological threat might bring this issue into reality. With the government’s endless discussions about our “inevitable” pandemic, and the Church’s recent counsel on pandemic preparations (see ProvidentLiving.org), this is something to take seriously.

How do you get clean water if it’s not coming from your tap? Do you have some water barrels set aside with water already in them? That will give you some lag time between any emergency that happens and the time you need to worry.

Have you followed prophetic counsel to keep a rotating three-month inventory of everyday food and a “long-term supply” of survival food? If so, you will need a way to prepare that food.

Although not commonly used in the United States, many varieties of solar ovens are the main source of cooked food for millions around the world. We have the perfect climate for solar. You can make a solar oven yourself or purchase one.

Start cooking with it now to get proficient, reduce your utility bills and keep the heat out of the kitchen!
For those with an adventurous spirit, you could try earthen ovens, rocket stoves, or the many other ways to cook food that don’t include modern utilities.

The next item is shelter. We need not look far to find fellow Americans who have been recently displaced from their homes due to California fires, Midwest floods and other problems. Members of the Church must face these problems with everyone else.

If you had to leave your home, would you have a way to keep your loved ones out of the elements? My personal last choice would be a stadium or school with thousands of other people. If you have a contingency plan in advance, you can spare yourself this scenario.

Add the Extras

After the basics come the “comforts” like showers, clean clothes and mended socks. Actually short-term they are just niceties, but long-term they are needed to prevent disease. There are great little toilet-plunger-type agitators that will spare your hands from all the laundry soap. Perhaps some large, old-fashioned wash bins and a wringer would be in order, along with clothes pins and some line?
Remember that the Amish have never modernized to electric appliances; there are companies (see www.lehmans.com) that sell all kinds of gear for those interested in non-electrical means of caring for their home and family.

If you want to make your bathing, cooking, laundry and dishwashing easier, you might consider building a solar hot water heater. If you are good with scrap lumber, duct tape, a few screws, aluminum foil, a coolant grill from a discarded refrigerator, and a piece of glass, you can make it for under $5. (This might make a great science fair project for your kids!)

In the absence of power, perhaps some might miss television the most. Now would be a great time to learn a better way to entertain yourself. Guitar? Singing? All jokes aside, how about spoons or a harmonica? There’s a reason somebody started playing them. It’s got to be better than staring at a darkened t.v.

It’s All for the Best

Some may say that it seems silly to think about these kinds of preparation and skills; or that it is too scary to contemplate the world changing this way; or that we have not needed these skills up to now, so we will not need them in the future. These are all variations on the same theme: placing our trust in the arm of flesh. The Lord has decreed that changes will come before His return, and we are seeing fulfillment of prophecy daily. Therefore the wisest course is to prepare ourselves for them.

As Elder Neal Maxwell said, “It has been asked, and well it might be, how many of us would have jeered, or at least been privately amused, by the sight of Noah building his ark: Presumably, the laughter and heedlessness continued until it began to rain—and kept raining! How wet some people must have been before Noah’s ark suddenly seemed the only sane act in an insane, bewildering
situation!” (Neal A. Maxwell, For the Power is in Them, p. 20).

These are small acts, well within our power. They are nothing that has not been done by generations of our forbears. If this task looms too large, ask the Lord for help: for the testimony; the ability; the means; the storage; for whatever you lack. It is my humble testimony after personal experience that the Lord rewards those children who are earnestly seeking to do His will in all things. May He bless you to prepare.

“View the actions of the Latter-day Saints on this matter, and their neglect of the counsel given; and suppose the Lord would allow these insects to destroy our crops this season and the next, what would be the result? I can see death, misery and want on the faces of this people. But some may say, ‘I have faith the Lord will turn them away.’ What ground have we to hope this? Have I any good reason to say to my Father in heaven, ‘Fight my battles,’ when He has given me the sword to wield, the arm and the brain that I can fight for myself? Can I ask Him to fight my battles and sit quietly down waiting for Him to do so? I cannot. I can pray the people to hearken to wisdom, to listen to counsel; but to ask God to do for me that which I can do for myself is preposterous to my mind.” (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, quoted in Victor L. Brown, “Prepare Every Needful Thing,” Ensign, November 1980, emphasis added).