A few times, so few I can remember them as events, we've been without electricity unexpectedly at home in Canada. Here, quite literally it's an unusual day when we don't have an outage. Usually it's for less than fifteen minutes. Some days it's for less than fifteen minutes half a dozen times in a day. And once in a while, the outage lasts most of the day or night.
No power here means no heat in the winter and no ac in the summer. It means that the oven doesn't work, or the washing machine, or the tv or the computer. We have a gas stove top, so once in a while we finish cooking on the stove instead of in the oven.
Water comes and goes too, but more rarely. We choose not to drink the tap water, but we do use it for some cooking and bathing and washing clothes and dishes (not at the same time!).
While on the topic of water, a few words about laundry. We have a small front loading washing machine which we all dislike. It has a bunch of settings. The shortest "30" actually takes about an hour and then you have to manually change settings to spin the clothes dry which takes another thirty minutes or so. Some settings take as long as three hours. For a family of five this turns laundry into frustration.
Once the machine is finished spinning and thumping, we hang the clothes on the line. In the winter, because it was so cold and wet, we hung the clothes on a rack in the livingroom for all to see. Most days there is enough wind for the line at the back of the house to do it's job, but lately the rain has meant we've had to put up the rack on the deck. Humidity and no wind means that it takes two days to dry a pair of socks and jeans can take three. As one of the girls said just this morning, don't leave your laundry until you're out of things to wear. Good advice.
