When the toilet paper is gone from all the stores, now what? Some people may have a few rolls, or a few hundred rolls, stored away. Let’s assume we have an unforeseen disaster. One where the roads cave in or are washed away like we had this last winter on the east coast. We had a major highway between Southern Utah and Nevada separate when a heavy rain storm hit fast and hard. It was the remains of Hurricane Norbert. It was closed for any semi-trucks driving from California to Northern Utah for four or five days. This was within the last three weeks. Yikes! It was not an earthquake or hurricane right here…but it affected everyone who drives on the I-15 highway.
Highway I-15 Closed
After that highway was closed I went and checked out a local grocery store to see how the shelves looked. I had my camera with its strap around my neck and some chick with a vest mumbled something to me and I just kept walking. After I scoped out the store and took some pictures (bottled water shelves were half empty) I left the store. When I was leaving the lady approached me and said “you cannot take pictures in our store”. Hmmmm…well I did. I explained I write a blog and want people to be aware of empty shelves after a minor disaster…..it’s who I am. No signs were posted saying “pictures” not allowed.
Make Cloth Toilet Paper
No one wants to talk about toilet stuff. I get it. But here’s the deal, we need to talk about it. We all use the bathroom so let’s just lay all the cards out. Number one, I want my own emergency toilet and I want toilet paper to go with it. Now you can save your old phone books and use those pages to take care of your business as well. But today I am showing you how to make you own toilet paper cloths. I made mine in ten inch squares. I am going to use my serger to go around all the edges to keep them from fraying. Or I might sew them and turn them inside out and top-stitch. I bought a small garbage can and inside that can I have a zippered clothes bag to put the soiled cloths in to wash later. I will add apple cider vinegar to the water with my laundry soap to wash them.
Water Bottles For Rinsing
In the picture above you see two bottles. These can be filled with water and a drop or two of essential oil to rinse our private areas. It might seem really crazy to think about making your own cloth toilet paper. Well, these are really soft flannel squares with zero chemicals and fewer trees will be cut down than they need to make regular toilet paper. My daughters grew up with cloth diapers. I think more and more young mothers realize how expensive disposable diapers are. I keep reading where some very smart young mothers are starting to use cloth diapers. Yay! The first investment is a lot, but so is a monthly disposable diaper bill, even with coupons.
All we can do is take baby steps to be prepared for the unexpected. But we need to start today. I hope this post motivates you to really think about how much toilet paper we can really store? We can use my emergency washing machine to wash and rinse the toilet paper cloths. We will need a way to hang up our laundry too! My YouTube, using my clothesline is on the Earth Easy website. I love that clothesline!
