Groovy Green, my other blogging home, has a great 2 part series on “100 Things That You Can Do for Peak Oil.”

Part 1 (1-48: Home, Garden and Clothing) Part 2 (49-100 Community, Family, Transportation, Etc.)

Whether or not you believe in the coming peak production of oil, these lists provide a great reference for taking steps to become more self sufficient, preparing for any sort of major calamity, and reducing your impact on the environment.

Here are a few examples:

Home:

1. If you live in a place where it gets hot in the summer, consider building a screen room (a room with screened windows all around or almost always around), either attached to your house or seperate. You can put a wood cookstove in the screenroom and use it as a summer kitchen for cooking and canning, avoiding adding heat to your house. You can also sleep in the screenroom when it is too hot to sleep inside, and reducing or eliminating the need for air conditioning. The room can double in the winter as a woodshed. If you cannot build on, freestanding screenrooms are also a possibility. For sleeping even a mesh camping pavilion or tent under the trees will be better than many houses.

2. For those in cold climates, consider a four poster bed. These were once not merely decorative - with heavy coverings for the top and the sides, they could be heated with your body heat, and provided a cozy sleeping space in an era when bedrooms were unheated. A frame can be added to many existing bedframes if you are at all handy, and curtains are easily made. You can also add wall hangings and tapestries as cheap forms of insulation to existing walls. They can be made from old blankets and cheap fabric, or can be as artful as you like.

3. Pay your mortgage ahead whenever possible. If economic times get hard, and you are unable to pay, the bank will foreclose first on people who own only a little of their home equity. The more payments you can make on your principle, the more secure you will be, even if you don’t own the whole thing. If you rent, be a good tenant and establish a relationship with your landlord, who is thus more likely to be accomodating of you in difficult times.

4. Make sure you have a reliable source of non-electric water, whether rainbarrels, a cistern, hand pumps on your well, or a community source, such as a public pump. If you cannot easily create a private such source, consider advocating with your community that public water sites, with either manual pumps or solar powered ones be created at local public centers, such as schools, parks and community centers. Use the examples of extreme weather to emphasize the need to ensure a reliable local water system in a crisis.

Read more of Sharon’s work at Causabon’s Book (her personal blog)