Preparing for winter 2022/23

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How is best to prepare for the next winter? I imagine energy prices will be huge, I can afford a bit of an increase but I'm worried it will reach my limit.

I'm trying to forward think and plan ahead. I've bought some hot water bottles (in the sales) to put away and I will try and get a good stock of cupboard type foods to ease the food shopping bills over the winter when the energy will be used more. Ideally I want to try and have less other outgoings in November, December and January to cover the increase in my energy bills for that time.

I may also start overpaying a little each month on my energy account, or into a savings account so I have a bit of a buffer.

Any other ideas please?

I bought a dehumidifier last year to use drying clothes in front of the logburner and it is fab!
Our log store is full now and that will do us to spring next year. Total cost £330. We don’t have central heating.
We are looking into a power pack and have discovered Ecoflow now, we had previously looked at Jackery

We have a pulley maid in the guest bathroom on the top floor for Winter clothes drying; would highly recommend.

We have canals running less than 50 meters from our house to the North, South & West (so prep plan 1 in a storm should be, run East!) so my flood preps are always strong, but the plus side is that water is drinkable with minimal filtration which I have prepped for, so I've never needed to store water. However, the Dutch government is now saying water levels are dangerously low due to lack of rainfall, so now for the first time I'm having to consider storing water. If anyone has any tips on where to begin, please share.

In preparation for potential energy cuts this Winter (which NL has said won't happen, but given our close relationship with DE, I suspect we may ((rightly)) help them out if they need it) I'd like to invest in some cookware for the log burner. Our burner top surface is quite large so could easily get a few pans on there. I've read recommendations of stainless steel and ceramic - does anyone have a preference or any suggestions?

We've plenty logs in for the Winter, but I did ask my husband to build a log bin at the back of the house as it had previously been out front, and he dutifully obliged. I've noticed a few others have done the same, so folk are perhaps anticipating thefts given the crazy costs I mentioned previously.

I've just bulk ordered a year's worth of toiletries & cleaning products and we already have 6 months in reserve, so we're good on that front (apart from the elusive toilet rolls which we seem to use up far faster than I'd realised).

I'm currently on maternity leave and have 2 prepper projects underway:

1. Recipe book: We have 3 months food in at all times, which could stretch to 4.5 months if I'm careful so I'm putting together a recipe book based on my food stores. I have plenty of lovely recipe books, but assuming I won't have half the ingredients they require and not wanting to rely on devices (power cut), I am putting together a paper version. I'm hoping this will help to ensure some meal variety and plan go add to it over the years so I can hand it down to the kids.

1. Blankets: I am crocheting/knitting big blankets for us all. I bought heaps of wool last month in a mega sale and am aiming to have blankets all over the house by Autumn. This year we kept the Christmas blankets out til March so I'd like to have something without Santa on it by Spring!

We both WFH as much or little as we want, and kids school & daycare is within 500m of the house, so fuel isn't a problem for us this Winter.

Hope everyone else's preps are going well

Gosh reading all of this we are so unprepared for winter! We have a very old house and the central heating doesn’t work on the third floor so we have been trying to get a plumber in to look at it but to no avail.

in some ways it’s ok as I WFH up there so planning to get an oil filled radiator with vouchers paid for by credit card points plus a heated throw - already have fingerless gloves

we are oil central heating and it it v expensive - we only bought house earlier this year, topped up to full before the prices started to increase and have been putting away 120 a month since towards oil. So hoping by time we come to top up it covers a tank and then we had surplus in our bills account anyway so hoping that will cover another top up (with the extra 120 a month put away between filling and needing to re-order) and then be ok until next winter - but it might not cover it

need to stock up on thick socks and slippers for us and the DC and we have def been using the car less.

could do with getting some dried/tinned goods stocked away.

we don’t yet have a log burner (should do in 2024 when we get works done to our house) but DH has already started stock piling wood from some trees which fell in a storm. He will build a log store soon

we already grow a lot of our own fruit and veg and have a second freezer so once we’ve harvested will do a lot of batch cooking to freeze - crumbles, pies, pasta sauces etc. we should also have around 30-40 butternut squash which store well and can be used to make soups, tagines, pastas etc

But we really do need to get that heating looked at - will harass DH who is in charge of that sort of stuff

We don’t have central heating

We don't either. At least it's not proper central heating as we rely on the old back boiler in the fireplace. That does for heat and hot water when the fire's lit and keeps us in hot water for many months. In summer we have an immersion heater, which is used sparingly.

The place I live in only has one bedroom, one living room, one bathroom and a kitchen. It hasn't been updated since about 1984, so there are few electric sockets, though we don't have space for gadgetry anyway. In our favour we have a loft, a double garage, a number of sheds and good sized garden space.

Living in a small, old fashioned cottage does simplify matters. Another room would be useful, but so it goes.

@Handyweatherstation 4 Bedroom house here. No radiators. Electric showers and an undersink water heater for the kitchen. Immersion tank for bathroom taps and bath, but only on in the autumn winter. A couple of electric plug in heaters for very cold times. No heating at all upstairs. We have an 8kw logburner and we open all the doors to let the heat circulate. We insulated all the internal walls when we were doing the house up.

@AKnitterofThings - much bigger house but it sounds like you've got similar workarounds to deal with. Do you put one of those fans on top of the log burner?

@Handyweatherstation We didn’t find those fans did much really. We have put an electric fan on in the past and that was good, but just leaving the door open everywhere works. Our downstair shower room is really cold in the winter though. It’s a case of plucking up courage, running to loo, put wall heater on, sit on loo, run back. We stayed at my Sil’s once and they had central heating on all night at 24*with a radiator next to the bed , we nearly expired. It’s only really for a few months of the year and we wrap up warm. Hand knitted socks and slippers make all the difference. Plus if you go outside for a walk or gardening and come back in it’s lovely and toasty.

@AKnitterofThings - I hadn't realised those fans don't do much, but it doesn't surprise me.

Our bathroom is also freezing in winter and we have strategically placed rugs for late night visits in bare feet. Then there's the bedroom, which also gets very cold in winter. I put the dough bowl on the floor in there over night in summer, when doing no-knead bread, and it goes in the living room over night in winter 😅

I know what you mean about other houses being too hot and a radiator on all night next to the bed sounds really OTT. Heating set to 24C!!! Because we're outside for much of the time during the day, the house still feels toasty when we get in, even if it's 14C or less. From what I recall, the lowest we've got to indoors is 8C, but if it's proper minus temps outside then you don't notice as much. Still get the fire lit promptly though.

Not sure if I mentioned this on this thread but we’re in a new build with a heat pump. While the insulation is very good we have no options if we have power cut. No gas. Dogs will be happy though as they don’t like the under floor heating. We had a few days in December when the pump cut out and it was bloody freezing. We do have blankets and thick socks. DH finally ordered blinds last week, plus black out blinds, hopefully that will help to take the edge off next winter.

Tomorrow I plan to check the cupboards and decide how long the supplies should last.

Been lurking on this thread for awhile but I'm considering getting one of these plug in hobs from IKEA and plughing it into one of the solar generators mentioned above.
www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/tillreda-portable-induction-hob-1-zone-white-70493503/

I'm also going to build up my food stores and practice different meals in my slow cooker, that way if there is power rationing I can cook during the day and just keep the food warm until dinner time. Equally I thunk a slow cook would work on one of the generators above.
I have a baby so I buy a months worth of formula at the moment, mainly for budgeting purposes. I'm looking forward to his bottles not needing to be sterilised, that will be one less thing to worry about.
Older kids have oodies and I'm going to buy some fleece sleepsuits for the baby. I've been buying winter clothes in the sales for the baby too. We have lots of blankets and extra duvets so may have to hunker down on the sofa with them. I'm just worried about keeping our open plan house warm.

I've made a plan in my diary to start building up my stores of dried foods and long life items again so money will be freed up for heating.

We really need to reduce the amount of washing we produce. I think we will have to stop using the tumble dryer.

I'm also going to get a baby bath on market place so I can bath the baby in the warmest room in the house and reduce the amount of water we need in the first place. Saving lots of money getting free or second hand items on Facebook groups.

@YellowSparrow You might be better with a camping stove as that hob is still 2kw. It depends on the output of your battery pack though, but using it for any length of time would drain your battery.

Sterilising baby bottles - how do you do it? Asda have Milton tablets at 6.8p each (I’ve just looked) and they are good for 24 hours. Packets of 40. (For the fun of it, autocorrect autocorrected I’ve to ivermectin, Twice!)

Don’t worry about nice baby baths. A $2 plastic tub will do, I promise. I remember bathing in front of the wood stove on cold nights in a plastic bucket.

Don’t worry about nice baby baths. A $2 plastic tub will do, I promise. I remember bathing in front of the wood stove on cold nights in a plastic bucket.
Flexible tubs are great as soon as they can sit, will fit toddlers and young children depending on size of the tub

As multi-functional containers, We have big garden buckets - 1 was always for garden use but 1 was for carrying Dd wet sailing gear so kept clean and nice. I have used it for bathing a visiting DNiece and also for washing laundry by hand when the washing machine broke down. And we use the actual garden one for hauling a large batch of logs in at once etc. They stack into each other in the shed. They come in different sizes from Garden centre - GC means they're expensive though. (And I have no idea of a brand name to link, sorry).

But cheaper option could be the torkis laundry baskets from IKEA - they are similar plastic and flexible and solid but much cheaper (€9) - just more of an oval than round shape. It has been used to bath DDog (so would do a baby) and to hand wash a few things so quite versatile beyond just carrying laundry.

I have what may seem a silly question but some of you may know the answers.

If there was a possibility of prolonged power cuts, I am trying to think about reducing the pressure on fridge/freezer and keeping it as cold as possible.

So if I was to take the ice cubes from freezer (integrated ice maker) when the power went off, and uSe them split across the fridge and my Coleman cool box, would that help keep fridge cold? My thought is to put things used a lot into the coolbox (milk, butter, stuff we snack on etc) to reduce fridge openings. Perhaps taking a precooked meal from freezer to defrost in coolbox as well.

Or would I be better leaving ice in freezer?

I am half thinking about a camping coolbox that runs off 12v and a power bank/battery for it, but that may not happen (power bigger problem here than coolbox). So thinking it through ahead of time.

I’m not sure of the energy calculations but in general the advice is not to open your fridge or freezer in the event of a power cut so you would have to do it pretty quickly. If you did however then it would seem to make sense to take some ice plus regular use things like milk and butter and cheese and out them in the cool box to minimise the opening of the fridge

We are preparing to insulate under our lounge and hallway floor and insulate the heating pipes. We also have plans to update our old radiators for modern more efficient ones.

I have also just ordered interlined curtains for the lounge and second bedroom. Not sure what to do about the window and patio door in our kitchen.

Because of were i live, we are not allowed a log burner or open fire so will have to rely why on gas central heating supplemented with hot water bottles blankets.

Does anyone have any recommendations for anything on sale at the moment?

i’m thinking:

heat holder socks
thermals
thick tog duvets
electric lap blankets
dressing gown/oodies/fleece pjamas

is a heated airer worth it? I have limited space so would still need my tumble for sheets but if i could restrict usage to one load a fortnight that would be ideal.

cooking wise, I am almost set. Electric stove but I barely use my oven since I was given an airfryer. I am also considering a soup maker (i know i could do on hob but i hate chunky soups and dont have a blender), so i can have cheap hot lunches, and maybe a very small slow cooker/rice cooker too.

Sheets dry really quickly on an airer. Quicker than clothes.

Do you have radiators? If so, airer next to radiator. Sheet over airer, tuck the sheet down the back of the radiator to make a warm tent.

Have you heard of a wonderbag or hay box? They are good for keeping stuff you've brought to the boil on the stove hot so it continues to cook.

@Haggyhaggerson a stick blender would take up less room than a soup maker, though I don't know which way would use less energy.

@Haggyhaggerson I have a hand Blender which i got years ago. My only ever qvc purchase but I'm sure they must be available elsewhere.You turn the handle on top and it chops whats inside. So you get a workout too. Works for cutting cheese up rather than grating and mixes stuff easily . V useful and would be even more so if there are power cuts

Did the food shop today and picked up some extra pasta, red lentils, tinned potatos (lovely in the air fryer) and chickpeas.

I think i’m pretty set on getting a soup maker, i’ve owned a hand blender and didnt love it so sold it - but thank you,

i’ve scored some heat holder socks new on vinted for cheap. On the hunt for winter wear/thermals now.

try aldi special buys for merino wool, not sure when they will come in but they are worth it as the cheapest on the market.