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Introduction :
These are things essential to actually living in a structure. Some may be salvaged, others may be repaired. There may be a need to improvise or even construct new equipment. This was recognised in the 1940s, but the excellent 'Utility' furniture of that time would be a dream in a severe recovery situation.
Many of the procedures on this page are best carried out by an organised community but at a pinch could be done by individual householders or a small group looking after their hamlet or street.
To some degree this page goes beyond the rebuilding of the home, into areas covered by self-sufficiency enthusiasts. However, the writer hopes that this will be of help in a crisis.
Furniture :
Clothes have to be hung up or stored away from dust, damp and moth. Food has to be kept away from dust and vermin, so cupboards and chests (preferably of drawers) are important. So, equally, are beds, tables and chairs. Basic designs are available elsewhere on the Internet.
Almost any timber can be used in furniture making, but sawn planks and beams are likely to be the most useful. Stuffing for mattresses, seat cushions and the like, depends very much upon what you have. Americans have used Spanish Moss, Highland Scots have dried bog moss and used that, but elsewhere anything from clean rags to horsehair and from feathers to straw, have been used to stuff upholstered furniture.
Sinks, Washbasins and Baths :
Washing is important. The old tin bath is one expedient, but another would be some kind of timber box lined with plastic and used as a bath. A shower cubicle may be easier to improvise, as would a wash-stand with a bowl and a bucket.
Steel sink units are fairly rugged, but it may be necessary to improvise one from sheet steel, or to make use of bowls on washstands. Sticks and dowelling can be used to construct drying racks for crockery and kitchen utensils.
Pots and Pans :
Modern aluminium and stainless steel are difficult to repair, so damaged pots and pans tend these days to be discarded. In the past, the tinker or tinsmith would use rivets and patches to repair damaged cooking pots or braze new handles onto them. Used food tins have been used in wartime for a variety of cooking and drinking utensils.
An alternative is actually to make cooking pots from pottery, as was done for thousands of years, accepting eventual breakage as a fact of life. Some pots were strong enough to be heated slowly over a fire, others were brought to the boil with the help of hot stones and improvised wooden tongs. Although the result did taste of iron, the writer has brought water to the boil in a pot with some steel rods used as pokers - the same trick as has been used to 'mull' wine for centuries.
Carpets and Curtains :
These are often the hardest things to replace, mainly because woven fabrics are hard to obtain and replace. Frontier women sometimes had to make do with sacking, whilst the rag-rug has an honoured history in many countries. Reeds and grasses have been woven into matting for thousands of years, in the tropics with the matting used for floors, walls curtains and partitions. Northern Europe used to strew floors with dried rushes, which would generally be replaced every three months (although some remained till they rotted).
Sanitation :
Vast quantities of domestic sewage are disposed of without thought of their economic value. The ammonia and phosphate content alone are valuable fertiliser - as long as the sewage is composted for a time to destroy dangerous pathogens. Sewage collection from the dry-earth closet for garden burial or compost activation is an ancient trick. Dry earth or ash are the usual way of covering the urine and faeces to deter flies and odours. Properly run, it is as effective a system as is a 'modern' water-closet.
Commercial or municipal collection of sewage by the 'night cart' may be as essential in a recovery-stage community as it was in the nineteenth century in America, Australia and Britain. Metal buckets sealed and sterilised by dipping in hot tar, for emptying into a suitable cart (or slurry wagon) with a collection tank, are the essence of this collection system.
Cleaning Materials and Disinfectants :
There are a few very simple cleaning materials that can be made from common substances. :-
- Lye Solution and Soap :
Mixing wood ash with water and then filtering it, will produce the reddish solution of potash called 'lye'. Lye is a powerful cleaning substance on its own, but it can be made into a rather rough soap by boiling it with a suitable fat.
- Chlorine Solution :
Chlorine water - electrolysed from salty water - is a less-known effective sterilising and bleaching agent. It can be used as a hypochlorite solution to sterilise water and cooking or eating utensils. The writer has made it with the help of some insulated wire, a couple of 9-volt batteries and two small carbon anodes from some old 'dry' batteries. Officers of water authorities were trained during the 1980s to produce chlorine water for batch chlorination of drinking water in disaster situations, after the raw water had been rough-filtered.
- Limewash :
Slaked lime - which is bactericidal - can be made into limewash with fat and water - this is a bactericidal paint and an alternative means of cleaning bucket toilets ('nettys'). Its monthly use in latrines and its annual use in re-painting houses, helped reduce disease up to the end of the 1800s (Nineteenth Century). Slaked lime has in the past been used to disinfect water, although water so treated is 'hard' and can 'fur' kettles.
Other Household Supplies :
There is a considerable list of domestic supplies which are considered necessary now, but which would be hard for an individual householder to manufacture. The following list of alternatives for basic necessaries may spark 'cottage industry' and barter in a recovery economy. :-
- Toilet Paper : This unlikely essential was once replaced by dried Sphagnum Moss (Bog Moss) in most of the Scottish Highlands and in parts of the English Pennines and Scottish Borders. The moss is bactericidal and highly absorbent - much more comfortable to use than toilet paper, as the writer found out by experiment. Other expedients such as Dock Leaves are less satisfactory.
- Brushes and Brooms : Broom branches do make reasonable hand-brushes, but the best ones are bundles of Birch twigs tied together as a 'switch', sometimes with a central wooden broomstave.
- Basketwork : Usually made from Willow, Hazel and similar flexible twigs, or the long stems of Norfolk Reed. Can be used for anything from carrying and storage baskets to chairs and wattle partitions.
- Matches : Up to the end of the 1800s, flint and steel and scorched rag or fluff tinder - kept in small boxes - were used to light 'spills' or 'matches'. The old 'Zippo' petrol lighter made use of the same basic idea, many still being used today.
- Pots and Crockery : These have been mentioned already, but the production of salt-glazed and slip-glazed ware in simple kilns may be needed to replace smashed ceramics and glassware.
- Rushlights, Candles and Lamps : Muttonfat and lengths of Soft-Rush stem were used for thousands of years to make simple taper-type candles. Candle-making from hard fat and wax is slightly more complex, but can bedone with braided fibre wicks. Lamps - burning softer fats and oils - can be improvised from jam-jars (see Nuclear War Survival Skills site) or reproductions of ancient Roman and Greek designs. The writer has made rushlights and improvised lamps - the smell is not great, but at least they make some light.
A variety of useful recovery living ideas can be found in the JustPeace Nugget Pages.
© 2003 Richard Edkins.
Site maintained by
Dalbeattie Internet.
Last Updated 16th April 2003.
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