Five months, not three days.
Everybody on the television gets ready for the three bad days. My grandmother got a widow and three children through the winter of nineteen thirty-four by getting ready for five months. Forty-nine pages of how that house got through: the list, the heat, the light, the water and the pantry, every line checked against what the fire and health people publish now, and what each one will not do.
A list on the back of a seed packet
Ruth's whole winter fit on the back of a seed packet. I have the packet. Lamp oil, matches, salt,
flour, beans, coffee, wool for socks. That was the store part, and it was short. Everything else on it was a job:
clean the flue, bank the potatoes, fill the water barrel.
That is what a winter list is, and it is not what the stores sell you. Most of a ready
house is cheap, or free, or already in it, put in the right place at the right time, with somebody who knows what
each thing will not do. This book is that list, the jobs behind it, and the numbers behind the jobs.
Go and check two things
They're free, they take five minutes, and they are straight out of the book. If your house passes both, it is in better shape than most, and I would rather you kept your money.
Check one · Turn the alarm over
Take every smoke and carbon monoxide alarm in the house down off the ceiling and turn it over. There is a date on the back. The sealed kind are built to last about ten years. If the date is ten years gone, or there is no date, or it does not sound when you press the test button, replace it. Carbon monoxide has no color and no smell, and it does not wake you up.
Check two · Find the shutoff
Find the main water shutoff tonight, turn it off and on once so you know it moves, and tie a tag on it. Mine was behind a box of canning jars in the cellar the morning the pipe under the sink split. Then show it to everybody who lives in the house.
Three real pages, out of the actual book
Not a mock-up and not a sample chapter written for a sales page. These are pages thirty-eight, thirty-four and forty-five of the file you get.
Most of it gets spent in the wrong order
A storm bucket before a list
The buckets on the end caps are built for three days. A winter is five months, and most of what carries it is things the house already has, in the right place. Write the list first. Buy what is missing from it.
A space heater before the chimney
A chimney inspection and a furnace filter cost less than the heater, and the fire people say space heaters are behind about a third of home heating fires. Do the jobs first, then decide if you need the heater at all.
Nine hundred pages before a number
The big preparedness books tell you everything except the number you need on the night. This one is forty-nine pages because that is how long it takes to give you the numbers, and to say which agency they came from.
Two books, and five cards to print
Ruth's Winter House
- Ruth's Winter House — 49 pages, 38 chapters in ten parts
- Every chapter in five beats: the day, what it meant with the numbers, how to tell in your own house, what it will not do, and what to do
- The store lists from the videos, item by item
- Five printable cards: the October List, the First Hour, the Air, the Water, the Freezer
- Ruth's Ledger, free — 52 pages of her kitchen book of the old ways
- Every future edition free
Seven days, every dollar. Read it, use it, take the October List round the house with a pencil. If it is not what you hoped, reply to your receipt email inside seven days and every dollar comes back — no questions and no forms. The book stays on your shelf either way.
The six things people ask first
Is this checked, or old wives' tales?
Every practice is set beside what is actually known now, and where the old way is wrong the book says so with the number. There are things Ruth did every autumn of her life that I tell you plainly not to do.
Is the list from the video in it?
Yes, both of them, on page thirty-eight, with the chapter behind every item. And the rest of the winter around them: the heat, the light, the air, the water, the pantry and the people.
Can I print it?
Yes, and five cards are built to be printed on plain paper — the October List, the First Hour, the Air, the Water and the Freezer.
I already know most of this
Then the part you want is the fourth beat of every chapter, which is what the practice will not do. That is the beat almost no old book has.
What is it, as a file?
Two PDFs. Forty-nine pages and fifty-two, emailed within a minute of paying, yours to keep on your own machine. Nothing to log into and nothing to renew.
Will it go out of date?
Where guidance changes the book gets corrected and you get the new edition free, at the same email address.