The tragedies of the wildfires in eastern Washington and on Maui, followed by hurricanes and flooding in California and Florida brought a secondary topic to mind: hospitality in exigency. It’s often alluded to, but it’s worth exploring the practicalities. How can a prepared household effectively support friends and family who have to leave their homes?
If you successfully make your household productive and resilient, it will assuredly become a refuge to others at some point. It’s wise to consider what this might look like now.
Types of Scenario
Let’s start with considering the cases where you might have to offer hospitality to friends or family in difficulty.
In an ideal world, your location is actually a shared retreat, and you’ve worked with your guests to prepare the place in advance. This should be on your mind if you have family living in a high-risk area and foresee the possibility of a future evacuation. In this case, you will know who is coming and an idea of what the circumstances might be. You have abundant opportunity to develop a plan between yourselves. You can preplan the logistics, including providing some storage space for the expected guests to pre-position necessary supplies to minimize the packing they must do in an emergency.
In most situations, it’s more of an expedient matter. You may have a little while to prepare, but unexpected circumstances prompt the need, and there’s been no opportunity to preplan. But with a few days’ notice, there’s some time to make adjustments, pick up supplies, or otherwise prepare.
However, in the case of a swiftly moving disaster, you may have only a few hours of notice or simply have them pull into your driveway unannounced. Hopefully, they will have been able to pack, but they may arrive with only the clothes on their backs.
What Does It Look Like
The need for hospitality may be short-term, such as with an temporary evacuation due to a natural disaster. But it could also be much more long-term. In the aftermath of an economic or social collapse, you may be the only one able to offer shelter to displaced friends and family.
Even apart from exceptional circumstances, the need for hospitality is not uncommon. Especially in the current challenging economic times, many families have had to temporarily move in with parents or in-laws while in a tight spot. Consider the following cases from our own family’s experience as a few examples.
During my childhood, we had to temporarily relocate to another city due to a family medical need. An extended family member kindly put us up for the whole time with one spare bedroom and enough spare floor space for all the kids. I remember it as a good time with cousins, but it was also a tremendous help to our family.
In college, I took an internship out of state. We spent the summer living in a camper trailer outside my in-law’s home, with our 1-year-old and another baby on the way. There was no formal RV hookup, so they ran a garden hose and extension cord across the yard, and we got by well enough.
More recently, another family member and his family had a significant gap between leaving their previous rental and getting their new home into a “move-in ready” condition. They stayed with us part-time for an extended period.
Looking at the future, we don’t expect an empty nest, but we expect to be helping to provide for aging parents and other family members who need additional care and likely helping provide housing for our children and spouses as they seek to establish their households.
Accommodations
A minimal home can seem ideal until your two- or four-person household suddenly doubles or triples in size. Thinking through the logistics in advance is a helpful mental exercise.
The simplest solution is for your guests to bring their own accommodations in the form of an RV or camper trailer. In the short-term this can be a “dry” self-contained solution, but beyond a week or so, you’ll need to work out a solution for utilities. And while living in an RV is not ideal, it’s much more workable if you have a house with a full-sized kitchen and bathroom facilities nearby.
But what if your guests have to move in with you? Setting up comfortable quarters for a group can be challenging, whether two or ten additional people.
Prior planning can significantly ease the burden here. Camping cots, airbeds, futon or folding mattresses, or Murphy beds are all more comfortable than sleeping on the floor, but can be stored without taking up too much space. You can buy these on short notice if needed, but having at least a couple of options ready can make the whole process much easier.
Similarly, dedicate some closet space to putting aside several spare bedding sets. Remember pillows! “Space saver” vacuum storage bags are invaluable for storing extra bedding, compressing bulky pillows and comforters down to a compact size, and protecting them from dust and pests.
Sanitation
More people in the house means greater demands on your home facilities, particularly due to additional wastewater. It is important to manage water usage carefully, especially if you are on a septic system. Excessive outflows can reduce the effectiveness of bacteria in the tank and lead to solids clogging the drain lines or the tank overflowing.
– Make a schedule to spread water use over the course of the week rather than concentrating it on one wash day that may overload your system.
– Make showers short, or adopt the “navy shower” standard.
– Minimize excessive toilet flushes and avoid leaving the faucet running.
– Use the dishwasher or minimal water for hand-washing dishes.
More crowded living means more risk for illness, so be sure to practice good hygiene and take advantage of the extra help to ensure all high-touch surfaces are cleaned regularly.
Privacy
If you don’t have spare bedrooms, consider partitioning off areas to provide more privacy. Full-height room divider curtains make for a flexible way to create personal spaces as needed. Depending on the season, you might even consider using a garage, carport, or tent to provide this extra space.
Feeding a Crowd
How cooking and dining are handled depends on whether you are all pitching in together or trying to run two households in parallel with separate meal schedules. In the latter case, it’s a matter of working out a plan that avoids too much kitchen overlap and all parties being diligent to keep good order. It will mean some end up eating earlier or later than otherwise preferable but is generally manageable.
But when you will be eating together for an extended period, shared living will call for greater efficiency. To be ready for this, you need to have the skills and equipment to feed a crowd as needed. It’s not just a matter of having the food, but having practiced getting it all together.
The best preparation you can do is to make a habit of regularly hosting larger groups for casual meals. You’ll quickly find the need for a few essentials, especially a large stock pot and skillet, casserole dishes or Dutch oven, sheet pans, and mixing or serving bowls. Don’t worry about impressive or complicated meals so much as providing hearty, nutritious, and appetizing fare.
Planning Ahead
You can take many steps to prepare your property for possible future needs. If you start from the ground up, you can design in extra capacity from the beginning. As your budget permits, you might consider including or adding some of the following.
Getting a larger number of people in and out along with RVs or trailers is much more managable with a wide, ideally circular, driveway and ample parking areas.
When installing or replacing your septic or electric system, consider oversizing it for your “worst case” needs, not just your current household usage. This extra capacity could readily support an RV, a bunkhouse, or a cottage, in the future.
If you have plans to host guests in a trailer or RV, set up one or more dedicated hookups with water, 30 Amp or 50 Amp electric service, and a septic connection. If you can, avoid improvising for power, water, or worse, wastewater.
If you are building or expanding your house, consider including additional space as a bonus room, office, or studio that can be converted into a guest accommodation. Basements and attic rooms are great “free” additions that can provide long-term flexibility.
If you have the time and budget, you might purchase a purpose-built tiny home or a pre-fab shed that can be finished as a guest cabin or cottage. There are an abundance of companies that can provide a shell or roughed-in structure and deliver it on a trailer in sizes up to 16′ wide. This can be a cost-effective way to add more square footage, and as a “portable” building, can avoid going through a formal permitting process in many areas.
Also, if you do not have easy access to connect to existing septic utilities, consider installing a composting toilet and setting up a gray water disposal system. Setting up a “semi-dry” cabin this way may make it feasible in locations where it would otherwise be impossible. (Beware of local ordinances on wastewater disposal!) The guest cabin at the family ranch is set up along these lines, and being fairly remote from the main house, it was much easier to dig only a single small trench for water and electric lines.
Conclusion
Obligation to our family, friends, and neighbors is an important duty and merits a place in planning our homes and lifestyles. As the apostle Paul noted in his first letter to Timothy, “If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
Part of exercising this duty is structuring our lives such that offering hospitality will not feel like an imposition. With a measure of planning and forethought, you can be equipped to meet this need when it arises, to the benefit of both host and guest.
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About the Author: Jonathan Rawles is JWR’s eldest son. Since 2007, he has owned and operated SurvivalRealty.com, a real estate advertising site that specializes in rural retreat properties — both on and off grid. There are no commissions charged, and advertising at SurvivalRealtly is quite affordable. Both real estate agent and For Sale By Owner (FSBO) properties are listed, with a great history of success in linking sellers with buyers.