Published Wednesday, October 21, 2026 at 08:01 AM PT
Burbank Ā· Wednesday, October 21, 2026 Ā· 8:01 AM Ā· 61Ā°F, 86% humidity, wind 0 mph SSE (gusts 2), 29.29 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 5
šØ Project Worth Stealing
Bertha’s House Hacks has a storm-prep rule that costs nothing, which is the only price point my budget respects. In her Dollar Tree ice-storm rundown, the most useful item isn’t on the shelf. It’s a habit: fill everything the night before the weather turns.
The math is a gallon of water per person per day, and if your tap is safe, you fill your own clean jugs from it instead of clearing the flats of bottled water off the pallet. The night before the ice, every empty jug in the house gets filled at the sink. So do the big pots with lids. The bathtub gets filled to the top, which becomes a week of washing water and flushing water for as long as the drain still takes it. The trash bag in the toilet from her title is the fallback for when it doesn’t.
The only purchase is empty gallon jugs with handles from the Dollar Tree. She keeps four in the closet so there’s always something to fill. If your water comes from a well with a pump, the water leaves when the power does, so the jugs have to be full before the storm. That’s the difference between the house that has water and the house melting snow in a pot.
Don’t buy heavy-duty batteries, because she says they’re the cheap chemistry and die in the drawer within a year. Tape the fresh pack to the side of each lantern with painter’s tape, so when the lights go out you open the pack and the lantern is already new. Her total for the closet is about $27.
Dad joke, since the cold demands one: it’s a plan with real hold-water value. Steal it before the next freeze, Little Mister.
The Intro Nobody Wanted
Little Mister, I’d love to tell you about a hand-cut dovetail, a pond liner, or a load-bearing wall someone knocked out with a sledgehammer and optimism. I can’t. Today’s sources contain zero sawdust, zero stain, zero demolition, and zero koi. The entire haul is two transcripts from one channel, Bertha’s House Hacks, and both cut off mid-sentence like a table saw operator who just remembered something.
A missing joke beats a fake one, and a fake dovetail beats nothing about as much as a fake fire extinguisher does. The sources cover two stories: prepping a house for an ice storm and shopping for a month of groceries. One is arguably home maintenance. The other is a receipt. We work with what we’ve got.
Woodworking, Restoration, Demolition, Ponds: A Moment of Silence
Nothing came in for woodworking, furniture, refinishing, home building, demolition, or ponds. Valar morghulis, which is High Valyrian for “all men must die.” Today it applies to the workshop section, which has died quietly in its sleep. Check back tomorrow, when somebody will surely be sanding something.
DIY Tricks: The Ice Storm Closet
The only story with any real DIY meat is Bertha’s House Hacks, “Put a Trash Bag in Your Toilet Before the Ice Storm and Watch What Happens (9 More Dollar Tree Buys).” The transcript starts around item nine and ends in the middle of her wrapping up, so I only have the back half. That half is a surprisingly sensible lesson in what to buy and what to skip.
Batteries. She warns that the heavy duty batteries on the same shelf as the lanterns are the cheap chemistry, and that they die in the drawer within a year. Her fix is to tape the pack to the side of the lantern with painter’s tape. Her claim is light for a week in three rooms. That’s her number, not mine, and I haven’t tested it. Anyone who has ever opened the flashlight drawer to find batteries that leaked and fused into a science project will appreciate the tape trick. It costs nothing, and it beats the ancient tradition of searching the junk drawer by feel.
Water. This is the part of the video that matters. The rule, which she attributes to “Batch 207” of her book, is about a gallon a person a day. If your tap is safe, you fill your own clean jugs from it the day the weather turns. The flats of bottled water stay on the pallet.
- Fill every empty jug in the house at the sink.
- Fill the big pots that have lids.
- Fill the bathtub to the top, which she says becomes the washing water for a week and the flushing water for as long as the drain still takes it.
The trash bag in the toilet, per the video’s title, is for when the drain stops taking it. The transcript picks up after the explanation, so I can’t walk you through the mechanics. I’ll just note that the headline promised a trash bag in a toilet, and the video seems to have delivered one.
The version I can quote is that the empty jug comes from the Dollar Tree, though the transcript is garbled enough that I won’t swear to the exact wording. Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #164 says never spend your own money when you can spend someone else’s. The municipal water department treated that tap water, and now it’s sitting in your bathtub for free. The Ferengi would be proud, and the water bill would not.
If your water comes from a well with a pump, your water goes with the power. So the jugs have to be filled before the storm, and that, she says, is the whole difference between the house that has water and the house that’s melting snow in a pot. That’s a serious point, so here’s a joke with a flag on it: the pot of melted snow is the one time “going back to basics” is a threat, not a lifestyle brand š.
The wrap-up lists the nine items: a chip can opener for one night, hand warmers in the pockets, lanterns with the batteries beside them, and the jugs filled the night before. The first couple of items are cut off in the transcript, and she totals the closet at about $27. The rest of the tally got eaten by the transcript, so I’m not going to guess at it.
The Other Story: Groceries, and a Cart With No Boxes
The second source is also Bertha’s House Hacks: “I’m 55 and Mexican. I Only Buy Groceries Once a Month ($200 at Walmart, Here Is How I Make It Work),” dated the day before. It’s not a workshop story, but it’s the only other thing on the desk, and it has a clear point of view.
She buys limes, because as she puts it, a Mexican house without limes is a house where nothing tastes finished. They keep four weeks in a bag in the drawer. She also takes two apples as the fruit that lasts a month and the only sweet thing in the cart. The jalapeƱos get sliced into vinegar with carrot and onion the day she gets home, which keeps them a month in a jar instead of three days in a drawer.
- The bulk shelf comes to about 68 dollars.
- The total this week at her store is 185 dollars and change.
- Add 15 to 20 dollars for the quincena (the second trip, as I understand it from her wording), and the month is about 200.
She calls that the number on the thumbnail “counted honestly with the second trip in it.” I respect a creator who admits the clickbait number needed a footnote. Page 203 of her book calls this the “buy again out it” rule. That phrase is a transcription mangling I can’t fully decode. What I can quote is her instruction to walk your own receipt with a pen.
Her finding is that there isn’t one thing on the receipt that isn’t a food. No box with a picture of the supper on it. She says that’s where the 200 comes from: from what is not on the paper. Then she runs through the meals that cart makes, which she says are for a different video: arroz rojo, tortillas, caldo de pollo with cabbage, tinga tostadas, enchiladas rojas, huevos a la mexicana, chilaquiles from stale tortillas, and arroz con leche “when somebody is sad.” That last one is the most useful sentence in either transcript.
Where the Two Sources Agree
Buy the lantern batteries with the lantern, fill the jugs before the ice, and keep the limes and jalapeƱos in the fridge instead of throwing them out on day four. In both, the money gets saved by moving the work earlier in time, which is what every good shop teaches too. Measure twice, cut once, and fill the tub before the pipes freeze.
Verdict
Two thin transcripts, one channel, and no sawdust. Hail to the king, baby, but the king today is a lady with a jug closet and a Walmart cart, and she did more with her half-transcripts than most woodworkers do with a full cutting list. Tomorrow I expect lumber. If I don’t get any, Little Mister, I’m filing a complaint with the universe, and I’ll attach this issue as evidence.
Deeper Cuts
Little Mister, the main piece already squeezed these two transcripts hard. What’s left is the stuff in the margins, and since both transcripts cut off mid-sentence, I’m keeping this short. I won’t pad it with invented sawdust.
The Book Is the Real Product
Both Bertha’s House Hacks videos cite her book by number. The ice storm video points to “Batch 207” for the water rule. The grocery video points to page 203 for the receipt rule, and says another chapter explains “why none of them cost anything.” Neither transcript says what the book is called, how much it costs, or where to buy it, so I won’t guess. Each video is a free sample of a numbered system, though. For a DIYer that’s a decent habit to steal: write your shop rules down with page numbers, so “rule 207” settles the argument at 9pm when the ice is already coming down.
The Cart as a Parts List
The grocery transcript is a bill of materials in disguise. Her claim is that every line on the receipt is a food, and that none of it is a boxed meal with a picture of the supper on it. Then she shows the build. Arroz rojo and tortillas are “the floor of the month.” Caldo de pollo takes cabbage, carrot and potato. Tinga tostadas get cabbage on top. Enchiladas rojas use cuajillo and block cheese. Huevos a la mexicana take green chiles. The chilaquiles come from tortillas that went stale.
She treats stale tortillas as an input, not a failure. Every woodworker keeps an offcut bin for the same reason. The cabbage, carrot and potato do the same job across the caldo and the tostadas. One cheap input feeds several builds, and that’s what keeps the total at about 200.
She also gives a three-part test: something to eat it with, and one cheap bright thing. The transcript cuts off before the full rule, so I only have the shape of it. The limes and the jalapeƱos are clearly the bright things. Rice and tortillas look like the “something to eat it with.” It’s a decent design pattern for any project: a cheap base, a cheap accent, and nothing in between that you’re paying for twice.
The Jar Trick, Compared
That is a pickling brine, and it’s the same logic as the painter’s-tape trick from the ice storm video. Both fixes take about a minute of work on day one so the thing works on day thirty.
The batteries get taped to the lantern. The jalapeƱos get sealed in the jar. Her limes just go in a bag in the drawer, where she says they keep four weeks. So there are three levels of effort for three kinds of perishables: tape, brine, and nothing. It’s a short spectrum, but it’s the closest thing to a decision tree in either transcript.
What the Transcript Garbled
Some of this is auto-captioning breaking, and I’d rather flag it than fix it with imagination. “The empty gallon juke” is almost certainly a jug. “The hogs filled the night before” is almost certainly jugs again. “Licked it for the steps” I can’t decode at all. The line about “the bag of chips that is not in this cart is the apple” I’d read as a snack swap, with the apple standing in for chips, but that’s my reading and not a quote. The Dollar Tree is named in the ice storm video, but I can’t confirm which of the nine items came from there beyond the jug. If you ever cite these videos, check the audio first.
The Well Pump Footnote
The most actionable safety line is the one the main piece mentioned only briefly. If your water comes from a well with a pump, she says the water goes when the power does. Her answer is the same as for city water, which is to fill everything before the storm. Anyone with a hand-pump workaround or a battery backup on the pump is outside what these transcripts cover. I’d call that a real gap, Little Mister, and one worth a trip to a better source before the next ice storm. Here’s a joke with a flag on it: an electric pump with no backup is an expensive way to find out you live in a house with no plumbing š. The straight fact is that she says to fill the jugs before the storm, and that costs nothing.
Verdict, Take Two
Both videos belong to one channel, and both reward the same habit, which is doing the cheap boring thing on day one. It’s all for you, Damien! That’s the energy of a woman filling a bathtub at midnight so a house can wash and flush for a week. Shiny, as the crew of Serenity would say.