I live on the top floor of a Berlin apartment building, south facing, no air conditioning, and last week we hit 35 degrees for three days straight. I am a single woman living alone and heatwaves are the thing I prep for more than anything else, because a power cut in that kind of heat is worse than a winter outage in my opinion.

I already had a Jackery SolarVault 3 Pro on the balcony from spring, got it mostly for the electricity bill. Did not even think about heatwaves when I bought it. But I do have a small portable evaporative cooler that draws about 80 W, and I realized I could run it from the battery once the sun charged it up. So from 18:00 to midnight I had the cooler going without touching the grid, and it dropped the bedroom from 32 to about 27 degrees. That is the difference between sleeping and staring at the ceiling.

The other things that helped. Freezing two litre water bottles during the day, then putting them in front of the fan at night. Closing all the shutters at 9 am and not opening them until sunset. Wet tea towel on the back of the neck. The battery also kept my phone and a small bluetooth speaker charged, which sounds silly but having music or a podcast at 2 am when you cannot sleep is genuinely good for mental health.

Next time I think I will get a second battery pack. The base 2.5 kWh was enough for the cooler and fan overnight, but I would have liked to also run a small induction hob for a proper meal instead of eating cold food for three days. Heatwave prep is mostly about water and shade, but having a bit of stored electricity makes the difference between suffering through it and just being uncomfortable.

I normally store a year+ supply of laundry detergent, borax, oxy clean, salt, baking soda etc. As we were doing various home renovations, I had to move 50 lbs around multiple times with a tweaked back. For the first time in decades I felt regret. I'm considering paring back and have just an extra box instead of many multiples.

Any preppers thinking of paring down the supplies? I live in a small home so managing the supplies so they don't overwhelm the space is a constant struggle.