72 Hour Kits

This week, my husband didn't have to work! It's been fun to have him home all day, and we've tried to be productive. Yesterday, we pulled out our "72-hour kit," which gets to go in quotation marks because I'm not actually positive it would help that much. The way it was, anyway...

 

We went through everything in there, and took out 6 expired Clif bars, 2 corroded batteries, and several almost-expired batteries (which we'll use). We made a Walmart run (and by we, I mean my husband) and he picked up new Clif bars as well as some first aid helps.

 

We added a bunch of stuff to it as well. I added an extra outfit for me as well as a sweatshirt, and I added a long sleeve shirt to the Walmart list for my husband. I added extra undergarments to both of our bags. I added an additional battery-free (crank) flashlight. It's still not perfect, and we need to update our expired car kits, but we're on our way! I have no idea what to include for my 1-year-old, however. She's growing so fast that anything I put in there would likely not help much at all.

 

Currently, our kit contains the following.

• 2 pairs of jeans each
• 2 sets of undergarments each
• 2 pairs of socks each
• 1 long-sleeved shirt for me
• 2 short-sleeved shirts each
• 1 sweatshirt for me
• 6 Clif bars
• 3 rolls of toliet paper
• 2 toothbrushes
• 1 small tube of toothpaste
• 1 travel-sized shampoo
• 1 bar of soap
• 2 tubes of sunscreen
• 2 crank flashlights
• 1 batter-operated flashlight with siren and flashing lights
• 1 bag of assorted batteries
• 1 box of matches
• 3 ponchos
• 1 emergency blanket (the small silver kind)
• 1 spare pair of glasses
• 1 small bottle of contact solution
• 1 contact case
• 2 travel-sized sticks of deoderant
• feminine hygiene products
• 1 bottle of ibuprofin
• bandaids
• neosporin
• 1 ace bandage
• 1 benadryl stick
• sterile guaze pads
• medical tape
• moleskin
• throat lozenges
• decongestant nasal spray
• 1 flat of bottled water (approximately 2 gallons)

Pretty good, huh? Not complete, but getting there. I need to add

• rope
• 1 tarp
• tweezers
• an oral decongestant
• medical scissors
• triangle bandage
• more food options
• additional clothes for husband (another shirt and a sweatshirt)
• duct tape
• better food options
• a real blanket
• clothing for daughter

Really, not too bad. I'm glad we made the effort to go through it this week, and I hope we can get around to purchasing all these things sooner rather than later. We also need to have a small kit in each of our cars. We had purchased-kits that my mom gave us for Christmas one year, but apparently it's been a lot of years because the food and the water all expired. Time to make new ones! They will be smaller versions of what I have above.

Do you have an emergency kit? Where do keep it and what do you keep in it? How often do you go through it?