Are you having a hard time deciding what to get your “special someone” for Valentines Day? Well worry no more. We have made it easy for you – and what’s better then the gift of preparedness? Send your loved one to work with a special 72 Hour Kit for the Office. We even made a contents list and cute little tag for you to attach to the container you gather the contents in.

For the tag – that reads “Because I always want you to be safe” and contents list, click here. As always, you may customize this list to meet your specific needs and don’t worry if you can’t get all the items at once. Put a few of the items in, and keep giving them extra “parts” as special surprises through out the year.

IN THE KIT (buy trial size if you can)
- food (protein bars, granola bars, beef jerky, candy, fruit roll ups)
- toothbrush/toothpaste
- washcloth/facewash/bodywash
- shampoo/conditioner
- razor/shaving cream/deodorant
- change of socks/underwear
- kleenex/wet wipes
- hand sanitizer
- travel-size first aid kit including small bottle of Tylenol
- work gloves
- rain poncho
- space blanket
- small flashlight with spare batteries
- a whistle (to draw the attention of rescue workers)
- carbon-filtering dust mask (for smoke, dust, debris, etc.)
- small novel
- small radio with spare batteries
- cash (small bills for vending machines)
- contents list

WITH THE KIT
- crow bar
- water

To print the tag and contents list, click here, or click on either of the images. Good luck and Happy Valentines Day!

p.s. If you want to give your husband a hint on something to get for YOU, you can always send him the link to our Food Storage Made Easy Binders

Today is the DAY! We got Grandma Lori’s disaster kits all purchased and compiled and she is very excited with the results. We started out this phase of our Food Storage Makeover by discussing the three different options available for disaster kits. After some discussion, we found a solution that worked well for Grandma Lori. Check out our video below to see our discussion and the final results!

We have had a lot of people ask us about options for buying kits that are already put together. We got the one in the video from Emergency Essentials who has a huge selection of different kits you can purchase depending on your family’s needs. We will be doing a post later this month discussing some of the different options. (*hint* There just MAY be a giveaway associated with that post!)

p.s. We came up with a really fun way to get the whole family involved in putting together your kits that we will be sharing with you soon, so stay tuned!

The best way to start a Food Storage, is with Emergency Preparedness. In fact, it’s one of the most popular reasons why people decide to get going on a Food Storage in the first place. Help someone start out their journey right- with some of the following ideas:

Emergency Preparedness Plan

Print out our Emergency Preparedness plan that has detailed checklists to help a family make their family plan, build a disasters kit – including a 72 hour kit, and put together an evacuations list and car kit. Roll up the pages, tie it up with a cute ribbon and attach the Day 1 tag.

Car Kit or 72 Hour Kit

Make, or purchase a pre-made Car Kit, or 72 Hour Kit. These can be found at stores, or online. Consider even just putting together a little first aid kit for someone’s car. Don’t forget to attach the Day 1 tag to your kit!

Subscription to Mozy

One thing people rarely think about with Emergency Preparedness is computer back-up. With all the pictures, work, and data on our computers, the last thing we would want in case of a fire or earthquake is to loose all that precious stuff! Consider purchasing a monthly, or one-year subscription to our favorite online back up. See why we love it here! Print out the receipt, roll it up, and tie a ribbon around it and attach your Day 1 tag. Anyone would be thrilled to receive this on their doorstep!

Back to the 12 Days List

    

Don’t forget that all of this information can be found in our Emergency Preparedness Plan Workbook which contains simple checklists to help you develop your family’s emergency plan (download in excel format or pdf format).

In our Getting Started section we have given a great example of how to make a 72 Hour Food Kit using a milk jug. We have always encouraged people to modify this kit to suit the needs of their own family and situation, but people have written asking us for more help with that. So we have come up with a few options which will hopefully be helpful for everyone. Pick the option that works best for you!

Detailed Instructions:

If you want it laid out for you step by step including a shopping list and contents list for one particular example of a 72 Hour Kit, follow our 72 Hour Kit milk jug instructions.

Create Your Own:

If you want to have more flexibility over your meal options, you can customize your kit using our new 72 Hour Kit Food Ideas worksheet. Follow the instructions and pick and choose what foods work best for your family.

Already Made:

For those of you who want the convenience of having a kit ready-made for you, we have been exploring some different options such as this 1 Person Safety Kit. We will be giving a more thorough review of these options in a future post so stay tuned!

If you have any additional items to suggest that work well for you please email them to us at info@foodstoragemadeeasy.net and we will compile them into an even more robust worksheet that we will incorporate into our Emergency Preparedness Plan and our Food Storage Made Easy Binder in the future.

Step 2: Water

• Empty out your water jugs, check for leaks or cracks
• Refill the jugs with fresh water and add bleach if your water is not chlorinated
• Purchase a new bottle of bleach for emergency purification if your current bottle is expired

Emergency Preparedness Plan

• Change out the perishable food items from your 72 Hour Kit
• Update seasonal or outgrown clothing in Disaster Kits for young children
• Remind your family of your Family Emergency Plan

In case you missed the infamous 72 hour outtakes video

If you have an infant or a toddler at home, consider including these items as you put together your disaster and 72 hour kits for your family:

• Instant formula. Make sure to buy the kind you do not need to mix with water. Also, track expiration dates and rotate through them frequently.
• 5 small bottles for the formula. You can fill them with purified water to provide extra drinking water in your kit.
• Refrigerated bottle bag. This is helpful in case you get the chance to warm up or cool down the formula you can keep it at that temperature for around 4 hours.
• Plenty of diapers. The exact number needed depends on the age of your child. I recommend including about 20 disposables and also 3 cloth ones that can be washed, dried and reused in case you run out.
• A travel package of wipes. These are great for washing as well. If you have space I’d recommend just storing a full box of wet wipes.
• Pacifiers. Put in two just in case. If you’re stressed the baby will probably be stressed and it’s a comfort for them.
• 3 cotton/flannel wraps, and 2 muslin wraps.
• Baby food. Depending on the age of your child you will probably want to include some jars of baby food. Once your baby can eat mostly regular foods just pop these out of your kit.
• Washcloths. Stored around 10 small ones, it’s an eventuality, you’ll require them at some point.
• Small comfort toy/s. If you child has a specific toy or blanket that he/she really loves, try to grab that in an emergency. But if you can’t, then try to have a usable substitute that will help comfort the child in lieu of their favorite item.
• Clothes – and plenty of them! This is a tough one as babies grow so fast. One trick I recommend is that as you swap out their closets to put in the next size of clothes to remember to do that in the disaster kit at the same time. Make sure to include clothes for all types of weather and include lots of spares.
• Ziplock bags. These work great for storing used diapers or anything else that is dirty, or clean for that matter.
• Bulb nose syringe and saline. Saline loosens mucous and syringe sucks water/mucous/misc out of ears, nose, mouth etc. You never know if you’ll need one so it’s great to keep in your kit.
• Infant tylenol/motrin. It never fails that kids get sick as soon as you are somewhere WITHOUT your medicine. So this is a definite requirement for any child disaster kit.
• Desatin or other diaper rash cream and travel-sized baby powder. The last thing you’d want in an emergency situation is a sore bum and nothing to treat it with. This will be especially useful if you have to resort to using cloth diapers.

The most important thing to remember is to always be thinking about what is appropriate for your child’s age and stage of development. For example, if your child is no longer drinking bottles then there is no reason to keep formula in your disaster kit.

For the tag – that reads “Because I always want you to be safe” and contents list, click here. As always, you may customize this list to meet your specific needs and don’t worry if you can’t get all the items at once. Put a few of the items in, and keep giving them extra “parts” as special surprises through out the year.

IN THE KIT (buy trial size if you can)
- food (protein bars, granola bars, beef jerky, candy, fruit roll ups)
- toothbrush/toothpaste
- washcloth/facewash/bodywash
- shampoo/conditioner
- razor/shaving cream/deodorant
- change of socks/underwear
- kleenex/wet wipes
- hand sanitizer
- travel-size first aid kit including small bottle of Tylenol
- work gloves
- rain poncho
- space blanket
- small flashlight with spare batteries
- a whistle (to draw the attention of rescue workers)
- carbon-filtering dust mask (for smoke, dust, debris, etc.)
- small novel
- small radio with spare batteries
- cash (small bills for vending machines)
- contents list

WITH THE KIT
- crow bar
- water

To print the tag and contents list, click here, or click on either of the images. Good luck and Happy Valentines Day!

So last week I started on a mission … to get my emergency plan ironed out, including the disaster kit and 72 hour kit food items. Back in July when Jodi bought all the ingredients to update our 72 hour kits, I put mine in a bag in the closet (the truth comes out). I started to think, if I had to evacuate my house I would be in big trouble. All my food was in a bag in one closet, the emergency supplies I DID have were scattered around the house, and another thing – my important documents binder wasn’t made and I had no cash in case credit card systems were down. How would it have worked for me if I had to evacuate my house quickly – ummmm not so well!

It’s been about 5 days of me focusing really hard and now I finally have my emergency bin all put together! We are going to be focusing a whole month on Emergency Preparedness early next year, but for now I wanted to fill you in on a couple things I did and learned.

1- I bought a car kit ($20 at Wal-Mart). If your Wal-Mart doesn’t carry something like this, we found this Emergency Road Assistance Kit that is very similar and is great because you can toss in a water bottle and some snacks into the bag as well.

2- I PUT my binder with important documents together (passport, birth certificates, social security cards etc). When doing this, I asked myself one simple question – if my house burned down – would I be annoyed I didn’t have this document? If so, I put it in.

3- I went to the bank and took out $200 cash – and asked for small bills. In Hurricane Ike, a lot of people commented on how they wish they would have had small bills so they weren’t paying too much for stuff when stores didn’t have change.

4- I put my 72 hour kit food in a nice old big plastic animal cookie bin. It fit perfectly and was easier than using milk jugs (I like easy).

5- I gathered up all the items in the disasters supplies area of our Emergency Preparedness Plan and purchased the things I didn’t have.

6- I placed ALL this stuff in a big bin in my front hall closet. I was sad because I had a cute little shelf all arranged in my basement for this, but then learned that it’s best to keep your kit somewhere that you can access it easily if you have to evacuate quickly.

p.s. My wonderful sister sent me a list of things she compiled for HER emergency kit. Some of the items were not initially on the list that we posted under Getting Started. I have recently added them to our Emergency Preparedness Plan and uploaded the revised list so you may want to print off a new copy if you have been using the older version.

Have you done your emergency checklist yet? You can accomplish all of this within a few days if you just set your mind to it!

If you haven’t already completed your “emergency plan”, be sure to go through the first component of our Getting Started page where we have outlined the basics of what you need to do. We include this under getting started because we feel it is important to have this done even before you get your food storage plan underway. For convenience sake, we have copied the information for you here.

Have a Basic Emergency Plan in Place:

• Before you begin your food storage, it is critical to have an emergency plan for your family. Read our article about this topic, or print out our simple checklist as a guide.
• The most critical component of your emergency plan is to have your 72 hour kits with food and water. We recommend creating your own kit as it is more cost-effective and you actually get REAL food.
  • To create your own 72 hour kit follow the instructions on our blog post or view our instructional video
    
  • To purchase a kit, check out an emergency supplies store or we really like the kits available online at America Family Safety.

Where are you on YOUR emergency preparedness? Let’s keep each other accountable. Post your updates in the comments section!

While preparing the blog post “How to Make a 72 Hour Kit” I pulled out my own kits to take some pictures. I realized the date on them was July 2006 so I decided I better rotate the food out since the recommendation is typically to rotate it every 6 months to a year. I opened the kits up and discovered that if we truly would have had an emergency these would not have been very pleasant to eat.

Top Ten Reasons I Needed to Rotate My 72 Hour Kit Foods:

10. Didn’t even have a kit for my youngest daughter (and she’s almost two!)
9. Stew expired July 2007.
8. Tang powder turned into crystallized lumps.
7. Beanie Weanies tasted rancid (yes I sampled them) and expired in 2007 as well.
6. Expired oatmeal although it didn’t taste too bad.
5. Raisins as hard as rock. Even my kids wouldn’t eat them.
4. Fruit roll-ups were smashed flat and REALLY sticky and gooey. I should NOT have let my kids attempt to eat them!
3. Expired noodle soup which also didn’t have any directions on the envelopes … hmmm.
2. Beef jerky was so hard that it killed my jaw to try to chew it and also had white powder on it that I am suspicious was mold. I hope I don’t get sick from tasting it!
1. The jolly ranchers melted all over the entire kit! Must have gotten overheated when we moved.

So not only would it have been gross in an emergency but now as I’m rotating it, the food is going to waste because it is so nasty and old.

Solution

Today I decided enough was enough. I took my kids to Walmart with my Printable Shopping List in hand. I bought enough stuff to make 6 kits (Julie likes me to get hers at the same time I’m doing mine) and it cost $49.50, so approximately $8.25 per kit. We didn’t need to purchase the stove, fuel pellets, matches, or spoons so to make a brand new kit would cost a few dollars extra. It took me about 30 minutes to empty out the old kits and put in the new food items. So I procrastinated for a whole year on something that took me less than 2 hours and about $30. I make myself mad sometimes.

Bonus

While I was redoing my kits I was finally able to make the “video instructions” I have been meaning to put together since I did the original 72 hour kit post. Hopefully this will help you out if you are working on your kits for the first time!

Do you have your 72 hour kits prepared yet? When is the last time YOU rotated your 72 hour kits? What is your goal for when to get them replaced (if you have been a slacker like us)?

Step 1 – Make sure you have saved 1 milk jug and 3 2-liter bottles per person. Wash them all out with soap and let dry.
Step 2 – Multiply the number of kits you want by the items listed in the shopping list and purchase the food items from Walmart or your neighborhood grocery store. All the food will cost around $8-10.
Step 3 – Purchase a wing stove and fuel pellets from an emergency preparedness store such as Emergency Essentials or if one isn’t available in your area follow the links below to order online. Only one stove is NECESSARY per family, but they are pretty cheap so if you’d like to have one per kit that is fine too. It will make it much more convenient in a true emergency.
Step 4 – Cut straight down the middle of a milk jug diagonal from the handle. Go about 1/3 of the way down. At the bottom of that cut, make a horizontal slice coming from each side but leave about 2 inches of the jug intact. This should make a sort hatch that you can pull open and insert the items in. Watch our video below if you are having trouble visualizing how to do this.
Step 5 – Place the necessary items into each milk jug according to the contents list. Put the Tang and cocoa servings into small zip-lock bags (1/4 c. per serving). If you have extra food left over, stick it in as space permits. Tape the milk jug up. Tape the contents list to the outside of the jug and record today’s date and the family member who will use that kit. VOILA!
Step 6 – Fill your 2 liter bottles with water and store all of the items in an easily accessible place (your car trunk is the ideal place if you have room). Check out our Step 2: Water page for more information on how to properly store the water.

Resources
Printable Shopping List
Printable Contents List
Video Instructions
Purchase Wing Stoves Online
Purchase Fuel Pellets Online