Pop quiz time

1.)  Where is the closest flashlight to you at this moment?

2.)  Do you have an air filtration mask and could you put your hand on it in two minutes or less?

3.) What items do you have to keep your house cool and where do you keep them?

4.)  If you had to remove stitches yourself, do you have the tools to do it?

5.)  What’s your secondary method of communication?  Is it charged and ready?

So how did you do on the quiz?  Obviously, there’s no right or wrong answer.  The bigger question is  – could you answer each question?

Each of these things above is integral to preparedness.  Sometimes, we have these things – which is HUGE!  If you just have these things – high five!

More often than not though, if we have these things, we don’t know where they are.  So how do we organize things so that we KNOW that we KNOW where things are?

We develop kits!

Each kit is self-contained and is kept in tote.  For larger items, I keep them in large totes from Costco.  For smaller kits, I keep them in smaller totes which fit in the large Costco totes.   So what kinds of kits should we be putting together?  I’m going to be giving you a list of 11 kits.  I’m going to give you an overview here, but I’ll be doing a post on each of these so I can dive deeper.

Now there is one very well known kit that I am not including in this and it’s called a Bug out Bag or Grab and Go Bag or many other things.  A Bug Out Bag is for leaving the area, and we’ll cover that at some time.  These kits are all about what you are ready for at home.  So we’ll jump right in with kit #1.

(1)  Lighting Kit

While I’ve written on emergency lighting before, a lighting kit is totally different.  If your lights go out, making sure that you have everything in one place to take care of any lighting emergency is of huge importance.  Flashlights, candles, matches, batteries, lamp oil, lamp wicks, butane lighters, and so many more things will fill out this tote.  You’ll be able to provide your family with light to play games and read together, and also with nightlights for little children’s rooms, so they aren’t afraid.  Having lighting will give you such a sense of peace in the midst of a power outage.

(2) Cooking Kit

For some of us, our gas stoves are how we plan on cooking if the power goes out.  What about people out there who only have an electric stove?  Or what if gas also goes out with the power?  How do you handle that?  While there is already a blog post on how to cook if the power is out, it falls short of talking about a cooking kit that you can put together yourself.  This could include a solar oven, a herc oven, wood oven/cook stove and/or a butane burner.

(3) Heating Kit  

If it’s winter, having several ways to keep your house warm is important.  And there’s more to it than just having an extra heater.  In order to work these strategies though, you need the right equipment. Tent anyone?  Nope, it’s not what you think, and we’ll get to all of it when we tackle the heating kit. Putting together this heating kit so that you know exactly where each of the elements to take care of your family in the midst of a winter storm is more than simple.  It’s vital.

(4) Cooling Kit

What a heating kit is to the winter, a cooling kit is to the summer.  While there are ways to passively cool a home, unless your home was developed for that, it won’t be as effective as other means of cooling.  You do have options like cooling towels, battery-powered fans, air circulation through the house, and other ways to keep yourselves cool during the summer months.

(5) Communication Kit

This is, oftentimes, an overlooked kit.  Unless you want to work with smoke signals from your backyard – you may need a more up-to-date way to communicate with other people around you.  This is something you should give thought to on multiple levels.  Keeping your communications equipment together will provide you with a quick means of contacting someone in your preparedness group in the event of an emergency.

(6) Sanitation Kit

Frozen pipes anyone?  Or maybe you have a burst water pipe, so you can’t flush toilets or drink water from your taps.  How do you handle these problems?  A sanitation kit is more than a portable toilet bucket with a snap on lid.  What else do you have to have in place to make sure everything will work together.  How do you put together a kit so that everything is in one place and can easily be grabbed to be put into action?  We’ll talk about that when we talk about our sanitation kit.  Want some basic tips on getting your sanitation in order – even if it’s not about a kit.  You can check them out here.

(7) Clothes Repair Kit  

Do you have needles, thread, buttons, snaps, and patches for torn blue jeans?  These things will all help you during an emergency if you tear something important like your apron – when you’re cooking from scratch using an alternative heat source, that’s adventure enough.   But clothes also provide a protective barrier between you and the elements.  Having clothes that are well-maintained will help you hold things together.

(8) Medical Kit

I didn’t say a first aid kit, because a medical kit is much more than that.  It’s much fuller orbed and contains both allopathic medicines as well as alternative remedies.  It contains basic medical equipment, as well as first aid supplies and OTC’s to take care of everyday colds and sniffles.  If you want to get started on this kit before I really go deep into it, you can get some basics here.

(9) NBC Kit

NBC doesn’t stand for the television channel, it stands for Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical.  While this isn’t something any of us ever PLAN to have to use, we should have one of these ready at a moment’s notice.  There are so many things that are important to have ready in case of a horrible attack on our country, such as having rudimentary things like a radio and a Geiger counter.  How about having plastic and duct tape to make windows as airtight as they can be?  Water needs to be stored.  If people go outside, you need protection for them and so much more.  How long do you need to remain inside, how do you know how long you’ve been there?  Do you know how to build a Faraday cage from scratch?  What about power and so much more!  We’ll discuss it when we hit this kit.

(10) Pandemic Kit

We’ve narrowly averted being hit by a pandemic in 2014 when we had four laboratory-confirmed cases of Ebola here in the US.  Again, while we never plan to need this kit, we NEED to have this kit ready.  Do you have the right masks ready?  How about gloves and proper suits, in case you have an infected person in your family?  Do you know what items you need to set up a quarantine room?  What kinds of other help should you have on hand?

(11) Kid Kit 

Are you a parent or a grandparent?  You need a kid kit.  Do you have kids on your street?  You may want to have items on hand for them as well – though I certainly wouldn’t go for as robust a kit as if you have your own kids in your home.  What do you need to have on hand for emergencies if you have kids?  It’s not just as simple as having crayons and coloring books on hand.  You need to take into consideration each aspect of your child.  We’ll discuss how to discover their needs and desires so you know how to develop this kit specifically for the kids that God has given to you.

(12) Homeschool Kit

If there was ever a catastrophic disaster which closed the schools down for a LONG period of time, would you be prepared to carry on your children’s education?  Would you have a basic idea of what each child should be learning?  Would you have the basic books on hand that your children would need?  How about other supplies like notebook paper, printer paper, rulers, erasers and so much more!  I’m a homeschooling Mom, and I’ll walk you through this step by step.  It’s so much simpler than you think!

(13) Power Kit

Power’s out – so why do you need a power kit if you have a light kit, a cooling kit, a heating kit, and a cooking kit?  Because even if you have those other things you may still want to charge your cell phone.  You may still want to watch a movie – even with the power out.  You may need to use a small appliance.  How do you do this without power?  There are tools to accomplish all these things and more.  We’ll discuss all of those and putting them together in this kit during this post.

(14) Water treatment kit

You may have stored water, but what if you run out of stored water?  How will you handle your water woes?  You need to be able to treat water in more than one way.  What if the bleach that you stored is now expired?  What do you need to keep on hand in order to make sure that your family has clean water?  We’re going to explore those circumstances and the basics that you should have put together when we discuss water treatment kits.  Looking for some basic tips on water storage before I tackle the water treatment kit, you can find that info here.

Once each kit is assembled and stored, the peace that they will provide you with will be amazing!  As I write each of these posts, I’ll link to them so that you can find each of them from this first post.

What About You?

What kits do you have put together already?  Are there any other kits that should be added to this list?   I’d love to hear.  Leave a comment below letting us know!

Together let’s Love, Learn, Practice, and Overcome

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