What are the basic emergency essentials you need to gather for your family? Here’s how to get started without getting overwhelmed! From food storage to 72-hour kits, to off grid options and more! 
Gathering emergency essentials like food, water, and clothing can seem like an overwhelming task, but it doesn’t have to be! Here’s some practical, actionable advice from someone who’s been gathering emergency essentials for several decades.
Preparedness is a Journey AND a Destination
Beyond that rather pragmatic line of reasoning there are some simple truths about gathering emergency essentials for our families:
- It’s more about the experience and process than it is about the list of items in your basement or bug out bag.
- Living in a provident manner, preparing and providing for ourselves, is a lifestyle and there are skills to be learned as well as food to be put by.
- Somehow this process always seems to include learning to live more frugally, more thankfully, more practically.
- The lessons learned and the lifestyle changes that occur aren’t something that you and I can simply gift to another person. Even if we could somehow download our emergency preparedness efforts into someone else’s head, its most likely that the information wouldn’t make any sense because it would have no personal frame of reference.
Where to Start with Emergency Essentials
Many of us already know that developing a pattern of preparedness is vitally important and then there are those of us who just aren’t there yet. Either way, its hard to know where to start. Never fear! I know awesome bloggers and when I asked them to share with me their best preparedness posts, I had a huge list in a matter of minutes. Brace for impact.
Why Prepare Emergency Essentials?
Are you still not quite convinced? Are you still imagining “preppers” as those weirdos in tin foil hats? Or, do you have family members that aren’t quite on your same bandwagon? That’s ok – its only a place to start. Here are some articles to help you out:
- From the Prepared Ninja, Reinforcing the Basic Need for Preparedness
- The Bug Out Bag Guide gives quality, not too overwhelming advice on How to Start Prepping
- Common Sense Home has just 5 Simple Preparedness Basics
- The Rural Economist has a seven part series on Getting Prepared for Beginners – this was a great series of posts on the basics and not overwhelming at all.
Start with B.O.B.
A good place to start, if you’re new to the whole preparing emergency essentials thing is a BOB – Bug Out Bag. They’re also known as 72 hour kits, grab and go bags, emergency packs and that kind of thing.
Preparing emergency essentials for three days is a manageable task, but no less vital to emergency preparedness. Besides, BOB is a nice, friendly name – start with BOB.
To help you get started:
- Here are our sister articles on preparing a BOB for your baby and improving upon you BOBs for babies and children – both have free printables!
- Food Storage and Survival has a great article about putting together a BOB for your car – oh, did I forget to mention you need one in your car, too?
- And your office but don’t worry because the DIY Prepper has you covered there.
- Also, we have a whole section on this topic in our book, The Do It Yourself Homestead. We even include information on how to make your BOB’s more healthy!
What are Emergency Essentials?
Some emergencies are events like natural disasters, which tend to be more motivating to prepare for because they’re scary. It’s just human nature to need a push to do something new or hard. Here’s some fire to light under your tushies because I love you.
- Lil’ Suburban Homestead shares their preps for a winter ice storm – I lived in NC for six years and I KNOW about ice storms. Its not hail, y’all. They’re ICE. STORMS. And they’re just not right.
- Common Sense Home shares what they do to get ready for any winter storm. Now that I live in Utah, I take winter very, very seriously.
Food Storage
Another good motivator is food. I don’t know anybody who actually enjoys being hungry.
Like many religious people, our faith observes fasting days (once a month usually) and I love the process of that. I learn how grateful I become for a piece of toast or a glass of water.
BUT, I wouldn’t want to do it for more than 24 hours (a typical fast), and certainly not long term.
Grow Food – just a quick note
Learning how to Grow Your Own Food can save you money (especially if your family is large) and provide you with food that is pesticide and GMO free. Yes, growing food takes work but you’re reading an article on emergency preparedness.
Clearly, you are under the impression that taking care of yourself and your family requires work. You’re smart that way.
We have an entire chapter on The Homestead Garden in The Do It Yourself Homestead, just so you know.
Health
Another motivator to get emergency essentials together is our health.
- Mom With A Prep shares 10 Frist Aid Skills Every Parent Should Know.
- It’s not something we’re comfortable thinking about but there is the possibility of large scale illnesses striking and overwhelming our medical professionals and facilities – what then? That’s a long answer, but here are a few ideas from Food Storage Moms (number 12 is important – just sayin’)
- For some simple herbal combinations for health that you can make yourself, just visit our link on the topic.
- Here’s how to encapsulate your own herbal supplements – money saver! For more herbal information on the homestead, just search the medicinal herb garden section in our book, The Do It Yourself Homestead.
- To prepare ahead of time to use herbal plants medicinally, I suggest you take the beginner courses through The Herbal Academy. Just click below for more information:
Off Grid
So what if the grid does go down? It doesn’t have to be caused by a political coup – a computer hacker or an earthquake is probably more likely to cause us to loose public works.
Have you ever run electricity drills with your family? You shut off the electricity to everything and see how long you can go before you go nuts.
It’s a particularly powerful lesson in summer when you shut off the AC, or in winter when you shut off the heat.
Have you Tried Off Grid Cooking?
If you decide you want to be proactive, you can practice your outdoor cooking skills now:
- Homestead Lady has a whole article on 3 off grid cooking methods that we’ve learned as we experiment with increasing our skills in this area.
- Melissa K. Norris has a great podcast called Cast Iron and Dutch Oven Outdoor Cooking
- If you want to know anything about a family living off grid, just visit Trayer Wilderness – Tammy’s family is constantly inspiring me!
- We have a whole section on off grid living in our book, The Do It Yourself Homestead. We interviewed real-life, off grid homesteaders to get their advice and experience.
What to Store in the Pantry?
When deciding what and how much to put into your long-term food storage supply, take it nice and easy. Buy just a little something extra at the grocery store this month and then start reading this list of articles.
What to Store in the Pantry - List of Resources
When deciding what and how much to put into your long-term food storage supply, take it nice and easy. Buy just a little something extra at the grocery store this month and then start reading this list of articles.
Overwhelmed?
Did I lose you back there or are you ok?
If you’ve read to the end of this article, you’re probably one of those who is ready to begin to gather these emergency essentials in earnest. Or, you’re ready to step up the preparations you’ve already made.
Religious leader Bonnie Oscarson said, “Where much is required, much more will be given!”
There are so many mentors out there – you do not have to try and organize this venture all on your own. Providing for your family, filling your lamps with oil, is a big task but there are countless people able to help along the way.
This time of year is all about gathering, isn’t it?
We’re bringing in the harvest and soon we’ll be gathering our families together to celebrate our bounty and the coming festive season. Before that happy time descends upon us, let’s take a few moments and examine what we more we can be doing to prepare to care for those we love to the best of our abilities in any circumstance.
We can’t do it all, but we can do something. And it’s time.
If you read this article and still need some more preparedness information and incentive, be sure to check out The Prepared Homestead chapter of our book, The Do It Yourself Homestead. Don’t just stop at preparedness information, though! With eight different chapters and over 400 pages of homesteading instruction and how-to’s, there’s bound to be something here for everyone. If you’d like a free sample from the book, just email me at Tessa@homesteadlady.com and I’ll get you set up. Or, click below for more information on the book:
Holy cow, that’s one heck of a conglomeration of resources! Thank you not only for the mentions, but for bringing so many great articles together in one place! Bookmarked!
Thank you for sharing your awesomeness!
When I was growing up my family would try to go a week without lights once each year. It was fun for us kids! Of course, kids don’t stay up at night which makes it easier 🙂 We never turned it completely off though.
A week is a great accomplishment!
Another great post. Congrats on being chosen as a featured post (twice) on this week’s Wildcrafting Wednesdays! I can’t wait to see what you have to share this week.
https://www.herbanmomma.com
Wow! This is amazing! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the part about preparing is more about the process, than just gathering things together! I needed this today. We have been learning all about preparedness the last year or two. We have 8 kiddos, that range in age from 17 to 8 months old. The only problem we have is that the willing ones are the youngest and can only do so much. Our olders are wanting to spread their wings and be *doing* important (to them) things, not working in the garden or milking the goats. It is hard to impress upon them the importance of this being a lifestyle, something we need to always be working on. Some get it, some don’t. We don’t know too many people who think being prepared is something that needs to be lived. A few people that have mentioned that they agree, won’t talk past that. Sigh.
Anyways, all that to say…..I really needed this post today, and am so glad you took the time to put all this information together!
Blessings,
Kerri
Thank you for sharing that, Kerri! Sometimes you wonder if you’re helping at all, so I really appreciate you taking the time to comment.
I know what you mean about trying to get your children on board. My son, strapping lad that he is, really is more of an indoor person so getting him to do outside chores has been…a chore. I recently discovered that he likes to cook, though – I didn’t think to ask the ten year old boy if he likes to cook and that was my mistake. The other morning I asked if he wanted to make breakfast while I went out to harvest the plums and tomatoes, which he really didn’t want to do. He said yes! We ate excellent waffles and the harvesting got done.
He still has outside chores just because he lives here but I’m grateful to have found something he’s passionate about that is also helpful to the home.
Now, if I could just find a kid who was passionate about ironing. Ugh.
Just quickly wanted to add that the “oil” the virgins ran out of was not necessarily physical resources. It was the Holy Spirit… They neglected to get to know the Lord and therefore receive the oil. When the “bridegroom”, who is an analogy for Jesus Christ returned, they were caught unaware. You cannot share your oil because it’s personal and it is dependent on your relationship with the Lord Jesus. So, is it good to be prepared? Yes, however if you have a relationship the Heavenly Father, I belive He will provide. Fear Him, the One who controls everything, and know that there is nothing else to fear. God bless (:
Yes, that was the main point, of course – everything is spiritual before it is temporal. I love the parables because they have so many layers of learning.
Thank you for stopping by and adding to our discussion!