Welcome!
Welcome to week #4 in the “72 Hour Kit Ideas: A week by week approach” series.
This series is all about making it simple and do-able to get a 72 hour kit put together for you and your family.
Creating such a kit can be overwhelming and financially difficult to do all at once. But through this series, I’ve broken it down for you into 26 small steps! You can see all the steps here. Just take one small baby step each week and in 6 months you will have a well stocked, personalized kit!
You can even go through the series a few times over a year or two adding just the most basic supplies the first six months and then a few more “extra” supplies each time you cycle through it again.
Want even more help?
This series is also available as an e-book. Purchasing the e-book gives you a few additional benefits over just reading the free series:
- Additional details and tips
- The ability to print the entire book!
- Pictures of my own kit showing just how I pack each week.
Download “Your Own 72 Hour Kit Plan” E-Book Now!
Last Week:
I hope all of you were able to plan the food you will include in your kit last week.
Week #5: Purchase & Organize Food
Your food will need to be well organized so that you know what to eat when. If you pack it today, you won’t remember tomorrow! So this week, purchase and then find a way to organize your food in your packs.
Ideas / Options:
Consider the pros and cons of the following options as you decide which will work best for your family.
Milk Jug / Other Gallon Container Method
- All your food for your entire 3 days is in one place together with a label for what to eat when.
Bag Per Day Method
- Put each person’s food in one bag or each day’s food in one bag.
What We Have Done In Our Family:
We use the bag method. I found it easier that way. I like having each day’s food together with a label on the bag telling us exactly what to eat for each meal. Each bag also has someone’s name on it, hopefully making it simple to find food when needed.
I did not include anything that is too easy to smash (no Ritz or Saltine crackers, etc.), so I’m not overly concerned about that, but I do pack our food at the very top of our kits for that reason.
If you bought the same food I did, you can download and print the labels here:
- Download in pdf format here (you will be able to print only, not edit).
- Download in Microsoft Word format here (you will be able to make changes as needed and then print).
How about you?
Leave me a comment and tell me how you’ve decided to add food to your kit. What are you adding? Why? What will you be doing this week?
Skip to:
| Week #3: Plan Your Food | Week #5: Food Prep | Week #1: Water to Carry | Series Into: 72 Hour Kit Series, A Week by week approach |
Becky is a wildlife enthusiast and pet and livestock care expert with a diploma in canine nutrition. With over a decade of experience in animal welfare, Becky lends her expertise to Simple Family Preparedness through insightful info about pets, livestock, bee keeping, and the practicalities of homesteading.
Hi,
I’m from Mexico, and I’m checking this page. My family and I are starting to do our kit. In Mexico there are many earthquakes and some people say soon will be a very big one so we want to be at least prepared. Sadly there are no so many options as you have in other countries but still we are trying with the things we have available. Thank you for all this information. 🙂
Claudia,
A lot of the food we are able to get at stores in the US is also available online (usually it’s cheaper this way also). Of course Thrive has lots of stuff available this way, but at Amazon.com you would be able to get almost all of the things other people have mentioned shipped to you too. Of course it would probably be a little different to you, since it’s not food you easily find where you shop, but you might have fun learning to use some different things.
Thanks Caitlin!
I’ve decided to add the ready meals that you add water to to our kits for now. I also have FD food that I am adding.
For suppers I was just planning to add extra of what I added last week for lunches. Then I found some recipes online that used Ramen noodles and dehydrated/freeze dried veggies to up the nutritional value. I could even add some FD meat and seal it all up in a Mylar bag with an oxygen absorber for homemade MREs. I will add some comfort foods this week too.
Smart Bonnie! Great idea!
My two year old is picky and I’m on a non-dairy diet while nursing an infant, so packing food for our kits a was a bit tricky. But I think I found the perfect solutions for us! I packed Kraft Easymac packets for my son and Ramen noodles for me. My husband gets both. 🙂 I also included applesauce pouches and cookies. Unfortunately, most of the Thrive Express meals contain milk 🙁 So I will wait until I can eat dairy again to add those to our kits.
I was on a non-dairy diet while nursing one of mine too Vanessa! Good luck!
I added a metric ton of canned tuna we had leftover from a brief time this winter when we had to mix our own food for our cats. I’d stashed it in our pantry and just found it.
Lucky you Tom!
My husbands grandmother is going to show me out to use old soda bottles and co2 tablets to store beans and rice. I’m already a canner of veggies and fruits, but am looking into canning meat (the thought still scares me some) and We started our own garden last week so we will have fresh items to dehdryate or can. Baby steps, once we get our budget under control I plan on buying some of the Express dinners to test them out.
Sounds good Jennifer! Good luck with the meat!
We have bags of dry items like beans and rice. Of course the huge downside is we have to have water and time to cook them but both are something we eat a lot so its also something we know our toddler would eat. We also have peanut butter for lunch. And I have flour to make tortillas to put the peanut butter on . We have plastic canisters with a screw top that we put this stuff in to keep it lightweight and sanitary and to prevent spillage. We reuse those coolaid jars where you just add water. We use this stuff to camp as well so its not wasted. This weekend I made biscuts over coals of a campfire and it was awesome. So much easier than I thought it would be.
Love that you rotate through it Christina!