Welcome!
Welcome to week #5 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 you were able to purchase and organize all your food last week.
Week #5: Food Prep
If the foods you added to your 72 hour kit require any sort of preparation, you will want to be sure you have the tools necessary to make use of your food. Much of the food I suggested did not require any prep and it is a great goal to have most of the food in your survival kit meet this ideal. But this isn’t always possible. If necessary, add everything you will need to prepare your food to your kit this week.
Ideas / Options:
Consider the pros and cons of the following options as you decide which will work best for your family.
- Can Opener
- Pocket Knife
- Scissors
- Multi-tool (these could be used to open food).
- Stove in a Can
- Wing Stove
- Mess Kit
- Cook Set
- Aluminum foil (Wrap food in foil and throw it in a fire to cook without needing any cookware! Easy, cheap, light and small!)
What we have done in our family:
Not much! Since the food we included does not require any prep, we did not need to add any of these items! However, in the past I have had a multi-tool and wing stove in my kit because of their light weight.
How About You?
Leave me a comment and tell me how you will cook the food in your kit and what you will include to make that possible. What are you adding? Why? What will you be doing this week?
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| Week #4: Purchase & Organize Food | Week #6: Eating Your Food | 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.
We have a foldable one-burner stove that works well. We also have a small mess kit for cooking. It’s enough to make soup/boil water, and that’s most of what we need now that we’ve added a lot of freeze-dried fruits for snacks. We just have some soups and entrees (and coffee!) that we have to heat up.
Perfect Katie!
I have four heat cells in my emergency pack. I also have equipment for starting fire… That being said I have aluminum foil and a mess kit which has a metal cooking pots. I only keep one pan in my backpack because of weight/limited space. I keep the others in a small plastic bin in the garage with other supplies that are not completely necessary. If I were able to drive away, and time allowed, I plan to grab these as well. I have a multi-use tool which has a can opener. Most of the food I have in my backpacks doesn’t require cooking, but if needed I have supplies to cook fish or wild-life.
Great plan Laura!
Hello! I am a fairly new subscriber and am still in the beginning stages of planning. I have some Shelf Reliance food stored, but am nowhere near having it organized! We do have a Coleman camp stove, but as previous comments have said, it’s pretty bulky and not really a good option for 72 hour kits, unless it’s just separate, but near and easy to grab. Also, hadn’t really thought of dishes/cooking utensils yet, so the set would really come in handy! Thanks a bunch for offering the chance to win it!
I have a Coleman camp stove but am looking into other options during this week’s challenge because it’s ok for my home kit, but not really the best option for my bug out kit because it is too bulky to carry if we were on foot. I also have lots of prepackaged meals and a ton of energy bars. The energy bars are great because they are really high in calories, but their downside is that they don’t have a very long shelf life and they get pretty heavy if you have a lot of them. I am still exploring other options this week.
I’d replace the crank can opener with a P38. It’s barely larger than a quarter and fits nicely on a key ring so you always know where it is.
For cooking, I found stainless steel cups with folding handles that my Nalgene bottles fit into for easy packing. I’ve been using a wing-stove for 30-plus years and added a home made wind screen made from aluminum flashing (you could also use aluminum foil) that doubles as a cup support to improve BTU efficiency. The stove, fuel tabs, matches and even individual servings of coffee and instant oatmeal all fit nicely into a plastic soap box. It’s part of my minimalist approach to comfort in the woods.
Great tips Greg. Thanks!
We rotate our cooking instruments from our kitchen to our go bags. Like we just upgraded our can opener, so the old one was put into a bookbag that had canned food. Hubby and I also carry the old school can openers on our key chains as well.
My wife mentioned that we carry the old style can openers on our keychains, but I have to offer one bit of advice: practice. I had to teach her how to use it, and we both needed practice using them. Just a simple reminder that just having something isnt good enough, you have to know how to use it too.
Love this advice Brandon! Stuff isn’t enough. Knowledge is just as important if not more so!
Smart Meredith!
I like your idea with the key chain can openers. Good thinking! : )
Great posts! I’ve been working on my kits like crazy, but I would still like to add some heat cells.
I really do love the heat cells Laura!
We live in a small town, and I am an avid couponer so I keep lots of things on hand. Often I won’t o shopping for 2 weeks, and in the winter sometimes longer. I have always just assumed that in an emergency we would have heat in our wood stove. Thanks for challenging me to step it up and have fuel cells on hand!
Of course Cindy! Thanks for taking the challenge!
Found your site on Pinterest! My husband and I have recently been focusing more on emergency preparedness and survival skills. As a chef, im sure he’d appreciate this cookset! Will be looking around the site and visiting often.
Welcome. Glad to have you hear!
We have a backpacker’s stove/fuel as well as a camping stove. These are not in our 72hr kits but can be grabbed if needed. We have matches/lighters and petroleum jelly soaked cottonballs in our kits. I plan to add some other firestarter to our kits as well. I need to add tin cups though so we gave something to heat up our food in. I would love to win this giveaway so I would feel like we had what we needed. Thanks for the opportunity!
Sounds like you’ve got a great start Julie! Good luck!
I took advantage of SR black friday sale and picked up a wing stove w/ extra fuel tablets, 2 mess kits, 4 utensil sets, 4 cans of Heat Cell, flint starter, waterproof matches and several Thrive Express pouches. I also have a roll of aluminum foil, multi purpose tools and a Swiss Army knife for each pack. I can’t believe how much progress I’ve made in just the few short weeks since I’ve found your site! Added more water to my stash this week as well. Monday, I plan to hit the bank and get all my quarter rolls, $1 and $5 bills at one time. I’ve been saving empty deodorant containers to hide the money in (one for each pack). Hoping if someone goes through our pack, deodorant is the last thing they will be looking for.
Oh, I almost forgot! I made DIY fire started disks off Pinterest. They work awesome, especially in the wind!
We have some firestarter disks that we made with lint from the dryer and wax from old candles melted in a cardboard egg carton. We also have a small butane camping stove, but would like to get the stove in a can. We have several manual can openers that leave smooth edges so the cans can also be used for cooking and collecting water later.
Yard sales are a great way to find inexpensive mess kits since so many parents have had kids in boy scouts at some point. We found one that looked brand new for only $0.75. I also bought a multi-utensil tool (spoon, fork, knife,ect.) in the stocking stuffer section at CVS. Not sure yet how we are going to cook but we do have 2 flint rods to use to start a campfire so we will probably be cooking somehow over it.
I just found your website today and this week I plan on looking back through the weeks I missed and starting to organize what I already have. I think I will start to find the stove in a can type things. I will also be asking my mother in law about what they have. I know they have some of the things. This can be super overwhelming and scary to think about. The worst thing we can do is pretend that we would never need anything. When we lived in Florida, we all had our hurricane kits.
We made some little camp “stoves” out of cat food cans (scout style) & use denatured alcohol in them. Not exceptional for heating a lot of food, but good for boiling water & food pouches. Also, less convenient to carry the small containers of denatured alcohol, but not too bad. We have sewing kits, crank style can opener, waterproof matches, & multi-function pocket knives, as well. I will be adding heat cells & a wing stove.
I’ve been following your blog for a close to year now, & I’m amazed at how far I’ve gotten, all with the weekly reminders from your series. I remember saying how overwhelming it was at first, but now I feel somewhat prepared & I just add on as I get more reminders. As always, thanks for the great series!
We will be adding a 5 piece mess kit and a multi-tool to our pack. We’ll also be adding 4 of the heat cells (which sound like fantastic little devices!) and possibly a wing stove.
*GASP!*
Those mess kits! I used to always use one when we would go camping, when I was a kid. It was my mother’s from when she was in Girl Scouts and was seriously the most useful, most compact thing. I went on a canoe trip with my church one year, and that was the single most indispensable piece of equipment. And now I know where to get more!
(As for cooking, I have waterproof matches and camping know-how to get me through. I’ve been making fires for years. And for cooking, I have a cast-iron set set aside.)
We have two portable, lightweight (in handy carrying cases) gas stoves with 10 butane gas cans. This week I will be working on a small pan set to go along with it. Most of the emergency food we have now doesn’t require cooking but after the cookware, I can add even more variety to our 72 hour foods. 🙂
I have several ways to cook. I have a gas grill and lots of replacement cylinders. I have a coleman camp stove. I have a propaneturkey fryer, I have an old wheel rim with a custom made grid to use with wood and lots of wood cut and stacked. I have a Camp Chef stove and I have a tralvel trailer with a gas stove. I also have a smoker (Charcoal). I have dutch ovens and I know how to use them. I want a solar oven, but I don’t have the cash to spend on one righ tnow.
We have a 2 burner camp stove we used to cook on for three years when we didn’t have electricity while building our house. I also purchased a one burner stove from a yard sale this summer for $8 that normally runs $28 (Yay!! And it works great). I have also put a #10 can of freeze drief fruit in my kit so once it is empty, I can make a little stove out of it (with an empty tuna can that I filled with card board and wax with a wick in the center as fuel), for once my propane is gone.
What is in the sewing kit and how do you use it? It is listed as an item to use to open food with, but I don’t have a clue how.
I have some sterno cans handy for Thanksgiving and Easter to keep food warm. They are pretty small and not very heavy. I think they would pack well.
I’m a bit late checking in this week. We have a foldable camping stove and 3 cans of sterno, a couple of multi-tools, and a small pot and camping pan somewhere…I just have to find them and centralize them. I don’t have any utensils dedicated to cooking with this set, though, and all the utensils in my kitchen are larger than what I would like to pack. I saw a small set in the camping section at Wal-Mart, though, so I may be picking up those.
Good luck Aimee!
i plan on buyin a wing stove and some heat cells
Great tips as always. My hubby and I have some nice pocket knives to put in our packs, but also looking into getting a nice multi-tool though. For now we have a little backpacking camp stove that I got before we were married. It has come in handy before;-)
Yes, these things come in handy more than one might think!