Welcome!
Welcome to week #7 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 add some utensils, plates etc. to your kit last week.
Week #7: Clothing
If you (heaven forbid) ever have to face a serious natural disaster, it is likely that you will need a change of clothes. You may be bleeding or extremely dirty. Even if you aren’t, you will likely want to change your clothes at least once over a 3 day period of time.
So, this week, add clothing to your kit supplies for each person in your family.
Clothing Suggestions:
Consider the following thoughts as you decide what clothing will work best for your family.
- Keep your clothing as lightweight as is reasonable.
- Try shopping at your local thrift store.
- Bright, solid colors are smart.
- Think of what the weather will be like in the next 6 months and include appropriate clothing.
- Consider a sweatshirt and sweatpants. You could cut them off in warm weather.
- If you have children, especially young children, think of how much you expect them to grow in the next 6 months and include clothing in that size.
- Don’t forget underwear, shoes and socks!
What we have done in our family:
We have pants and long sleeve shirts (could be cut off in the summer), for each family member. We also have a change of underwear and 2 changes of socks for each family member in our kits. I keep each person’s clothes in a plastic bag so they will stay dry even in rainy weather.
We keep coats, hats, gloves and shoes in our coat closet (they take up too much room to be in the actual kit) and would actually wear these if evacuating in the winter.
How About You?
Leave me a comment and tell me what clothing you will add to your kit. What are you adding? Why?
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| Week #6: Eating | Week #8: Shelter | Week #1: Packaging Your Kit | Series Into: Survival 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.
At the moment my wife and I have ponchos in our bug out bags and I have a 5 person dome tent next to my bag. I am looking into converting a 12 x 12 dining canopy I have into a tent. The canopy is a plastic top with light weight aluminum poles. I am going to buy some tyvek home wrap from a builder (it is too expensive to buy a whole role) to go around the sides and as a ground cover. Tyvek is light weight and to be able to use the canopy as a tent would have 144 sq ft and plenty of headroom.
We have tents, sleeping bags, ponchos, tarps and emergency blankets. What I don’t have are clothes packed. Our shoes are by the door in the garage, so I need to focus on the other clothing we need. Our weather is from vastly different season to season, 90+ in the summer to the low teens in the winter, so I will have to be diligent about rotating them out each season.
I have tarps and a few ponchos, but not near enough for my extended family. Gonna have to work on that. It seems the prepping never ends. Thank goodness it is yard sale season.
We have a small 2-person tent, a tarp, and some rope packed into our kits. I also have ponchos for each person.
This week I will be working on clothing. We live in a climate where it is warm pretty much year-round so I’m planning on including lighter clothing and maybe in the winter months tossing in a sweatshirt. I’ll be packing twice as many onesies for the baby in case of blow-outs, spit-up, etc.
Shoes is a hard one for me. I want to be sure that they are sturdy in case we have to walk (i.e. no flip-flops), but I don’t want to spend a ton of money on an extra pair of shoes that we’re never going to wear. Especially for the kids, whose feet grow so quickly! Our shoes are right by the door and if we have to get out, shoes will need to be put on, so I think I will just focus on making sure there are also socks near the front door so they are easy to grab in a hurry.
We each have two sets of clothes, one as a base layer for cold weather. We also each have two large leave sized garbage bags and a poncho (cheap plastic type). I found two military ponchos with grommets at a yard sale for $2 each (yay!!) for my husband and I. I also found my husband and oldest daughter rain suits at a yard sale, coat and pants for $2. I also found a backpacking tent at a thrift store for only $10. It looks like it has never been used. I am hoping to get two more back packing tents and the younger children heavy duty rain ponchos. Yay for yard sale season!!!
So far, I have for everyone in our 5 member family: underwear and socks x2, pants with zip-off legs, tank top, and light weight long-sleeved button-down shirt; trashbags to act as ponchos; tarp; and emergency solar blankets. I will be adding a couple of small pop-up tents. Our cold-weather gear is stored near our packs, though it’s not needed right now.
We have some survival/tube tents, enough for our family of 5. We also have extra clothing and emergency blankets. We live in a pretty mild climate, so thankfully we don’t (usually) have to worry about heavy winter clothing.
Recent fires here in Colorado and the evacuation of the boy scout camp makes me glad I have started our kits. When I started I bought sling bags since I was having issues finding backpacks that would work. I’m using the sling bags now for an extra pair of shoes and clothes for everyone. Since the strings can be pulled to make them long they will fit over our backpacks. They could also be used to carry the wet clothes keeping our backpacks dry.
We just got a small tent on clearance, here. Super-lucky! 4-person for $40.
For packing an extra pair of shoes in your kits, you can choose a durable pair of boots to put on in an emergency. Then you can put a smaller pair of shoes in your kit. (You can put your socks/underwear/clothing inside of your shoes to save space!)
My husband and I are active in sports and hiking as well as many other outdoor sports and the one thing i can honestly say in regards to clothing make sure you have moisture wicking clothes, wool socks and sturdy boots, this goes for your underwear too. The last thing you want to do is end up in a situation where you cannot have a vehicle and you or your feet get wet and you develop blisters and then have to dip into your first aid kit to treat them (if you’re even properly prepared for them.)(if untreated can lead to infection from not being able to properly cleanse) We have chacos which we can strap to our packs if the weather is warm enough and raining or we’re having to hike through large bodies of water. The best part of having these clothes is that they will dry quickly and if you are in colder climates you want to be dry when the temps drop or risk hypothermia.
Great point Erin! Thanks for your insight!
I am a school nurse and former safety director. I was looking for more information about car preparation to share with my parents. I plan to share your site with my parents. Your week by week plan makes the prospect less daunting.
I consider myself fortunate that I used to be an avid backpacker and so I already own a super light weight water proof tent. For anyone who purchases a tent I would consider adding the cost of a good waterproof tent spray and making sure it is leak free before you need it. The whole reason I purchased a new tent was because the old one I had leaked and I didn’t realize it until I was on top of a Mountain. It rained then froze. My sleeping bag was literally stuck to the floor of the tent. Very uncomfortable 🙂 Just a little side note, a vestibule is a great place for a furry friend to sleep out of the elements but with out making your tent all dirty.
As always Thank you for this series! It’s sooo great.
I have a couple of tarps to put into our bags, and we also have jackets and ponchos for everyone. I am considering a small pop up tent. Thanks 🙂
Thank you for this series. I already had some in place, but this helps me realize what I have overlooked. Clothing is what I have been working on. I love the suggestion of sweats, being you can cut them if it is summer. Also, thanks for thinking about visual, bright colors. I was going to buy darker ones until I read that! Even though our plans would (hopefully) put us in the woods and not a crowded area, bright colors would make it easier to find my kids in a tree/brush area.
This is where we really need to bolster our prepping. I don’t know why I didn’t think about having clothes in a go bag. We will have to pack some random clothes for everyone and update them with the seasons and as the kids grow. Thanks for bringing this up!
I just added ponchos and a tube tent, and we have a large tent that we take camping every year, but I really need to get some nice sleeping bags to keep near our kits so I’m looking forward to next week! Thanks again for the great advice!
We have a pop tent that we won the last go around which is great. I love it. This time around I added a rain coat for my self. I happened to find a really cheap one. And thermal underware for my husband and myself. I bought on black Friday . I moved my old cheap poncho to our bike kits. A few months back we got caught in a freak storm on the local greenway with our two year old and were not prepared. IT wouldn’t have taken any extra effort to have been prepared we just weren’t . It was raining so hard it was stinging our eyes and tornado warnings were in effect and we were 20 min away from our car with no protection. Along with many other families trying to make it out. It truly came out of the blue. We have a bike trailer so I will be making a small pack for it incase anything like that ever happens again. You can never tell when disater is going to hit. Thankfully for us and everyone else caught on the greenway a tornado never touched down, but it pointed out an area I never even thought about before.
Right now I’ve only got a tarp and some ponchos and emergency blankets for tent type shelter in our kit, but I’ve also got a three person tent if we have time to grab it. I sure hope I win this week! Thanks!
We have 4 ponchos (well, 5 including one for the dog), 2 tube tents, garbage bags, 4 emergency blankets, and a 6 person tent to be carried, if possible. We also have sunglasses, bandanas, hats and sunscreen for each person. I still need to get tarps, sleeping bags and clothes for each person. I plan to attach our extra shoes by the laces to the outside of each pack with carabiners which I found at the dollar store.
For us, the tarp idea is the most do-able, though I think I will put a tube tent (or two) on my must-have list for the next time through the list in six months!
My plan is to get sleeping bags that can withstand cold Central New York temperatures. Last winter was pretty moderate, but the winter before that was something like the 2nd snowiest on record!
This week I’m shopping at Goodwill to get lightweight coats for the whole family to put in our bags.
Last time we went the cheap route and got ponchos, this time we are adding extra ponchos and a pack of zip ties and a smallish tarp to each bag. Each of our bags also has one of the huge black lawn trash bags rolled up pretty small.
My family has a couple of small pop up tents that my husband uses for backpacking. We need to put them into our kits when he is not using them! That’s our plan for this week! Plus, I need to gather some clothes for the family. Definitely need to do ponchos here in the Pacific NW!