Household Emergency Checklist: What Your Shelf Needs for the First 72 Hours

Water 0 of 6

Everything else on this list can wait a day. Water cannot — it is also half the food plan, because stored food that needs water is not food until the water shows up. Container and storage details live in our Preserve the Water hub.

Drinking water, stored — 12 gallons in sealed containers: one gallon per person per day for three days, the floor every plan starts from.

Water for cooking, on top of drinking — 4 gallons beyond the drinking count. Freeze-dried meals, rice, oats, and pasta all ask for water before they become dinner.

A way to make doubtful water safe — a filter or purifier that works with the power out: gravity, squeeze, or press. These are the ones we scored head to head in our water filter comparison.

Containers dated and rotated — the fill date on a strip of tape, drinking water refreshed every six months, and the old water goes on the garden rather than down the drain.

A refill you can actually reach — rain off the roof, a well, or a creek you can treat. Know yours before you need it; our Rainwater Collection Calculator turns your roof into gallons.

Stored where it stays good — cool, dark, and off bare concrete. Heat and sun chew through both the water and the plastic holding it.

Food from the deep pantry 0 of 7

The deep pantry rule runs this whole section: store what you already eat, and eat what you store. Exotic food nobody touches is not a plan.

Meals that need no cooking — 36 meals that are a meal with zero heat and zero water: peanut butter, tuna pouches, bars, canned fruit, crackers. Day one of an outage is not the day to learn a new cuisine.

The freeze-dried layer — behind the everyday shelf sits the long layer: freeze-dried servings that keep for decades and ask only for hot water. We scored the ready-made kits head to head — Mountain House, ReadyWise, and Augason Farms — with the full scores on the starter kit reviews page.

A manual can opener — the electric opener is a paperweight with the power out. One hand opener in the kit and a second in the drawer.

Staples that become meals — rice, oats, beans, and pasta packed in mylar with oxygen absorbers: cheap, shelf-stable, and filling — and counted against the water in the section above. When 72 hours becomes two weeks, the Long-Term Food Storage Calculator does the pounds-and-buckets math.

Dates checked, food rotated — twice a year, pull anything close to its date into the weekly menu and replace it. Our Food Shelf-Life Lookup gives the honest keep-times for 30 common staples.

Plan for pets — their food and water sit on the shelf with everyone else’s: three days of their usual food, stored and rotated with the rest of the pantry, plus any medicine they take every day — and a carrier or leash that fits them now, kept where you can grab it if the house has to leave.

One comfort, on purpose — coffee, tea, cocoa, hard candy: something small and shelf-stable that makes day two feel less like day two. Morale is a supply.

Power — keep the cold food cold 0 of 6

Outage power on this site has one first job: the fridge and freezer hold their cold, and the freeze-dried and frozen stores you already paid for stay worth eating. The rest of the hub is our Preserve the Power page.

A power station sized for the fridge — big enough to run the refrigerator in bursts through a day and a night. Size yours with the Power Station Size Calculator before buying on a guess.

A way to refill it — a station is a bucket; solar panels are the faucet. Our solar generator comparison covers the pairings we scored.

Generator fuel, with a runtime you know — fuel stored safely with stabilizer in it, and the honest days of runtime figured on a calm day: start with our generator comparison and the Generator Fuel & Runtime Calculator.

Propane counted, not guessed — cooking and heat eat a tank faster than the label suggests. The Propane Runtime Calculator turns your tank size into real hours per appliance.

Freezer discipline — a full freezer holds its cold about 48 hours closed; a half-full one, about 24. Keep the door shut, and keep a thermometer in the fridge and freezer so the call on the food is made by numbers, not hope.

A light for every person — 4 flashlights or headlamps, plus the spare batteries in the same drawer. A house hunting for one flashlight in the dark is a house that needed four.

Warm or cool 0 of 4

The weather does not care that the power is out, and the house has to answer it without the furnace or the air conditioner.

A blanket or bag for every person — 4 blankets or sleeping bags rated for your coldest night, not your average one.

Warm layers out of the laundry cycle — hats, gloves, and wool socks packed with the kit, not buried in a dresser across a dark house.

Heat without the house system, safely — an indoor-rated heater and a working carbon-monoxide alarm to go with it. Never a grill, a camp stove, or an oven for heat: that trade takes people every winter.

A plan for the hot version — a battery fan, light bedding, and the coolest room in the house picked ahead of time. Heat is the quiet one: it takes people who thought they were fine.

Knowing what is going on 0 of 4

When the networks go down, information is a supply like any other — and it runs out just as fast.

A weather radio that needs no grid — battery or hand-crank, tuned to your local NOAA station, with the spare batteries stored beside it.

Phone charging, sorted — a charged power bank and a car charger. The phone is your radio, your map, and your phone book; feed it.

Your people, on paper — numbers for family, neighbors, the doctor, the vet, and one out-of-town contact, written down in the kit. Memory is the first thing stress eats.

A meeting point everyone knows — one near the house and one out of the neighborhood, agreed out loud rather than assumed.

Medicines and health 0 of 4

General planning only — anything specific to your household belongs to your own doctor or pharmacist.

Daily medicines, with a buffer — a week or more of the prescriptions the house runs on, kept current as prescriptions change. Ask your pharmacist what buffer is possible; many will help you build one.

A first-aid kit you have opened — bandages, antiseptic, tweezers, and the counter basics, in a spot you can name without thinking. A kit still in shrink-wrap is a rumor.

Eyes and ears covered — a spare pair of glasses or backup contacts, and hearing-aid batteries if the house uses them, packed in the kit. The emergency version of you still needs to see.

Medical devices, powered — if a machine keeps someone well — a CPAP, a concentrator — its battery hours belong in the power math above, figured on a calm day, not during the outage.

Toilets and cleanup 0 of 5

If the water stops, the flushing stops with it — and plain hygiene is what keeps a bad week from turning into a sick one.

A bucket toilet, ready to assemble — a sturdy bucket, heavy liners, and a snap-on seat, stored together. Nobody improvises this gracefully at midnight.

Heavy trash bags — two boxes of the thick ones. In a long outage, trash service is a supply too.

Washing without a tap — wet wipes, hand sanitizer, and a real bar of soap: the three-piece kit that covers most of a week’s washing.

Bleach or disinfectant, sealed — for cleanup water and surfaces, stored away from the food shelves, with the mixing ratio written on the bottle in marker.

Paper goods, counted — 4 rolls of toilet paper, plus paper towels and a stack of paper plates: dishes are a water cost in a dry week.

Papers, cash, and keys 0 of 4

The boring section. It is also the one people are most grateful for afterward.

Cash in small bills — cards are only money when the card readers work. Small bills, because in an outage nobody can make change.

The papers that prove things — copies of IDs, insurance, and the deed or lease, sealed in a waterproof bag in the kit, with a second set held by your out-of-town contact.

Spare keys, in the kit — house and car. Hanging by the door is not the same as findable in the dark, from the curb.

The numbers page — account, policy, and meter numbers on one written page: the page that turns a week of phone queues into an afternoon.

If you have to leave 0 of 5

Staying home is the plan. This section is the backup to the plan, packed before it is ever needed.

A go-bag for every person — 4 packed bags: clothes, the medicines, the paper list — three days of the person who carries it.

Half a tank, always — keep the car at half a tank or better, so leaving never starts with a line at the one open station.

Paper maps — your county and your way out of it, printed. The phone and the network tend to fail together.

Shutoffs known and reachable — water, gas, and the breaker panel: every adult in the house can find them, and the wrench lives at the meter rather than somewhere in the garage.

The ten-minute talk — everyone in the house knows where the kit is, where the bags are, and where the meeting point is — said out loud once a year, not assumed forever.