72 Hour Kits!

It's hurricane season down here in Texas. The message boards are asking me if I am ready for a hurricane every single day and so my mind is on emergency preparedness mode. I put some 72 hour kits together last year for our family and it totally helped out on my peace of mind. It's nice to know that you can just grab and go something, if needed. So I pulled those kits out this year, and found a few problems with my system. So after a little tweaking, I came up with these.

72 Hours Kits 

For a family of four*

My kits have the same three meals for all three days. I found that I saved money this way and it saves on the confusion of what to eat when you use your kits. This is my shopping list for my kits.

72 Hour Kit Shopping List

• 12 cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli (pop top)
• 12 packages Pop Tarts
• 12  Ramen Noodles
• 12 small boxes of Raisins 
• 12 apple sauce cups
• 24 fruit snacks
• 12 Chewy granola bars
• 12 packages of trail mix
• 12 Cliff Bars
• 12 crunchy granola bars
• 12 small packages of jerky (or jerky sticks)
• 36 water flavor packets
• 4 packs of gum
• 36 pieces of hard candy
• 4 packs of wet ones
• 1 box, 2 gallon Ziplocks
• 1 box plastic forks 
• 3 cases, 40 bottles of water (15 Gallons of water)

Total Spent=$104.45

*I just multiply the number of kits I needed by 3 to get how many items I need (except the wet ones x1, water flavor x9, candy x9, gum x1, and forks x6) So if you needed 7 kits, time 7*3= 21 cans of ravioli.

(Water and candy not pictured)

So something that I didn't think about last year when I was shopping was calories and expiration dates. So this year, I focused on that. If items didn't have a shelf life of over 6 months, I didn't add it to my cart. For calories, I tried to get as many as I could. My kits totaled in 2,270 calories per day. Last year, they only had 1,730.  For water, it is recommended to have 1 gallon of water, per person, per day. We have 4 people, so that is 12 gallons of water. I just bought three cases of water (15 gallons of water) and it is in my garage ready to be thrown in my trunk if needed. (If we don't have a car, we have a rolling cooler.)

Daily Menu

Breakfast-

1 pop tart(200)

1 crunchy granola bar(190)

1 box raisins(90)

1 fruit snack(80)

560 calories

Lunch-

1 pkg ramen noodles(380)

1 cliff bar(250)

1 fruit snack(80)

1 jerky(100)

810 calories

 Dinner-

1 can ravioli(220)

1 chewy granola bar(100)

1 fruit cup(100)

1 trail mix(280)

1 fish crackers(200)

900 calories

Extras-

1 pkg gum

9 suckers

1 pkg wet ones

6 forks

Total Calories- 2,270

Expiration Dates

One of the most disheartening things of dissembling our 72 hour kits from last year, was that things were expired. We were able to eat about half of what was in our kits. The rest I gave to a homeless guy who was asking for help and I threw away the stuff that was inedible. So this year I made sure to write down all of the expiration dates and put  it on the side of my fridge. I am hoping that next year, when things start to get close to their expiration date, I can switch the items out. Then I wont have such a large grocery trip. I'm hoping it works out. Still in the testing ;)

These kits have food in them that I know my family would eat if we were hungry. I don't usually buy a lot of  the things that I are in this kit but that can also make it a little more enjoyable if we ever have to use these kits in an emergency. I hope this inspires anyone who reads it to work on their 72 hour kits. Please share if you have any tips or suggestions.