Emergency School Backpack Survival Kit Thoughts

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Mountain House for Dinner: Review of Wraps and Macaroni and Cheese

The folks at Mountain House sent me some samples of their freeze dried meals to try, and really I was pretty excited.  I've had some Mountain House before and actually had compared it to a couple of other brands of "backpacker" foods and for flavor and texture, the Mountain House was my favorite.

So in order to give these samples the true test, we took them camping instead of eating them in the kitchen.  We had a Macaroni and Cheese double serving entree and one of the new Mountain House Barbeque Sauce with Beef Wraps that you can put on a tortilla or a bun or just eat plain if you want once it's reconstituted.

The first thing you need to eat Mountain House meals is water.  I did not try to eat either of these dry, but I'm guessing it wouldn't work too well.  The instructions tell you how much water each package requires and then tells you to heat the water up to boiling, so bust out the camp stove and pot and get some water boiling. 

I didn't bring any measuring cups, so I just used a mug and kind of guessed.  I also wanted a little hot water for washing the bowls after, so I'm heating too much water here.  While your water is heating, find whatever you need for serving, or just hang out and play cards with your friends.

Once the water is boiling, open your package and take out the oxygen absorber.  This little packet is totally harmless as long as you don't eat it.  It just helps keep the food fresh and dry in the package.  Each food pouch had an easy tear strip at the top and flared bottom so it could sit on your table or the ground or whatever and hold itself up.  Nice.

The dry stuff looked like this:

Then add your water and mix well.  The package tells you how much to add.  Like I said, I didn't bring a measuring cup--I just kind of guessed on how much water was 2 cups for one and 1 1/2 cups for the other.  Now it looks like this:

After the water is mixed in, seal the package using the little ziplock strip at the top and let it sit for 8-9 minutes (follow the directions on the back, if you happen to get one that says some other amount of time, believe the package over me).  Go put your jacket on, help the kids tie their shoes, get the campfire started, observe nature, or whatever else you need to do while you wait.

When your 8 minutes are up, open the pouches and serve.  The two serving macaroni and cheese served all three of our kids plus had some leftovers for me and dad to finish up.  The "one 16 oz. serving" wrap package served both me and sweet husband with some left for him to have seconds.  So two Mountain House meals served our whole family of 5.  And we dished out into bowls, but you could really easily just eat it out of the package so all you'd need is a spoon.  That would save you some dishes also.

I didn't guess right on the water amount for the wrap package.  It was a little watery when it was done, so we had it in a bowl and dipped our tortillas in it.  Quite a lot of spice for me, but husband really liked it.  If any of you know me, I'm abnormally sensitive to spicy foods, so it's probably the perfect amount of flavor for the average person.  The Macaroni and Cheese was a lot of cheese and less macaroni, but was quite tasty with a little salt or salsa added to it (I did the salt, hubby and son did the salsa).  We were totally satisfied for the evening hike.

Here's the quick benefits of using Mountain House freeze dried foods:
1. You don't have to pack much in your cooler.  Just make sure you have enough water packed or a source for water.
2. They are EASY to cook.  No slicing, dicing, getting your hands covered in raw hamburger, etc.  Boil water, add water, wait, done.  Left lots of time to be doing other things.
3. They cook up pretty darn quick.  Not much waiting for dinner.
4. Not much for dishes.  Actually almost none if you eat out of the package.
5. Not much waste either.  Once the food was eaten, all we had to throw away was the package it came in.
6. You don't have to worry about them going bad by the end of the week.  Super for long term trips where the meat in the cooler is always iffy by the end.

I have some Mountain House foods in my emergency kit.  They are lightweight and easy to prepare and taste pretty good.  You just have to have water and it's best if you have a way to heat that water.  Mountain House meals are available from Mountain House or at most camping outfitters--even my Walmart camping section has some.  As a side note, I haven't tried all the flavors, but really like the Turkey Tetrazzini.  Do you have a favorite flavor?

Krazy Glue for Your First Aid Supplies

I had a friend write with an idea for 72 hour kits or first aid kits. Her son fell about 9 feet out of a tree onto the cement edge of their pond and got a nasty gash by his eye and a concussion.  After getting it all cleaned up and disinfected, a neighbor who also happens to be a nurse gave them some of this to close the cut up. 

Krazy Glue?  Seriously.  If you've ever gotten this stuff on your fingers, you know how well it sticks skin together.  And the individual use tubes are perfect--you probably also know how well a big tube of Krazy Glue glues itself shut after one use.  The nurse friend told them super glue was invented for the purpose of closing skin.  Their son did have to take a trip to the doctor to get the concussion checked out, he's doing much better and the cut is reportedly healing nicely.

I know when we had our daughter fall and cut her chin, the emergency room glued it together.  They probably used one of these mini tubes of Krazy Glue and charged us a fortune for it.  Definitely would have been cheaper to do that one ourselves!  It would be worth picking a few of these up and having them handy in your first aid kits or emergency kits.

How about you?  Ever used a form of super glue to glue a wound shut?

New Car, New Car Kit

We recently added a second vehicle to our family.  This is a good thing.  I'm seeing some substantial fuel savings over driving the suburban everywhere we go.  This car has been in the plans for a few weeks, so I started gathering gear for a vehicle emergency kit before we even bought it.  Who wants to drive around in a naked car?  Get some gear in your trunk!

Here's the contents.  It's not perfect, and wouldn't make a very good bug out kit for longer than a day or two, but it's got most everything I need in it for the emergencies I am most likely to face.

Water
Emergency Food brick (the other one is still in the suburban)
Hard candy
Basic first aid--bandaids, tylenol, excedrin, kid tylenol, etc.
Hand crank flashlight with charger I can plug my phone into
Hand crank radio
Hand sanitizer
Toilet paper
Baby wipes (they're actually in the front of the car where they're more accessible)
Assortment of feminine hygeine
Pullups--we still have a bed wetter and an emergency stay overnight somewhere will be so much less stressful with these already on hand
Emergency blanket
A couple of cheapo rain ponchos
Fire starting kit (in the cookie tin)
Light sticks
Bug spray
Long sleeves for everyone
Jumper cables I've already used twice.

Seriously, there isn't much in here you can't just gather from around your house.  I had to go buy the ponchos, emergency blanket, hard candy, and the box it's stored in.  You might need to buy a flashlight or jumper cables or something, but in the meantime, get what you can together and get it in your car.  Half a kit is better than no kit.  You can put it in a cardboard box.  I've had a car kit challenge going on the facebook page and today I'm upping the ante.  Get a picture of your kit in your trunk and post it on the facebook page by this Saturday night, May 8th, and I'll enter you in a drawing for a SOL Survival Pak by Adventure Medical Kits.  This little kit takes the critical survival items and packages them in an ultralight, waterproof dry bag. Includes compass, mini rescue flash signal mirror, slim rescue howler whistle, waterproof and windproof survival matches, waterproof tinder quik, heatsheets survival blanket, survival fishing kit and duct tape.  Add that to your kit.  Nobody's sponsoring this, it's just me.  I want you to get some preparedness gear in your trunk!

As a side note, if you drive a van or SUV where your kit will be visible to the passengers (ie. NOT locked in the trunk), you probably want an opaque container.  This will help keep your food/water from exposure to light and small children. ;)  It will also make it so everybody and their brother dosn't see the gear in the back of your vehicle.  Might save your gear from theft as well depending on where you live.  Really, the most theft I worry about is the kids sneaking the candy when I'm not looking!

Now, for at least the third time, get some gear together and outfit your vehicle!  You'll be glad you did.

Kids 72 Hour Emergency Kits

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Rotating the Adult 72 Hour/Emergency Kits

Remember the 72 hour emergency kits? Well, if you've put one together for yourself or your loved ones, it's a good idea to get into them and rotate the supplies every so often. I actually like to do this every spring and fall (I use the LDS General Conference weekend as a reminder). Getting the pack out at least twice a year serves a couple of purposes. First, I get to rotate out all the old junk like old MRE's and expired medications and replace them with fresh stuff. Second, I am reminded of what I have in the pack and it gets me thinking of what else I need or want. And third, I get to organize all the stuff I added during the last 6 months (letting you all in on how I operate here--when I want to add something to the kit and it's not rotation time, I just unzip the top zipper and stuff it in, then I usually have 4-5 things that need to be put where they belong in the kit when rotation time rolls around).

This fall, just for you, I dumped the entire contents of my kit and took pictures--now doesn't that make you all feel loved? Just don't pay any attention to my nappy living room carpet--it was that way when we bought this house and I've got no drive to replace it until my kids are bigger.

So we'll start with the clothing. I have windproof fleece pants, thermals, a long sleeve top, socks/underwear, lightweight pants, and a small fleece blanket (okay, the blanket is for the kids). I've vacuum packed it all, so it takes up less space in the pack.Next, is the water section. Bottled water, nasty water purification tablets, portable water bottle style water filter (dad has the pump type filter in his kit). Redundancy is a good thing. Having clean water to drink is a big deal. I'd carry more water bottles, but they're heavy.
Now the food section. I have a real low tolerance for not eating. I am prone to migraines in a hurry if I skip meals or just eat junk all day. I also have kids that can only carry so much in their own kits, so it may look like I have food overkill, but I don't think I have enough. Freeze dried Mountain House meals (the best tasting brand of freeze dried backpacking food in my opinion), a couple of MRE's with MRE heaters (trying to phase these out of my kit--they taste nasty to me and are heavy, however, they are "ready to eat", I wouldn't need to use water for them, and they have their own heaters), kippered snacks (really, those are for my husband--I guess they should be in his kit--a bit of nastiness in a can), Power Bar type bars, what's left of the emergency food bars (re-vacuum packed), utensils, stainless steel cup that can be used for cooking as well as eating, chocolate (m&m's).
Now the heat/light section. Again, you might notice a little redundancy. Firestarting is not one of my strengths, so the more means I have of getting one started the better chance I have of actually getting a fire going. Okay, I'll try to go in some kind of order here. Lets try starting at the top left and going clockwise-ish. Lightsticks, military firestarters from somewhere (maybe out of a 20 year old mre?), dryer lint firestarters, super sappy sticks, high altitude lighter by Coleman, magnesium/steel firestarter thingy, magnifying glass from Target pharmacy, waterproof matches, cub scout style buddy burner (rolled cardboard in a tuna can doused with wax), solar/crank light radio, shaky flashlight. Need to get a bit of my char cloth in here. There's also a LED light clipped to one of the zippers of the pack.
Whew. Okay, now on to the tools and miscellaneous stuff. This one we'll go top left and then just kind of sweep to the right side of the picture. Cheapo rain poncho, emergency blanket, emergency whistle thingy with a compass and waterproof match case (forgot to check if there were matches in it . . . ), scissors to open all the vacuum packed things and whatever, a clothesline in a film canister, extra ziplock baggies for whatever, gerber tool (like leatherman), rope, pencil/paper, razor blades, assorted string/twine/small wire, pocket knife, ammo, leather gloves (hate to use up all my bandaids on scrapes that could be prevented by wearing gloves).
Are you done yet? Nope, still going. More assorted miscellaneous items: cash (small bills and change), playing cards, mini scriptures.
Lastly, toiletries/first aid/more miscellaneous. I'll take a stab at order here, but there's kind of a lot. We'll at least start at the top left. Maybe we'll try going in rows this time. Row 1: Minimal first aid stuff (triangular bandage, bandaids, ointment), hand sanitizer, baby wipes, feminine needs. Row 2: lotion, ace bandage, sunblock, ion drops, contact solution, glasses, extra contacts, contact case, toilet paper. Row 3: sewing kit, soap, handwarmers (guess those should have been in the heat/light section), medications in ziplock bags with the lot number and expiration date written on them, comb, shampoo, deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste, floss. We have a better first aid kit as well as a bag with more medications in an easy grab location. I've also added a little travel type tube of insect repellent and my important docs scanned to a thumb drive.
I have all this stuff packed in an internal frame backpack with the hip straps on it and a good old pair of shoes tied to the outside.

Here's the problem. I'm only 5'2" and about 110 lbs and have degenerative disk disease that gives me some real good back pain off and on and makes it tough to carry anything too heavy. Sweet husband hefted my pack and asked, "Can you carry this?" And the answer is: Not very far. It is a well built pack with the hip straps to disperse some of the weight, but it's still heavy as all get out. But what do I take out to make it lighter? And I haven't even really hit on the "shelter" concern in my pack contents. I'm hoping to be able to drive to my evacuation location or at least take the wagon. Any great ideas? Sweet husband's pack is just as heavy, and I don't want to rely on us having to be together or have both packs to have what we need.

I also rotated the kids' packs, I'll post on that hopefully in the near future :)

Preparedness Enrichment Night

A few months ago I was asked if I would do an Enrichment night for the ladies at church about preparedness. Of course I said yes. Now, for those who don't know, the LDS church has a program for the ladies called Relief Society, and part of that is having activities or meetings called Home, Family, and Personal Enrichment meetings where we get together and learn things or go places or have a dinner or whatever the local Relief Society decides we need to do. So our Relief Society decided they wanted a night to talk about preparedness, and I got the call to teach it. Well, the night is supposed to be about 1-1 1/2 hours long and I was asked in the spring and didn't do it until last week, leaving me about 4 months to wonder how to teach preparedness in 90 minutes or less without having the sweet ladies falling asleep on me or scaring them into the preparedness overload coma. So here's what I came up with, and maybe it can help some of you all also.

I decorated with random preparedness items, like canned goods, flashlights, radios, etc. I brought my grinder, dehydrator, a few of my favorite preparedness books, my emergency kit, my son's kit, my car kit, and prizes!

I started by asking a few questions about preparedness in general: Why should we prepare? and What are we preparing for? Got some good answers from the ladies, and some good discussion. There are some great quotes and scriptures for this section.

When I was first starting, I gave them all a little piece of colored paper. I used three different colors--we had about 20 people show up. After the discussion about why we were preparing, I had them gather in "families" by color WITHOUT TALKING. Now, a couple of them didn't get the no talking memo, but it worked okay anyway. The first group together was supposed to get a prize, but I couldn't tell which group got together fastest, and some were disadvantaged due to physical limitations of some of the ladies there, so I just gave everybody Waterproof Matches for their emergency kits.

Then we had a discussion about making plans like evacuation plans and meeting place plans and how important it is that everybody in the family knows the plans.

For the next activity, I gave each "family" a piece of paper and pencil and gave them 2 minutes to write down everything they could think of to put in a 72 hour/emergency kit. The group with the most things on their list won lightsticks for their kits.

Then we had a discussion about emergency kits, evacuation kits, car kits, etc. Why they're a good idea, generally what to put in them, etc. I could only cover the basics--not enough time! I could have talked for the whole 90 minutes on ONE aspect of preparedness! Ugh.

The third activity was a wheat grinding race. I had brought my Country Living hand crank grain mill, and set it up on the counter. Each family chose a representative and they had 30 seconds to grind wheat into flour. The winning lady ground almost 1/2 cup in 30 seconds! When she was done, she said, "I decided I don't like bread all that much." Even with a nice mill, hand grinding grain is work! The winning family got energy bars and the losers got hydration drink mix packets for their kits. And I got a little over a cup of flour to take home that I didn't have to grind! :)

Then we discussed what we should store like 3 months of easy, normal foods, water, money, and longer term storage of staples like wheat, rice, beans, etc. Also the tools to use the food you have stored--like a way to grind your wheat or cook your meals if there was no power/gas/etc.

The final activity was a tasting game. I made chocolate chip cookies with bean flour in them. What? I haven't told you all about bean flour? You can grind white beans and use the flour as a substitute for up to 1/4 of any recipe's flour. If I do the full 1/4 of the recipe's flour in bean flour, I can taste the beans a little, so I go a little less than 1/4 of the flour total. Anyway, more about bean flour another time. I had made these cookies with bean flour in them and they each took a cookie and had to guess the secret ingredient. One of the ladies had heard me talk about bean flour before, so she guessed what it was although she couldn't taste it in the cookie. Fun.

Everybody got one of my famous dryer lint firestarters as a prize. I had to explain what it was, I will admit they look a little strange if you don't know what they are.

Then we talked about the importance of knowing what you have and how to use it. This includes your food stuffs and your gear. It is not okay to say that your husband knows how to load and fire the rifle or light the stove, YOU need to learn how to use your equipment. What if he's not there? What if you're not there? The best time for experimenting and learning is now, when there is no emergency.

Finally, I practically begged them NOT to go home, file the handouts and do nothing! Inventory your stuff, buy stuff, learn something new, etc. Do something--ANYTHING! Just get doing.

I gave them handouts with the general outline of what we had discussed as well as sample lists for an emergency kit, a car kit, what to grab to evacuate, and long term storage.

I cooked up an MRE for them to sample and also had pieces of the survival bars they could taste. Some of the ladies had brought homemade bread and jam, so there was some good food there also. I've had a few ladies comment since the activity that they went home and inventoried their food supplies or gathered gear for their emergency kits. Hooray for progress!

Making Better Char Cloth

Hey, check out my post on Making Better Char Cloth over at the Utah Preppers site--some good information for firestarting, and something you might want included in your emergency kits especially if you have a striker type firestarting tool (flint/steel, etc.) you plan on using.

Vehicle Emergency Kit

Here's a little kit I put together a while back for my vehicle. And yes, it was in the suburban when I had the flat tire, so if it had happened somewhere where Incident Management Team was not available to fix my jack issue, I would not have died waiting for my sweet husband to come save me. I've had a partial kit thrown in and out in no particular container for some time, but figured I'd better get it organized so stuff wasn't floating around and I'd know what I had. So I swiped an Action Packer container sweet husband hadn't used in months (you know, the one from the food room) and packed it up. This also served to make some more space in my food room to put a couple buckets of oats . . . :)

This kit takes minimal space in the back of my suburban and could easily fit in a car trunk as well. Yeah, you'll have to pack your groceries around it, but it's worth it to have a little preparedness with you!

We only have the one vehicle. If you have more than one, make one for each one you drive, or be ready to swap your kit over to the car you're driving that day. Here's what's in my kit (most of it's in the picture):

Bottled Water
Flashlight (the shaky kind--I'm actually not a real fan of this flashlight, but had an extra so in the kit it went. I also have a LED light on my key ring.)
Batteries if you have the kind of flashlight that takes batteries
Light sticks

Food--I have hard candy, old MRE crackers, and my Homemade Survival bar bricks
A couple of cheapo rain ponchos

A couple of cheapo space blankets

Wet wipes
Toilet paper roll (anybody with kids has experienced this emergency)
Diapers/Feminine needs (okay, I don't have diapers in mine since my kids are thankfully past that stage, but I used to keep diapers in the car when we used them and a change of pants/clothes for the diaper wearer or potty trainer)
Basic first aid kit (can't tell you how many times we've needed a bandaid at a ball game or the park)
Blanket
Umbrella

Hand warmers

A cute little buddy burner like cub scouts make with the cardboard rolled up in the tuna fish can and then doused in wax (just had one of these laying around, so I tossed it in)

Fire starting stuff in an old cookie tin (matches and dryer lint firestarters)
Hand sanitizer

Long sleeves for everybody (light jacket or button up shirt)

A box to hold it all

Cash (coins and bills) or a prepaid visa card thingy (stashed discreetly)

Outside the box:

Jumper cables, tool kit, extra car fluids (oil, power steering fluid, wiper fluid, antifreeze, etc.)
Jack, tire iron (which I now have both of ;-)

That's about it. Seriously, we can't all drive around with Incident Management Team's truck of goodies (what a shame), but your car is naked without some gear in it! Plus, you'll feel better driving around knowing you won't be one of those people stranded for days who survived on chewing gum and restaurant mints until somebody happened to find them.

Don't stop now! Click comments and read on for more great ideas!

Make Your Own Homemade Survival Bars

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Survival Food Bars/Food Rations Review

Ever wondered what those survival food bars taste like? Are they all the same or is one brand better tasting than the others? Well my little group of ladies decided to have a taste test and lucky you, we're sharing the results with you!

I ordered one of each 2400 calorie food bar from Emergency Essentials--Datrex, SOS, and Mainstay brands. They cost $4.95 each plus shipping, and some varieties are also available in 1200 and 3600 calorie packs. (Following picture: SOS top left, Datrex top right, Mainstay bottom.)

They are all vacuum packed in foil packaging. I didn't weigh each one, but they all were about the same weight, just different shapes. (Following picture: Mainstay left, SOS top right, Datrex bottom right--why I didn't arrange them the same in each picture, I do not know--I'll be sure and do that for my next review like this to keep my own confusion down!)Now for the part you've been waiting for. The analysis. (In the following picture Mainstay is top left, SOS bottom left and Datrex center right.)

We'll start with the Mainstay bar. It was divided into 6 pieces that were not individually wrapped. The taste was like lemon shortbread, heavy on the sugar and shortening. It had good flavor and was rated the favorite of at least 3 of us. It was not hard, but was very dry. For land applications, the instructions say to eat one bar 3 times a day, so they're counting on 2400 calories lasting you 2 days. I'm not too hip on the idea of skimping calories especially in a stressful situation, but I guess if it was all you had and you just wanted to stay alive, you could get by on that amount. Sea applications, eat 2 bars per day (guess you wouldn't be moving as much).

Next was the SOS bar. It is divided into 6 individually wrapped pieces. It was a little harder than the Mainstay bar and just as dry. Unappealing brown color, with a mild coconut flavor. Not as noticable shortening flavor on this one. This was rated the favorite of 2, really bad by 2 others, and edible by everybody else.

Third was the Datrex bar. It was divided into 12 smaller individually wrapped pieces. Brown speckled in color--we thought they might be trying to trick our minds into thinking there was actually chocolate in it. It smelled SOOOO good! Like those coconut taffy type candies in the old days . . . however, the taste was nothing like the smell. It pretty much tasted like cardboard or sawdust packed together with a little shortening--extremely mild coconut flavor so you almost couldn't taste it. Again very dry--you'd definitely need water with any of these! This was rated the least favorite flavor overall, but still edible.

The general consensus was than any of the bars are edible, none were spit-it-out-nasty. If you were in survival mode, they'd sure be handy to supplement your other food, but I wouldn't want to have only an emergency food bar available! Chances are if you have purchased an "off the rack" 72 hour kit, your "food" is primarily Survival Food Bars--you might want to supplement with some other food. :) They aren't too expensive though, if you're looking at calories/$, so you might as well toss a couple in your supplies/72 hr kits/BOB's/car kits/etc.

I have no idea how long these are good for--I'm guessing they have a pretty long shelf life due to the moisture content and packaging. There are probably other brands out there as well, if I ever get ahold of one, I'll let you know if it's any good.

Another question that was raised was if you'd actually feel full eating these or if you'd get your calories, but still be hungry. I'll have to try one for lunch one of these days and see how long it takes to get hungry again . . . I'll keep you posted! In the meantime, the real winner hands down of the taste test was Megan's No Bake Cookies (far left in the following picture)! WAAAYYY better than any of the survival bars. Thanks Megan!

Feel free to ask any questions about these that I didn't answer in this post. I'll be re-vacuum-packing these with my Foodsaver and tossing them in our emergency kits. Still have at least 2000 calories left of each after the taste test. :)

Practically Free Egg Carton Dryer Lint Firestarters

Now I know after you read my firestarting post you wanted some of the egg carton firestarters for yourself, didn't you? Well, I'll sell you some of mine, or you can just make some of your own for almost no cost!

Here's what you'll need:

Dryer lint--any variety will do.

Egg carton--doesn't matter if it's a dozen, 18 or the "flats" as long as it's the pressed paper kind, NOT styrofoam or whatever else they might make egg cartons out of.

Wax--from old candles, crayons, or buy parafin wax at the store (although it's cheaper to buy cheapo big candles for this job--it doesn't have to be food grade wax).

A sense of adventure--just kidding, if you didn't have that already you wouldn't be here!

First, get your egg carton and collect your dryer lint by cleaning off the lint trap of your dryer. DO NOT throw it away (I actually feel bad throwing dryer lint in the trash anymore!).Next, stuff the dryer lint in the egg carton where the eggs used to be. If you don't do a lot of laundry, this may take a while to fill a carton, if you're like me and washing clothes all the time, I can fill a whole dozen with a full day's laundry. It doesn't have to be packed in tight.Now, here's the tricky part because I don't have pictures since the last time I actually did this was a few months ago even though I'm due to do it again because I have a bunch of egg cartons full of lint waiting to be waxed (total run on sentence--just like how I talk).

Set up a double boiler to melt your wax. You need a pot with water in it, and a can of some kind (I like the big V-8, tomato juice, apple juice, pineapple juice cans). Your can must be METAL and fit inside your pot of water with room to spare around it. Do not use a smaller pot that you like (or that is part of your double boiler setup) as your can--you'll be melting wax in it and will likely ruin it!

Put your wax in the can and the can in the pot of water and heat the water. The wax will melt inside the can.

When the wax is melted, scoop or pour it onto the lint in the egg carton. You'll want to put your egg carton on something that the wax can leak through onto (like waxed paper or cardboard or something you don't care about) because some of the wax will soak through the egg carton. When you're done waxing the lint, let it cool and harden and voila! Cheapo fire starters!

You can leave them all together in the shape of an egg carton and then tear them off one at a time, or tear them all apart and store them separately. They won't light with a spark, so you'll need matches or a lighter to get them burning. Throw some in your emergency kit, car kit, camping kit, whatever else kit you have that has matches in it. In our fire test, one of these little babies burned for 17 minutes and put out a good flame sufficient for even fire novices to get something burning with!

So now, what do you say to some eggs for breakfast and a day of laundry? :)

72 Hour Emergency Kit Camp

How fun is this???

How would you actually do if you had to head to the hills with your emergency kit? A group of Utah preppers is going to find out this spring with a 72 Hour KitCamp. The basic plan is to meet at a designated parking place, hike to the first night's location and set up camp. Next day, hike to another location and set up camp again. Trick is you can only bring your 72 hour kit--nothing else!

They are also planning on having some workshops and learn/teach a few skills and will have extras of the necessities so nobody dies.

This sounds like way too much fun to me. My kit is pretty well put together, but this has gotten me thinking if I were to take my family, how would we do? I would love to find out, after all, by practice we acquire the skills we need and quickly find the weak areas we need to work on. My only concern right now is the cost of restocking my emergency kit after the trip (we're kind of in a money crunch--like usual). Oh yeah, and my husband getting the time off work to be able to go with. Oh and having some type of shelter for all of us--really do I want to sleep in my space blanket? My kids are pretty good hikers, but could we actually pack all that stuff? And what if it rained??? What would your concerns be? Or are you ready to sign up? :)

72 Hour Emergency Kit Updates

I got together with a couple of friends last week and we hashed over our emergency kits. So now I've added a couple of things: mini scriptures, sunblock, purell (hand sanitizer), and some cash. I put all my liquid/lotions/soaps in snack size baggies to protect against leakage.

I also updated my medications. Before, I had 20 year old meds all thrown together in one little bottle, but realized this is not a good or safe method of keeping medications, so I put new medications each in their own snack size ziplock and wrote what medication it was, the lot number and date of expiration on the bags. I was surprised to find that half the meds in my cupboard are expired! Guess I'll need to be getting some fresh stuff . . . Don't forget your sharpie! :)Another thing I will be adding was mentioned in the comments section of my emergency notebooks post. I picked up a couple of flash drives at WalMart for $5.00 each and am scanning important documents and putting them on the drives, then putting the drives in my kits (see the emergency notebook post for a list of suggested documents).

One of my friends suggested shrinking the house down and getting one of those carpet bags like Mary Poppins has . . . anyone know where we could get a carpet bag like that? Maybe we could get a group deal on them . . . :)

Teach Your Children

This is a post for me. Maybe it will benefit some of you as well. :)

How much should you involve your kids when doing self reliance/preparedness type activities? My opinion (of course every thing I write here is my opinion) is that they should be very involved. For example, our 72 hour emergency kits . . .

I'm not the best at following my own advice--every time I update the emergency kits I face a moral dilemma--do I do it quickly and neatly while the kids are in school/playing with a friend/etc., or do I do it when they are home and have parts of the kits strewn all over the house as I'm trying to swap out the clothes in them? I've done both (depending on my mood that day--if one more mess is going to push me into a breakdown I do it without them). But I want them to know what is in the kits, what they are for, what they are not for, etc. I want them to know where their kit is kept and how to use what's in it. Take away the mystery and you take away the curiosity. Involve them, let them ask questions, and then when the mystery backpack is under their bed, they feel no need to get it out and eat the candy in it (well, at least not quite as often).

Another example is the garden. Let (or is it make?) the kids help you plant, weed, water, pick stuff etc. Sure, you will have crooked rows with bald patches in them and almost ripe veggies picked when you were really looking forward to eating that tomato in 2 more days, but the kids will learn what a garden takes and witness the miracle of food coming from seeds. I read a story once about a guy who took his kids with him to work in his potato fields and his neighbor asked, "why do you take your kids with you? Doesn't it take twice as long with them there?" To which the man replied, "I'm not raising potatoes, I'm raising kids." I really have to remind myself of this when I have the urge to answer the question, "can I help?" with "yeah, you can help by getting out of the way." Really, some times it is twice as exhausting and takes twice as long, but find a way to let them help you.

And the satisfaction they get when they did it is fantastic to witness. My 7 year old just opened her first can with a manual can opener the other night and she was so excited about it she wanted to tell everyone in the family! Now, I could have quickly and easily run that can through the electric can opener and told her I didn't have anything for her to do, but I got creative, listened to my own advice, and found a way to let her help.

Moral of the post is it is worth it to get the kids involved, it really is. Really. You'll be happy in the end when your kids hopefully grow up a little more self reliant and responsible. (At least that's my hope . . . )

72 Hour Survival Kits

Let me start by saying that the 72 hour kit is highly overrated. The idea is a kit with all the items you need to survive for the first 72 hours after a disaster in a portable container of some type in case of evacuations, etc. Here's the main problem with this idea: Who is coming in 72 hours to save you? How do you know they will get to you before your supplies run out? If you watched coverage of the Christmastime Indonesian tsunami or Hurricane Katrina, you saw first hand that it can take over a week for the government or other relief agencies to get to the hardest hit areas. Could you live that long on what's in your 72 hour kit? So I like to call my kit an Emergency Kit and have not limited it to 72 hours worth of stuff. I have kits for me, my husband, and each of our kids (the youngest's stuff is packed in my kit for now, but it's about time to get her her own pack).

Commercial kits are usually a good starting point. DO NOT buy a kit off the shelf and put it away and expect it to be any use to you in an emergency. You need to specialize your kit to your circumstances. Here's what's in mine:

In Mine/3 yr old's:
Water filter
Water purification tabs
Bottled water

Firestarting goods--matches, lighter, dryer lint firestarters, sappy sticks, magnesium firestarter thingy
Shake flashlight, solar/crank radio
Lightsticks

Razor blades, small wire, rope, fishing line/hooks, sewing kit, empty gallon ziplocks

Change of clothes and thermals for each of us
A pair of old but still good hiking boots tied to the outside
Vacuum packed fleece baby blanket (if you were a kid would you honestly feel comforted wrapped in a crackly emergency blanket?)

Poncho, emergency blanket, compass, whistle

Pencil, paper, deck of cards

First Aid, sanitary wipes, purell

Sunblock, insect repellent
Hand warmers
Leather gloves

Toiletries--soap, contact solution and case (I wear them), backup glasses, toothbrush/paste, etc.
--A note here, my dad used to fly overseas and the airline would give him travel size stuff--works great for these packs.
Toilet paper
Also feminine hygeine since I know what time of the month it will be if disaster strikes ;) You men won't need to pack those--although it's not a bad idea to add some to your first aid, they're real good at stopping heavy bleeding!

Gerber tool

Power bars, MRE's, Mountain House meals, survival food bars (probably too many, but I know I have a real low tolerance for missing meals and still being worth anything especially when doing any physical exertion. And I'm also packing extra for the young'uns that can only pack so heavy a pack of their own.

M&M's--there's no survival without chocolate

Important documents on a thumb drive

Mini scriptures

Cash (small bills/change)

That about covers my pack, dad has the stove in his, so hopefully we'll be together :)

It is all packed in an internal frame standard hiking backpack. Nothing fancy, but enough support that it wouldn't make for needing back surgery if I had to pack it somewhere.

When my kids were babies I had formula, bottles, baby cereal, bowls, baby spoon, and diapers in there.


My 7 yr old's pack (9 yr old's is similar):

Change of clothes plus thermals
Small stuffed animal

Poncho, emerg. blanket, small rope, matches, candle, fire starter sticks

Flashlight, lightsticks, whistle

Pencil, paper, scissors, flagging tape

1 MRE, tuna and crackers, 5 power bar/clif bars, candy
Bottled water

I put all theirs in those backpacks with wheels to make it easier for them to pack them.


Now, I don't know if my pack is overkill, but I am the mom and were it just me I may be able to cut it down a bit, but it's not. Plus the more I research the more I find there's things I don't have in there that I could see being very useful.

I hope to never have to pack it all out somewhere--if I had to haul all that stuff plus the three little ones we wouldn't get too far. I need a handcart! I hope to be able to stay in my home, then I'll have the rest of my resources to pull from also.

The kids all have red clothes and the flagging tape--I want to be able to find them--not sure if this is the best if others are looking for us, but I'm thinking standard natural disaster and trying to find my kids in our town/area if they are separated from mom and dad.

I use my foodsaver vacuum packer to pack all the clothes, blankets, diapers, etc so there's more room in the pack and they'll stay dry until they are needed. That's why my kids' packs have scissors in them--so they can get to their clothes.

And the packs all have a name tag on them with name, parents names, address, allergy information, etc. It's also a good idea to have a family picture in each pack so in case one of you is missing the others can show people who to look for--I need to update our picture and print one for each pack.