When the lights go out, you want to be prepared. You don’t want to be bumping around the house trying to find any source of light.

What a blackout kit is not:

There’s no need to put food or water or blankets or ANYTHING else inside of it. Why? Because it’s a blackout. Inside of your own house. You can easily access the food and water that is inside of your home. You wouldn’t bug out because of a blackout. Unless your home was being compromised and in that case, you’d be grabbing your bug out bag, not a blackout kit. I mean, maybe you’d want the blackout kit just cause, but your food and water would be taken care of elsewhere, not in the blackout kit.

What a blackout kit is:

A blackout kit should be used to contain all light sources and maybe a cooking set.

Here are some ideas on what you should put inside of your blackout kit:

Flashlights

Candles

Lighters

Matches

Batteries

Lanterns

Alternative energy sources such as external phone or battery chargers, portable solar panel, etc.

Extra cables to charge phone

Emergency radio

A cook set with any necessary fuel (this is only useful if you don’t have gas or if you just want a backup option)

That’s about it. We literally include ALL of our batteries and ALL of our flashlights (unless they’re in use for camping or EDC or whatever) and ALL of our candles, and ALL of our lighters and ALL of our matches inside of this container.

That way, if we ever need to access a candle or flashlight or match or whatever, we know exactly where to look, even outside of blackouts.

Make sure that the external phone chargers are charged up or that they’re functional. Make sure that all batteries are outside of the flashlights and lanterns so that they don’t corrode. It doesn’t take long to put some batteries in a flashlight, especially if everything is bundled together right there.

If you have a fire place, you may want to include fire starters.

Keep the container in a common, easily accessible area.

Make a list of ALL the items inside of that container and keep the list with the container. Update the list as you remove stuff and add stuff.

Here’s a video that I did that showcases our blackout kit: