Most emergency kit advice stops at the shopping list. But the failure mode of a home emergency kit is almost never that the wrong things were bought. It is that one person assembled it, that person knows where everything is, and that person is at work.
So build the kit, and then make the kit findable by everyone else in the house.
Water and food
- One gallon of water per person per day, three days minimum, two weeks if you have the space
- A water filter or purification tablets as a backup to stored water
- Three days of food that needs no cooking and no refrigeration
- A manual can opener. Every emergency kit list says this and half of them still get packed without one
- Food for pets, and any formula or specialty food a household member needs
Power and light
- Flashlights — one per person, plus a headlamp so hands stay free
- Batteries in the sizes your devices actually take
- A hand-crank or battery radio that receives NOAA weather broadcasts
- Portable chargers, kept charged, plus a car charger
- Camp lantern. Candles are a last resort, not a plan
Health and safety
- A real first-aid kit, restocked once a year rather than assumed
- A week of any prescription medication, rotated so it does not expire in the box
- N95 masks, work gloves, safety glasses
- Fire extinguisher, checked, and a smoke and carbon monoxide alarm with fresh batteries
- Whistle. Carries far further than a voice and costs almost nothing
- Hygiene: wet wipes, hand sanitizer, garbage bags, toilet paper
Tools and documents
- A multi-tool, duct tape, plastic sheeting
- A wrench or shutoff tool for gas and water, stored at the shutoff, not in a drawer
- Work boots or sturdy shoes near the bed — most injuries after an event are feet on broken glass
- Cash in small bills. Card readers need power
- Copies of ID, insurance policies and prescriptions, in a waterproof bag
- A written contact list. Nobody has memorized a phone number since 2005
- Spare keys, a paper map of your area, and a written meeting point
Make it a link the whole household has
Here is the part that makes the difference. Build the kit as a list, and use the note on each item for where it is and when it expires:
- "hall closet, top shelf, red bag"
- "water rotated March 2026 — replace March 2027"
- "gas shutoff wrench is zip-tied to the meter"
- "still need this"
On MakerManifest each item starts from a product page, so the shopping half of the list is unambiguous — the specific radio, the specific filter — and the notes turn the same list into the household's inventory. One page that is both what to buy and where it lives.
Publish it and share the link with everyone in the house, plus whoever would come check on the place if you were away. They need no account and install nothing to open it, which is exactly the property you want from a document that has to work on a stranger's phone on a bad day.
Split it if it runs long. A free account gives 10 lists of 25 items, and water/food, power/light, health, tools/documents is a sensible four.
Put a date on it
The whole thing decays. Batteries die, water gets old, medication expires, the baby you packed diapers for is now seven. Set one reminder a year, open the link, and walk the list. Fifteen minutes annually is the entire maintenance burden, and it is the difference between a kit and a box of expired things.
If you want the app to stay out of the way while you do this, pick the Just lists experience at signup — what it changes.
Build your emergency list free and make sure more than one person can find it.