I lived from my emergency supplies for 24 hours. Here’s what I changed.
September marks the end of long summer days and weekends at the beach, but it also brings a return to more practical concerns: back-to-school lists, reinstated routines and, as I recently discovered, National Preparedness Month. This last observance was news to me, but it prompted a useful question: How prepared were we, really? We owned emergency supplies—but did we know where everything was? Did it all work? And what would actually happen if we had to use it?
I thought spending 24 hours living from our emergency supplies would tell me whether we had enough. Instead, it revealed how many assumptions were hiding inside the word prepared.
For one day, my husband and I behaved as though the power and running water were unavailable. We used the food, water, lighting, charging equipment and other provisions we had stored for an outage. This was not a wilderness-survival exercise or a rehearsal for the end of civilization. I wanted to know whether our preparations would carry us comfortably through the sort of disruption that is considerably less dramatic—and considerably more likely.
On paper, we were well supplied. We had water, shelf-stable food, power banks, lanterns and several ways to heat a meal. But a list of possessions is not the same thing as a functioning system. Within 24 hours, we discovered equipment that did less than we thought, food we did not want to eat and ordinary routines we had failed to account for at all.
The good news is that this was only a test. We had the luxury of finding the weak spots while the lights were still on—and then fixing them.
1. I stopped pretending we could preserve the refrigerator
For years, I had kept a very large Stanley power bank among our emergency supplies. It weighs about 25 pounds, looks convincingly industrial and had been sold as something capable of powering appliances. It can charge smaller devices and jump-start a car, both useful functions. I had never, however, tested it on a refrigerator.
When I connected it to our small upstairs refrigerator—not even our full-size one—it lasted for approximately 15 minutes.
That ended the fantasy that this particular piece of equipment constituted a refrigeration plan. I have researched conventional and solar generators, but I do not currently want the noise, fuel management, expense or maintenance of a system large enough to keep our regular refrigerator and freezers operating through an extended outage. Perhaps we will revisit that decision. For now, our honest plan is to assume that we will eventually lose our refrigerated and frozen food.
That may not be an elegant solution, but it is a real one. Knowing what an appliance cannot do is more useful than admiring its impressive yellow casing in the basement.
What changed: We no longer count the large power bank as refrigerator backup. It is assigned to the jobs it can actually perform: charging devices and jump-starting a car. Our food plan begins with the assumption that refrigeration may be unavailable.
2. I replaced “emergency food” with meals
We had purchased some of the dehydrated savory meals marketed for emergencies. They were technically edible, compact and long-lasting. We also did not like them.
This seems obvious in retrospect. An extended outage is not the moment when chicken pot pie reconstructed from powder will become more appealing. If anything, an unfamiliar and disappointing meal feels more dispiriting when the house is dark and the normal conveniences are gone.
The shelf-stable food that worked best was the food we already enjoy: canned chicken, tuna and salmon; beef stew; soup and vegetables; ramen; boxed rice pilaf and Spanish rice; precooked rice cups; pasta with jarred sauce; instant potatoes; Indian sauce pouches; and dried vegetables that can be reconstituted and added to a meal. These ingredients can become recognizable combinations rather than a succession of products labeled “emergency.” Chicken, vegetables and a sauce over rice still feels like dinner. Beef stew with green beans and potatoes still resembles something one might choose to eat voluntarily.
We also have several ways to heat water and food if the usual cooktop is unavailable, including equipment intended and approved for its particular setting and an outdoor grill. The test reinforced that every fuel-burning appliance has to be used strictly according to its manufacturer’s instructions. A generator, camp stove or grill is not an indoor appliance merely because it is raining outside.
What changed: We are organizing the pantry around complete meals we genuinely eat, not around the abstract category of emergency food. Anything new must be tested before we buy more of it.
3. A gallon of water becomes very small when it has several jobs
We store roughly a gallon of water per person per day, in containers I can carry myself. I prefer that to a huge barrel in the basement that would be difficult to move or use. What I had not fully considered was how many demands would be placed on each gallon.
Drinking water is only the beginning. Water is also needed for coffee and tea, cooking, brushing teeth, washing faces, bathing, cleaning dishes and—during a longer disruption—washing at least some clothing. Once all those uses begin competing with one another, a gallon no longer looks particularly abundant.
We heated a small amount for washing and found that a warm sponge bath, a clean face and brushed teeth restored a surprising amount of normalcy. We would not wash our hair every day in an extended outage, but we could plan to do it occasionally rather than discovering the problem when we were already uncomfortable. I also added a simple washboard. It makes hand-washing more effective, uses no electricity and allows clothes to be hung to dry.
The exercise did not give me a perfect universal calculation for water. It gave me something more useful: a much clearer picture of how we would use it.
What changed: Our water plan now includes hygiene, cooking and cleanup—not only drinking. We added a washboard and a more realistic routine for washing ourselves, our dishes and essential clothing.
4. Redundancy mattered more than one impressive device
The equipment that made the day easiest was generally simple and overlapping. We have rechargeable bulbs that screw into ordinary lamps, so the rooms can still look and function somewhat normally. We have collapsible solar lanterns that produce a warm, candlelike light but can also become quite bright. They are light enough to carry or hang almost anywhere. We have used them at Tanglewood, along the walkway on Halloween and during actual outages when someone needed to go into the basement.
Solar equipment, however, is useful only when it has been charged. That is why we also keep rechargeable or battery-operated lanterns, along with power banks for phones. If one source is depleted or unavailable, another can cover the gap.
The same principle applies to cooking. We do not need six elaborate versions of the same solution. We do need more than one safe, tested way to heat water and prepare a basic meal.
What changed: We checked what was charged, what required batteries and what could be powered from the car. Our plan no longer depends on a single device performing exactly as advertised.
5. I had prepared to charge our phones, but not to live without them
The most revealing habit of the day required no equipment at all: I kept reaching for my phone.
I reached for it for information, messages, music and entertainment, almost without thinking. We had power banks, so I had treated phone charging as the entire problem. But a charged phone is only useful to the extent that the network behind it is operating. During a widespread outage, home Wi-Fi may be unavailable, cellular service may be congested or interrupted, and streaming music, Facebook, YouTube and even ordinary calls and messages cannot be assumed to work normally.
Downloaded material would remain available while the battery lasted, so we are creating a small offline collection of music and audiobooks—and reserving a few of the audiobooks specifically for an outage. We will not listen to them in advance. Opening that stash should feel less like making do with whatever remains and more like the beginning of an occasion.
We are also assembling analog entertainment we both genuinely enjoy: books we want to read, craft projects that are ready to begin, and a selection of games and puzzles. A crank radio gives us another source of information as well as music.
We may add a few audiobooks on CD and one of the newer all-in-one boomboxes that combines a radio and CD player with modern Bluetooth capability. Bluetooth streaming would be irrelevant without a functioning connection, but radio and physical media do not depend on the internet. It was an unexpected argument for keeping some supposedly obsolete technology around.
What changed: We prepared for periods without internet access, not merely periods without an electrical outlet. We now have information and entertainment that do not all rely on the same phone, battery or network.
6. Comfort was not frivolous. It was part of the system.
The best moment of the test was coffee.
We boiled water and made French-press coffee using the ground Dunkin’ coffee we normally drink. My husband takes his black; I used shelf-stable Coffee-mate. It smelled right, tasted right and gave the morning its familiar shape. We also made black tea and kept it hot in a large thermos.
Coffee did not solve the practical problems of an outage. It did something different: it made the situation feel manageable. The same was true of warm light, hot water for washing, a familiar dinner and the prospect of a book or game we actually wanted to open.
Preparedness advice often separates necessities from comforts, as though morale begins only after every “serious” item has been packed. Our experiment suggested the opposite. Familiar pleasures help create calm, cooperation and a sense that the household is still functioning. Good chocolate, proper coffee and something enjoyable to do are not substitutes for water or safety. They are part of what makes staying home through a disruption tolerable.
What changed: Coffee now has an official place in our emergency plan, including the coffee, water, heat, brewing method and shelf-stable fixings required to make it properly. Comfort is no longer whatever happens to fit after the practical items. We plan for it deliberately.
What I learned
At the end of 24 hours, I did not conclude that we needed a bunker, a generator or a larger collection of specialized emergency products. I concluded that we needed fewer unanswered questions.
We stopped assuming that one large power bank would preserve the refrigerator. We stopped treating food as suitable merely because it was sold for emergencies. We gave every gallon of water more than one job on paper, before it had to perform those jobs in real life. We checked our backup systems, prepared for the possibility that our phones might become much less useful and gave familiar comforts the formal place in our plan that they already occupy in our lives.
The test did not make me want to prepare for the end of the world. It made me considerably better prepared for an inconvenient version of the world we already live in.
Publication safety note
Before using any fuel-burning stove, heater, lantern or generator, follow the product’s current instructions and carbon-monoxide precautions. Ready.gov advises that generators, camp stoves and charcoal grills be used outdoors and at least 20 feet from windows; the Consumer Product Safety Commission says portable camping equipment should never be used inside a home unless it is specifically designed for an enclosed space and includes instructions for that use. The FCC recommends conserving phone batteries, limiting non-emergency calls and trying text messages when networks are strained.
Sources: Ready.gov, “Power Outages”; U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, “Carbon Monoxide Fact Sheet”; FCC/FEMA, “Emergency Communications Tips.”