Home Emergency Kit Checklist: The Shelter-in-Place Supplies a Go-Bag Does Not Cover

Key points

• This home emergency kit checklist is for sheltering in place at your own house for 2 weeks. It is not a bug-out bag, and it is not sized for 72 hours.

• Water is the largest number. The CDC says at least 1 gallon per person per day, so 2 weeks for a family of 4 is 56 gallons before you add pets or washing.

• Sanitation is the gap almost nobody plans for. If the water is off, your toilet is a bucket, and you need liners, absorbent, and gloves to make that work.

• Light and heat with no open flame. The CDC says generators go outside only, more than 20 feet from windows, doors, and vents, and never burn charcoal indoors.

• A kit you never rotate is a kit that fails. Replace stored water every 6 months, check food and batteries twice a year, and keep medications current.

Most preparedness advice assumes you are leaving. Grab the bag, get in the truck, go. But the far more common event is the opposite: the road is closed, the power is out, the water is questionable, and you are staying exactly where you are for a week or two.

That is a different kit. A 72 hour bug-out bag is built around weight, because you have to carry it. A home emergency kit checklist is built around volume, because you do not. Nobody ever hiked out with 56 gallons of water and a bucket toilet, and that is precisely the point.

This is the stay-put list. Two weeks, at home, no store runs, no utilities you can count on. Every number here comes from the CDC, EPA, FDA, or the National Weather Service, and each one is linked.

What is a home emergency kit, and how is it different from a go-bag?

A home emergency kit is a 2 week stationary supply for sheltering in place. A go-bag is a 72 hour mobile supply for leaving. They overlap by maybe 20 percent, and the missing 80 percent is what actually breaks.

Here is the difference in practice:

The part most guides skip: the reason 2 weeks is the target and not 3 days is that 3 days is the response time, not the recovery time. Power crews restore the easy grid segments first. Rural, elevated, and heavily damaged areas routinely wait 7 to 14 days. Build to the tail of that curve, not the front of it.

How much water do you need to shelter in place for 2 weeks?

At least 1 gallon per person per day. The CDC's emergency water supply guidance sets that floor and says to store more for pregnant women, people who are sick, pets, or if you live in a hot climate.

Run the math before you buy anything:

• 1 person, 14 days: 14 gallons

• Family of 4, 14 days: 56 gallons

• Dogs: roughly 1 ounce per pound of body weight per day, so a 60 pound dog is about half a gallon a day, 7 gallons over 2 weeks

• Sanitation and washing: add at minimum 1 more gallon per person per day if you want to wash hands and dishes

That last line is the one that surprises people. The CDC's 1 gallon figure is drinking and basic food prep. It is not a bathing allowance. A realistic family of 4 sheltering for 2 weeks is closer to 100 gallons than 56.

On storage, the CDC is specific: use food-grade containers with tight-fitting lids, keep them somewhere cool between 50 and 70 degrees F, and replace water you bottled yourself every 6 months. Commercially bottled water is the safest option and needs no treatment. If you want the reasoning behind those dates, we break down how long stored tap and bottled water actually stays safe and what goes wrong first.

If you run out and have to treat questionable water, the EPA's emergency disinfection instructions are the ones to follow: bring water to a rolling boil for 1 minute, or 3 minutes above 5,000 feet. If you cannot boil, use regular unscented chlorine bleach only, 8 drops per gallon for 6 percent bleach or 6 drops per gallon for 8.25 percent, doubled if the water is cloudy or very cold. Stir, wait 30 minutes, and it should smell faintly of chlorine. Neither method removes heavy metals, salts, or most chemicals.

What do you do about the toilet when the water is off?

You stop flushing and switch to a lined bucket. This is the single most-skipped item on every home emergency kit checklist, and it becomes the most urgent problem in about 12 hours.

The Washington State Department of Health's guidance on toilet use during emergencies lays out the method. Turn the water valve to the toilet off. Line the bowl or a 5 gallon bucket with a heavy plastic bag. After each use, add an absorbent and odor reducer: kitty litter, peat moss, sawdust, or lime. When the bag is roughly two-thirds full, tie it off, put in a fresh liner, add absorbent, and continue. Store the tied bags in a lidded garbage can, outside, until normal collection resumes. Wash hands with soap and water afterward, or use sanitizer and wipes if the water is off.

What to stock, for a household of 4 for 2 weeks:

1. One 5 gallon bucket plus a snap-on toilet seat lid. Two buckets is better, so liquid and solid waste can be separated, which cuts odor and volume dramatically.

2. Heavy contractor-grade bags, at least 30. Kitchen bags tear.

3. Absorbent, about 40 pounds of cheap clay cat litter or sawdust.

4. Disposable gloves, a box.

5. Hand sanitizer and wet wipes, plus a dedicated jug of wash water.

6. A lidded outdoor garbage can to hold the tied bags away from the house.

The part most guides skip: do not pour waste down a toilet that is not flushing, and do not use the toilet at all if the sewer main is compromised or the ground is saturated. Backflow into your house is far worse than a bucket. If your neighborhood is on a boil-water notice or a sewer advisory, assume the drain is not an option.

How do you light a house for 2 weeks without an open flame?

Battery lanterns, headlamps, and rechargeable power banks. No candles, no fuel lanterns indoors, no exceptions worth arguing about.

The reason is carbon monoxide, and the CDC's rules on it are blunt. Only use generators outside, more than 20 feet away from any window, door, or vent. Never run one in a garage, even with the door open. Never burn charcoal indoors, in any color. Never use a portable gas camp stove indoors. Never heat a house with a gas oven. Keep a battery-powered or battery-backup CO alarm near sleeping areas, check the batteries at every time change, and replace the alarm every 5 years.

What to actually stock:

• One battery LED lantern per room you will occupy, plus one headlamp per person. Headlamps beat flashlights because they leave your hands free.

• Batteries for 2 weeks of nightly use. Count the actual lamps and double it. Standardize on one battery size so a dead lantern can borrow from a spare.

• A CO alarm with a digital readout, which the CDC notes will show you the highest concentration detected, not just alarm.

• A power bank sized to your phones, plus a car charger. Your vehicle is a generator you already own, and it runs outdoors by default.

The part most guides skip: light discipline matters for sleep. Two weeks of running bright white lanterns until midnight wrecks a household's sleep, and tired people make bad decisions. Keep one warm, dim light for evenings and save the bright ones for tasks.

What food should be in a home emergency kit?

Food you can eat without cooking, without refrigeration, and without much water. That constraint eliminates most of what people stockpile.

Start with what is already in the house, because it goes first. The FDA's food safety guidance for power outages gives you the clock: an unopened refrigerator holds food safe for about 4 hours. A full freezer holds about 48 hours, a half-full freezer about 24. Refrigerator at or below 40 degrees F, freezer at or below 0 degrees F. Perishables held above 40 degrees for 4 hours or more get thrown out. The CDC's version adds the rule that ends every argument: when in doubt, throw it out, because unsafe food can look and smell completely normal.

So the plan is: eat the fridge on day 1, eat the freezer on days 2 and 3, and live off the shelf after that. Which means the shelf needs to carry about 11 days.

What belongs there:

• Canned protein. Tuna, chicken, beans, chili. Pull-tab lids where you can get them.

• Peanut butter and nuts. Dense calories, no prep, long shelf life.

• Crackers, tortillas, granola bars, dry cereal. Bread molds. These do not.

• Canned fruit and vegetables packed in liquid. The liquid counts toward your water.

• Shelf-stable milk and juice boxes. Especially with kids in the house.

• Comfort food. Coffee, tea, hard candy, cookies. Morale is a supply item and it is cheap.

• Infant formula, pet food, and any special diet items at full 2 week volume. Nobody is delivering these.

The part most guides skip: do not buy food your family does not already eat. A 2 week emergency is not the moment to introduce lentils to a 7 year old. Buy more of what is already on your normal grocery list, and the rotation problem solves itself.

Which manual tools actually matter in a home emergency kit?

The ones that replace something electric. Everything else is optional.

1. A manual can opener. Two of them. This is the most common single point of failure in a food supply, and it costs 6 dollars to fix.

2. A crescent wrench for the gas meter, kept where the meter is, not in a drawer inside the house. More on the rules below.

3. A hand-crank or battery NOAA weather radio. NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards is a network of over 1,000 transmitters broadcasting National Weather Service warnings 24/7 on 7 VHF frequencies from 162.400 to 162.550 MHz. It also carries non-weather emergencies: chemical releases, 911 outages, AMBER alerts. It needs a receiver that can pick up those frequencies, so a normal AM/FM radio will not do it.

4. A fire extinguisher rated ABC, and one that has been checked this year.

5. Work gloves, a utility knife, duct tape, and a tarp. The minimum kit for stopping a leak or covering a broken window.

6. A whistle, which is louder than your voice and never needs a battery.

On the gas wrench, be careful. Long Beach Energy Resources states the standard rule plainly: do not turn off your meter unless you smell natural gas or suspect a leak. If you do need to, use a crescent wrench and give the valve a quarter turn in either direction so it sits crosswise to the pipe. Then leave it. Only the utility can legally restore your service, and in a widespread outage that can take days you did not need to spend without gas.

What documents, cash, and medications belong in a home emergency kit?

Copies of anything you would need to prove, enough small bills to transact without power, and a medication supply that is actually current.

Documents. Keep paper copies in a sealed waterproof bag, plus encrypted digital copies: photo ID, insurance policies (home, flood, auto, health), deed or lease, birth certificates, prescriptions list, vaccination and vet records, bank and mortgage account numbers, and photos of every room for a claim. Your one-page family emergency communication plan belongs in that same bag, because the phone numbers you rely on live in a device that dies. Card readers do not work without power or internet, so keep 200 to 500 dollars in small bills. Twenties are hard to break when nobody has a register.

Medications. The FDA's guidance on expired medicines is worth reading before you stock anything. Expired products can be less effective or risky because of changes in chemical composition or a drop in strength, and there is no guarantee of safety past the date. Storage matters just as much: keep medicines in a cool, dry place like a dresser drawer or closet shelf, not a damp bathroom cabinet and not next to hot kitchen appliances, because improper storage cuts effectiveness even before the printed date.

Practical version: ask your pharmacy about an emergency refill or a 90 day supply, keep the medications in the house rather than the garage, note the earliest expiration date on your rotation calendar, and keep a written list of every prescription with dose and prescriber. That list is what a pharmacist 3 towns over will need.

The printable home emergency kit checklist

Here is the whole thing in one place. Print it, tape it inside the closet door, and check the boxes as you buy.

Water

• 14 gallons per person (1 gallon per person per day, 14 days)

• Extra for pets, plus 1 gallon per person per day for washing

• Unscented chlorine bleach for disinfection, and an eyedropper

• A pot for boiling and a way to heat it outdoors

Food (11 days on the shelf, plus what is in the fridge and freezer)

• Canned protein, peanut butter, nuts, crackers, tortillas, granola bars

• Canned fruit and vegetables, shelf-stable milk

• Infant formula, pet food, special diet items at full volume

• Two manual can openers, paper plates, plastic utensils

Sanitation

• Two 5 gallon buckets and a snap-on toilet seat

• 30 heavy contractor bags, 40 pounds of absorbent

• Gloves, sanitizer, wet wipes, soap, garbage bags, lidded outdoor can

• Menstrual supplies, diapers, and a 2 week supply of toilet paper

Light, power, and information

• A lantern per occupied room, a headlamp per person, batteries for 2 weeks

• NOAA weather radio, hand-crank or battery

• Power bank and car charger

• Battery or battery-backup CO alarm with digital readout

Tools and safety

• Crescent wrench at the gas meter, ABC fire extinguisher

• Work gloves, utility knife, duct tape, tarp, whistle

• First aid kit and a first aid manual

Paper and medicine

• Waterproof document bag with IDs, insurance, deed, records, room photos

• 200 to 500 dollars in small bills

• Prescriptions with the longest supply your plan allows, plus a written list

• Glasses, hearing aid batteries, and any assistive device spares

How do you rotate a home emergency kit so it stays usable?

Twice a year, on a date you already remember. The most common failure in home preparedness is not a missing item. It is a full shelf of expired, dead, and wrong-sized things.

Use the time changes in spring and fall as the trigger. The CDC already recommends checking CO alarm batteries then, so you are only adding 20 minutes.

• Every 6 months (spring and fall time change): replace self-bottled water. Test every lantern and radio and swap batteries. Check and replace CO and smoke alarm batteries. Pull anything expiring in the next 6 months from the food shelf into the kitchen and replace it.

• Every 12 months: check medication expiration dates and request refills. Check that clothing and shoes in the kit still fit growing kids. Verify the fire extinguisher gauge. Re-photograph rooms for insurance.

• Every 24 months: reassess household size, pets, and medical needs. Replace the printed document copies. Replace CO alarms at the 5 year mark.

The part most guides skip: store the kit where you will actually walk past it. A kit in the back of an attic is a kit you will never rotate, and heat cycling in an attic ruins batteries, medications, and canned food faster than anything else in the house. A hall closet or a basement shelf between 50 and 70 degrees F beats a perfect kit you cannot reach.

When should you call for help instead of handling it yourself?

Carbon monoxide, contaminated water, and anything swallowed are not situations to manage with a checklist.

• If a CO alarm sounds, get everyone outside into fresh air immediately, then call 911. Do not go back in to investigate. Headache, dizziness, weakness, nausea, and confusion in more than one person at once is carbon monoxide until proven otherwise.

• If someone swallows disinfectant, bleach, contaminated water, or the wrong medication, call Poison Control at 1-800-222-1222. It is free, confidential, and staffed 24/7.

• If you smell gas or hear hissing, leave the house first, then call your gas utility or 911 from outside. Do not flip switches on the way out.

• Follow local boil-water and do-not-drink notices exactly. A do-not-drink notice means boiling will not fix it, and the EPA is clear that boiling and bleach do not remove chemicals, heavy metals, or salts.

• If floodwater got into the house, discard any food that touched it, including anything in cardboard or non-waterproof packaging, per the CDC.

Frequently asked questions

How much water do I need for a 2 week home emergency kit?

The CDC's minimum is 1 gallon per person per day, so 14 gallons per person for 2 weeks and 56 gallons for a family of 4. That figure covers drinking and basic food prep only. If you want to wash hands, dishes, and bodies, plan on roughly double. Add about 1 ounce of water per pound of body weight per day for dogs, and store more if you live somewhere hot.

How is a home emergency kit different from a bug-out bag?

A bug-out bag is a portable 72 hour kit built around weight, for leaving. A home emergency kit is a 2 week stationary supply built around volume, for staying. The home kit carries the things you would never carry on your back: dozens of gallons of water, bucket sanitation, a full pantry, and lanterns for every room. Most households need both, but the home kit is used far more often.

How often should I replace the water in my emergency kit?

Every 6 months if you filled the containers yourself, per the CDC. Commercially bottled water can go by the printed date. Store containers somewhere between 50 and 70 degrees F, out of direct sunlight, and use food-grade containers with tight-fitting lids.

What food is best if I cannot cook or refrigerate anything?

Canned protein, peanut butter, nuts, crackers, tortillas, granola bars, dry cereal, canned fruit and vegetables, and shelf-stable milk. Eat the refrigerator first (about 4 hours of safe time unopened), then the freezer (about 48 hours if full, 24 if half full), then the shelf. Keep two manual can openers, because that is the item that fails.

Can I use my kitchen toilet if the water is shut off?

Only if the sewer line is intact and you have water to pour into the bowl, and even then it is usually the wrong move. The Washington State Department of Health approach is to shut the toilet's supply valve, line the bowl or a 5 gallon bucket with a heavy bag, add an absorbent like kitty litter or sawdust after each use, tie the bag off when it is about two-thirds full, and store the tied bags in a lidded can outside until collection resumes.

Is a generator worth it for a 2 week outage?

It can be, but only if you can run it safely and store fuel safely. The CDC's rule is generators outside only, more than 20 feet from any window, door, or vent, never in a garage even with the door open, and always with a battery-powered CO alarm inside the house. If you cannot meet those conditions, a large power bank and your vehicle's charger will handle phones and lights with none of the risk.

None of this is expensive or complicated. It is a shelf, a bucket, some jugs, and 20 minutes twice a year. The households that come through a 2 week outage in decent shape are almost never the ones with the most gear. They are the ones who thought about the toilet before they needed it.

You never know, but you can always be ready.

Sources

• CDC, How to Create and Store an Emergency Water Supply

• EPA, Emergency Disinfection of Drinking Water

• FDA, Food and Water Safety During Power Outages and Floods

• CDC, Keep Food Safe After a Disaster or Emergency

• CDC, Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Basics

• NOAA National Weather Service, NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards

• Washington State Department of Health, Toilet Use During Emergencies

• FDA, Do Not Be Tempted to Use Expired Medicines

• Ready.gov, Pet Preparedness Toolkit

• Long Beach Energy Resources, Emergency Gas Shut-Off