The 10 essentials of a shelter-in-place emergency kit

A shelter-in-place order tells you to stay exactly where you are because the air or the conditions outside are more dangerous than the building you are standing in. Wildfire smoke, a chemical release at a nearby industrial site, a hazardous materials spill on a highway, a severe storm, or a security incident can all trigger one. The instructions from local authorities follow a similar pattern each time: go indoors, close and lock doors and windows, and wait for the all-clear. Officials may also direct residents to seal a single room.

That wait is the part most households underestimate. It can run a few hours or stretch across several days, and it often arrives with a power outage, unreliable cell service, and no realistic way to restock. Stores may be closed or unreachable. Deliveries stop. The supplies already inside the home are the supplies available.

This is why a shelter-in-place emergency kit is not the same thing as a go-bag. A go-bag is built around mobility — light, compact, staged near the door for a fast exit. A shelter-in-place kit is built around endurance in one location, so it can be bulkier and heavier, stored in a hall closet, a basement, or under a bed. Weight does not matter when nothing is going anywhere.

FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security's Ready.gov program, and the American Red Cross all set the baseline at a minimum of 72 hours of supplies per person. Ready.gov goes further for home kits. It suggests a two-week supply of water and food where storage space allows, since extended outages can outlast a three-day plan.

The 10 categories that follow cover water, food, information, medical needs, room sealing, light, sanitation, power, documents, and the written plan that ties them together. They are organized so a household can assemble a kit gradually, adding one category at a time rather than buying everything in a single trip. Each one solves a problem the others do not.

Illustration: Quartz

Store one gallon of water per person per day for a minimum of three days, covering both drinking and basic sanitation. For a family of four, that is at least 12 gallons set aside in advance. FEMA and the American Red Cross both use that one-gallon figure as the baseline for home emergency supplies.

Commercially bottled water is the simplest way to reach that number. It arrives sealed and dated, needs no treatment, and can be swapped out according to the date printed on the label.

Water bottled at home takes more care. Use food-grade containers sold for water storage. Avoid reusing jugs that held milk or fruit juice. Protein and sugar residue is hard to rinse out completely, and what remains can support bacterial growth. Skip glass containers, which break easily and leave shards in the room a household is trying to stay in.

Keep containers somewhere cool and dark. Direct sunlight degrades plastic over time and warms the water. Both shorten how long the supply stays drinkable. Replace home-filled containers about every six months as a maintenance habit. Properly treated municipal tap water in a sealed, clean container stays safe longer than that, but a fixed schedule is easier to remember than an exact shelf life.

Pets count toward the total. Add roughly half a gallon to a gallon a day depending on the animal's size, and store it with the rest of the supply rather than assuming the household share will stretch.

Cooking draws on the same reserve. Dehydrated meals, instant rice, and powdered infant formula all need water that was counted as drinking water. Either stock extra or build the supply around items that need none.

A pump filter or purification tablets work as a backup, not a primary plan. Tap water often remains safe during an airborne hazard event. A long outage can affect water pressure and treatment at the municipal level, and stored water depends on neither.

Illustration: Quartz

Stock at least a three-day supply of food per person that needs no refrigeration, no cooking, and almost no preparation. A shelter-in-place order often coincides with a power outage, which rules out anything depending on a working stove, microwave, or refrigerator.

Canned goods do most of the work. Canned beans, tuna, chicken, soups, fruit, and vegetables keep for years unopened and supply protein, fiber, and calories rather than empty bulk. Pack a manual can opener inside the kit and leave it there permanently. An electric opener draws power the household will not have, and a case of cans with no way to open them feeds no one.

Build out the rest with items that need no prep at all. Peanut butter and other nut butters, crackers, protein bars, trail mix, dried fruit, jerky, shelf-stable pouches of rice or beans, and boxed cereal all work without heat or water. Shelf-stable milk and single-serve juice boxes add variety for children.

Tailor the supply to the actual household. Infant formula, gluten-free products, low-sodium options, and diabetic-appropriate snacks belong in the kit if someone at home needs them. Pre-packed emergency food kits sold off the shelf rarely account for those requirements. Pet food deserves the same three-day minimum, kept in a sealed, rodent-proof container.

Rotate the stock on a schedule. Every six months to a year, pull anything nearing its date into the regular pantry, eat it, and replace it with fresh stock. That use-and-replace habit keeps the kit current without throwing money away on expired food.

Skip very salty snacks where possible, since they increase thirst and water is the constrained resource during a shelter-in-place event. Freeze-dried meals that require boiling water are a poor fit for the same reason.

Include a few familiar comfort foods, particularly for children, since a confined stretch indoors is easier to manage with something recognizable to eat. Add disposable plates, cups, utensils, and paper towels, because washing dishes may not be possible.

Illustration: Quartz

A battery powered or hand crank radio is how a household keeps receiving official instructions after the power, internet, and cell network stop working. It is also how most people hear the all-clear that ends a shelter-in-place order.

The receiver to look for is a NOAA Weather Radio. NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards broadcasts continuously from the National Weather Service on seven frequencies between 162.400 and 162.550 MHz. The same network relays non-weather warnings issued by state and local authorities, including chemical releases, evacuation notices, and other public safety alerts. Receivers with Specific Area Message Encoding, labeled SAME, can be programmed with a county code so alerts sound only for the area where you live.

Combination units handle more than one job. Many emergency radios pair a hand crank with a battery compartment, a small solar panel, an LED flashlight, and a USB port for charging a phone. The crank removes the dependency on batteries, though it delivers short bursts of listening time rather than hours of it.

A smartphone does not replace a radio. Cell sites can lose commercial power, drain their backup batteries, or jam when thousands of people in one area call at once. A radio takes in a broadcast signal and asks nothing of the network.

Store spare batteries in the exact size the radio takes. Keep them apart from the stock set aside for flashlights so one device never gets stripped to feed another. Alkaline cells lose capacity sitting in a drawer, so test them twice a year. The American Red Cross suggests tying that check to the clock changes in spring and fall, which makes the date easy to remember.

Write down the local emergency station and the NOAA frequency for your region, then tape the note to the radio itself. Searching for a signal is not a task to begin once an order is already in effect. Anyone sharing the house should know how to switch the radio on.

Illustration: Quartz

Stock a first aid kit for cuts, burns, and minor injuries. Pair it with a backup supply of every prescription medication the household depends on, ideally two weeks' worth. Medication is the part of a shelter-in-place kit that is easiest to leave out.

A workable first aid kit holds adhesive bandages in several sizes, sterile gauze pads, medical tape, antiseptic wipes, antibiotic ointment, tweezers, scissors, disposable gloves, and an instant cold pack. Pharmacies and outdoor retailers sell pre-assembled versions that cover those basics. Assembling one piece by piece takes longer, but it lets you match the contents to who actually lives in the home.

Prescriptions are harder to plan around. A pharmacy may be closed, unreachable, or out of stock during the days an order stays in effect. Ask a doctor or pharmacist whether an extra supply can be arranged in advance. Some insurance plans permit an early refill for preparedness purposes, and some allow emergency refills once a disaster has been declared. Keep that reserve stored with the kit rather than mixed into the bathroom cabinet, where it is likely to get used during an ordinary week.

Write out each household member's medications, dosages, and allergies on paper and keep the list in the kit. A phone with a dead battery is useless. Another adult may also need to step in and administer a dose correctly.

Pack any device a household member relies on daily, including glucose monitoring supplies, spare inhalers, or epinephrine auto-injectors. Add instructions plain enough for someone who does not normally handle them. Over-the-counter staples belong here too: pain relievers, antihistamines, anti-diarrheal medication, and anything taken routinely.

Check expiration dates on medications, ointments, and sterile packaging on the same schedule used for rotating stored food and water. Tying all of it to one date on the calendar keeps the whole kit current. Twice a year is enough, and it avoids setting several separate reminders.

Illustration: Quartz

Plastic sheeting, heavy-duty duct tape, and a pair of scissors are the materials Ready.gov lists for sealing an interior room against contaminated outside air. No other item in the kit does that job.

Pick the room in advance. An interior space with few or no windows works best — a bathroom, or a bedroom with little exterior wall exposure. Less glass and fewer vents mean less surface to cover, which matters when the instruction to seal arrives with little warning.

Measure the room ahead of time, precut the sheeting to fit each window, door frame, and vent, then label the pieces. Cutting plastic to size during an active alert wastes minutes better spent moving everyone into the room. Store the scissors with the tape and sheeting so no one hunts through drawers.

Tape down every edge of the plastic against the wall or frame, not just the corners. Air moves through the smallest gaps, so cover electrical outlets, mail slots, bathroom exhaust fans, and the space under the door. A rolled towel pressed along the bottom of a door handles an uneven threshold better than tape alone.

Shut off anything that draws outside air in or pushes inside air out — air conditioning, forced-air heat, range hoods, and bathroom fans — before the taping starts.

Sealing is not standard procedure for every shelter-in-place order. It applies to airborne hazards such as a chemical release, an industrial accident, or heavy wildfire smoke, and local officials will say when to do it. An order issued during a public health emergency or a security incident does not call for taping plastic over windows. A sealed room restricts airflow, so it is a short-term measure held until authorities issue the all-clear or tell residents to ventilate.

Keep enough sheeting for more than one room. Larger households, or homes where someone cannot easily move between floors, may need two sealed spaces rather than one.

Illustration: Quartz

Pack one flashlight for each person in the household rather than a single shared light, and store spare batteries in the matching size next to them. Ready.gov and the American Red Cross both list a flashlight among the core supplies in a basic disaster kit. A shelter-in-place order that stretches past sunset without power is exactly that scenario.

LED flashlights outlast older incandescent models. They pull less power from the same set of batteries and stay cool to the touch, which matters in a closed room where several people share limited space. A headlamp for one or two household members is worth adding. It leaves both hands free for opening cans, changing a diaper, or guiding someone across a dark room.

Candles and oil lamps do not belong in this kit. An open flame is a fire hazard in a crowded room. In a space sealed with plastic sheeting and tape, a flame also burns oxygen and can produce carbon monoxide with nowhere to vent it. Candles turn up as a stopgap in ordinary power-outage advice. A sealed shelter room is a different situation.

Keep flashlight batteries physically apart from the batteries set aside for a weather radio, even when the sizes match. Otherwise one device gets raided to keep another running, and losing the radio costs more. Check both supplies twice a year on a fixed schedule.

Battery-powered lanterns are useful because they light an entire room instead of throwing a single beam, which helps when a family sits together in one place for hours. Glow sticks suit households with young children. They give off no heat, need no batteries, and carry no burn risk if one gets dropped or left on the floor overnight.

Test the flashlights themselves during routine checks, not only the cells inside them. Switches corrode and bulbs fail even when a light has sat untouched in a closet.

Illustration: Quartz

A whistle for signaling, N95 respirators for airborne particles, and sanitation supplies for a household with no working plumbing belong in every shelter-in-place kit. Ready.gov includes all three on its basic supply list, and each solves a problem that food and water cannot.

A whistle carries farther than a shout and takes a fraction of the effort. Someone trapped, injured, or hoarse after hours of calling out can still produce a sharp, directional sound that rescuers can follow to a location. Clip it to the outside of the kit or to a lanyard rather than burying it under canned goods.

N95 respirators filter fine particulate matter, which makes them useful during wildfire smoke and in dusty air after a building failure. They do not protect against gases, vapors, or chemical fumes, so an order tied to an industrial release still means sealing the room and waiting for the all-clear. Stock at least one per person, in a size that fits each face. A gap along the nose or cheeks lets unfiltered air slip past the material, and facial hair crossing the seal line does the same.

Plumbing can fail during a long outage, and a toilet that will not flush becomes a health risk within a day. A five-gallon bucket with a tight lid, heavy-duty garbage bags, plastic ties, and cat litter or sawdust assembles into a working emergency toilet. Line the bucket, add absorbent material after each use, seal the bag, and keep waste well away from food and drinking water.

Moist towelettes and hand sanitizer cover handwashing once the taps run dry. Both get used faster than most people plan for, so stock a generous surplus.

Tailor the remainder to the actual household rather than a generic list. Menstrual products, diapers, baby wipes, incontinence supplies, and denture care each matter to somebody, and running out midway through a multi-day order creates a problem with no easy fix.

Illustration: Quartz

A fully charged portable power bank keeps phones running for emergency alerts, calls, and texts after the electricity goes out. A capacity of at least 10,000 milliamp hours covers several full phone recharges, enough to carry a household through a multi-day stay indoors.

A phone does more than make calls during a shelter-in-place order. Wireless Emergency Alerts, the federal system that sends warnings and all-clear notices straight to mobile devices, land on the handset itself. No app has to be open for them to arrive. A dead battery cuts that link at the moment it matters most.

Store the bank already charged rather than empty, and treat it as a scheduled maintenance item. Lithium-ion cells lose charge slowly even when a device sits untouched in a drawer. A bank packed two years ago and never checked may hold well under its rated capacity. Topping it off every three months keeps it dependable.

Pack cables that match every device in the house rather than a single cable and an assumption. Households run a mix of USB-C, Lightning, and older micro-USB hardware across phones, tablets, and e-readers. One cable that fits the wrong device charges nothing. A small multi-port hub lets two or three devices draw from the same bank at once, which spreads a limited charge across more people.

Solar chargers work as a supplement during longer outages, particularly in a home with usable window light. They charge slowly and depend on weather and daylight, so they belong alongside a power bank rather than in place of one.

Households that need a laptop running for work or communication can step up to a larger portable power station. Those units cost more and take up considerably more storage space. For most homes, a phone-focused bank and the right cables cover the need without the bulk.

Illustration: Quartz

Keep copies of identification, insurance policies, medical records and a small cash reserve in a waterproof, portable folder inside the kit. These papers do little during the hours spent indoors, and a great deal in the weeks afterward, when claims get filed and services get restored.

Pack copies rather than originals. Driver's licenses, passports, birth certificates, Social Security cards, homeowner or renter insurance policies, vehicle titles, lease agreements and property deeds all belong in the folder. A sealed freezer bag works when a dedicated waterproof pouch is not available. Add a password-protected USB drive holding scanned versions, or save encrypted copies to a cloud account whose login at least one adult knows by heart.

Cash goes in the same folder because card readers, ATMs and payment apps all depend on electricity and a working network. A store running on generator power or writing out sales by hand often cannot process a card or break a large bill. Keep the reserve in small denominations — fives, tens and twenties — and leave it alone between emergencies.

Write an emergency contact list on paper and slide it in. Numbers for a primary care doctor, a pediatrician, the insurance company, the utility provider and one relative outside the region should be readable without a charged phone. A stored contact list disappears when a battery dies or a handset is lost, and few people can recite those numbers from memory.

Include a current photo of each household member, along with any pets. A recent image helps when someone becomes separated and has to be described to responders or posted on a local notice board.

A duplicate set left with a relative in another area, or in a safe deposit box, covers the case where the folder itself is damaged or unreachable.

Review the folder once a year on a fixed date. Policies renew, passports expire, medical information changes, phone numbers get reassigned and bills wear out. A folder full of expired paperwork offers little help at the moment it is opened.