Yesterday we returned from our annual camping week at the Lair of the Bear where we spend the entire week off the grid. Today we did 7 or 8 loads of laundry… (I lost count), returned the camping gear back to its home in the garage (while taking the opportunity to reorganize it into a more useful fashion), and washed all the dishes and kitchen items we used.

As we returned the bags that normally live in my car, we decided to take a closer look at what was in each bag before putting them in the car. One is a large LL Bean bag that holds what I consider my kids’ “emergency” bag. Another is a car “emergency” bag. There was also a bag of bags, a first aid kit, and a bag of blankets. I also had a few loose items like a book, soccer cleats, and a softball mitt. We had already taken out my gym bag on Mother’s Day when the boys helped me reorganize the garage. I had also already tossed the plastic bin of granola bars which had Christmas décor on their labels (from at least 2 years ago). It also contained Builder bars which the boys, perhaps mistakenly, said they would still eat. A couple of years ago, after Jasper and Bryce had graduated from high school, we dismantled the bag of extra clothes for each kid.  

Besides taking an adventure down memory lane, we learned an important lesson today about keeping our emergency supplies up to date… what follows is a humorous and (sometimes) scary look at what we found…

Kid “emergency” Bag

With three boys, I wanted to be prepared for anything… I had things in the bag that we needed (or thought we may need) over the years. The bag was full of things that would help us meet our goal of never letting the boys get tired or hungry. This is what we found in the bag:

• 2 water bottles – one was a hard, plastic water bottle with 4 carabiners attached, the other was a disposable bottle. We watered the plants outside with that water.
• A gallon sized baggie of food (with a label from Bryce’s emergency kit from 2009; needless to say, we tossed all of the food we found…)
  • 2 fruit roll-ups (where was the third one?)
  • Snack size bag of pretzels
  • One sandwich sized baggie with two pistachios (why wouldn’t someone eat the last two?!?)
  • Chocolate chip Z bar
  • Sunflower seeds
  • Cinnamon crunch somersaults (I have no idea what these are or where this snack came from)
  • Small bag of baked ruffles (crushed to a pulp, with an unreadable expiration date)
  • 1 Green tea bag
  • Cookie dough Luna bar
• Multi-purpose radio (never used, still in its package) which has a solar charger and hand-crack charger, flashlight, USB charger, AM/FM radio plus weather band, and it worked when we tried it)
• 5 hats – Logos abound: Wild Wild West Chili Cook Off, SEGA Sports, San Francisco Giants, Bayside Broncos, and a Golf Visor
• 5 collapsible shopping bags
• 4 umbrellas
• Ball pump with the needle bent (and the needle in the handle was bent as well)
• Goobers grape/peanut butter mix – partially consumed, with an expiration date of 7/10/2012. I have to say this was one of the best (gross) convenient kid snacks ever invented. All you need is a loaf of bread which is never far away and viola! You have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
• Body wipes – two samples, one was lemon grass, the other lavender – neither of which scent, would any kid would wear, ever.
• Multi-purpose tool (two size nuts, and a screw driver bit that we couldn’t figure out how to actually use).
• Crow bar – just what were we going to do with this?
• Collapsible frisbee with a Slumberger logo
• Balloon air toy – this toy is one of the best toys in the world for three boys. You pump up the long skinny balloon and let it go. It squeals and flies high and the kids chase and chase it. It was the best $9.98 ever spent!!! It keeps the kids entertained for a long time. In fact, a long enough time that when you all get back into the car, you can drive for a couple of more hours, pretty much complaint free. The pack of balloons were kind of glued together from all the heat in the car. We tried them out anyway. The process had the same effect on Keir as it did the three boys when they were young. We kept the good balloons and tossed the melted ones…
• Deck of cards (who knows if they were all there. You’d have ot play 52-card pick-up to find out.)
• Hacky-sack
• Foldable duffle bag
• 3 Jackets (More logos abound: San Carlos Little League, 2010 San Carlos Little League, and Bayside Broncos)
• A bag of 6 garbage bags (Jasper used to get car-sick and that was NOOO fun, so we were really prepared for that at all times)
• A bag of sunscreen – 7 bottles, actually, including 45. 55 and 70+, and the rest 30+
• 2 Cal rain ponchos – you have to be prepared for rain at the stadium
• Card game – Are We There Yet (in three languages: English, French, Spanish)
• Game book – Mind Matters, which contains, word searches, Sudoku, Cryptograms, anagram, and other fun puzzles my kids probably never did…
• 1 Blue sweat band (not two), like from the 70’s. In Bayside Bronco blue.
• 4 Shout wipes, in an unopened package
• Glow stick (which had a expiration date of 2012)
• 4 hand sanitizer packets
• Emergency blanket
• Band-aid (Only 1)

Going through this bag reminded me of using some of the stuff some of the time, and never using some of the stuff, most of the time! In driving across country with the boys twice, by myself, I found that the most useful toys were a tennis ball and frisbee. Neither of which were in this bag… the collapsible frisbee isn’t the same! Nor is the hacky-sack. But, either is better than nothing!

Blanket Bag

We had to reroll the blankets to get them all to fit into the shopping bag. Nothing exciting here except the one blanket that was self-contained had to be refolded 5 times. The fold lines were misleading, like those on a map once you unfold it; it never goes back the way it was handed to you at AAA.

Bag of Bags

You know those reusable shopping bags you are supposed to bring into the grocery store with you to handle all your purchases, and so you aren’t charged a bag fee? Well, this is my bag of those reusable bags… which I almost ALWAYS forget to take into the store with me. Oh well!

First Aid Kit

We already discovered that we need to restock this bag. When we were at the Lair, Keir got a blister while hiking and I said, “Oh, we have moleskin in the first aid kit that I keep in my car!” Keir grabs the first aid kit (which I first assembled in 2004 when we first started scout camping) and starts taking things out of it. The very first thing he grabs is a moleskin package, which is empty. What?!? Well, thankfully he found the moleskin. It had just come out of the package. But, in the meantime, he was inspecting everything else as he pulled it out of the bag. And, he was announcing most of the expiration dates on things. Most of which were before 2012. And, one package of meds, the Benadryl was 2004. Hmmm, time to restock that bag.

Emergency Bag (Different than the kid “emergency” bag…)

As we put the other bags back in the car, I said, “We should probably take a look at the car emergency bag while we are taking the time to go through all of these others.” Well, that was its own adventure back in time. This is what we found in the “real” emergency bag:

• Towel (Did I mention that Jasper gets car sick…)
• Paper towels – industrial strength and regular
• Toilet paper – a full roll
• Water bottle (crushed and won’t stand on its own, but it is full of water. It looked suspiciously like the one removed from the kid bag.)
• Emergency shovel – this one came with my car. BUT, it wasn’t at all like the one I thought that was in there. That one was a MacGyver-type tool with a compass on the end of the handle and other cool features you will probably never, ever use. That shovel was nowhere to be found.
• Motor oil
• 2 Lego land rain ponchos (one size fits all); I thought these were in the side wheel well with my CD changer, but nope, they were in the “real” emergency bag. And, I thought there were three of them.
• HELP Emergency kit (3 day rations – 6 food bars, 6 drinking water packets (evaporated), first aid supplies, personal care/hygiene items (read toilet paper, and nothing else useful, except maybe the refuse bag), emergency blanket, emergency checklist). I am sure whoever prepared the HELP kits meant well, but I am not sure how one would fare in an actual emergency with this kit. All it provided was a false sense of security.
• McKinley’s zip lock bag from 2009 Emergency kit
  • 5 wet naps
  • 5 hand sanitizers
  • Emergency whistle (probably from when I was a soccer coach…)
  • 1 collapsible shopping bag
  • 4 Coleman rain ponchos – I think these rain ponchos are evidence that I may have been traumatized from our first camping experience in California in 1981, when we camped at Muir Woods and were wet the ENTIRE time… have you ever tried to light a fire when it is damp all the time? You can’t even enjoy s’mores and pretend to like camping when that happens.)
  • 5 glow sticks
  • 1 eye glass repair kit
  • 2 emergency blankets
  • 3 game cards (from a trivia game), but no love note from a parent… which I am pretty sure is a requirement for the emergency kit assemblage for the school earthquake kits. And I can hear McKinley saying now, “And all my mom put in here was three trivia questions. She didn’t even include a picture!” NOT true!! We removed the letters and pictures from their emergency kits and just moved those to the earthquake kit bag for the next year…
  • 1 small deck of cards in a silver metal case
  • Lip balm (unused) with carabiner, and Cashin Company logo
  • Garbage bag, folded neatly
  • 4 suction cups (still have no idea why these are in here or even where these came from)
  • One emergency light with a corroded hearing-aid sized battery – labeled Intuit Corporate Services – which I picked up from an employee safety fair, sometime between 1995 and 2000
  • Waterproof matches
  • Coleman version of swiss army knife (includes fork and spoon) [I know each kid had one of these… why is there only one in this bag?]
• Gallon size Ziploc bag of food…
  • 5 granola bars, (4 chocolate chunk (their favorite), 1 S’mores),
  • 2 Hershey’s bars (one with almonds, one without; both pulverized beyond recognition as a chocolate bar to resemble hot chocolate mix…all of which had spilled into the bag, covering everything, and which exploded on to me and the counter when I merely opened the bag)
  • 1 bag of energy mix trail mix – 3/4s eaten with the bag neatly folded closed
  • 1 bag of dry roasted peanuts – expired 4 26 2010
  • 1 hand sanitizer packet (like a wet-nap from the 70’s)
  • 1 bunch of napkins, folded neatly
  • 2 teabags – one detox, one calm; I am pretty sure I need one or both!
• Corroded AA battery

WOW – I had no idea I carried around this much crazy stuff in both of the “emergency” bags – one for the car and one for the kids.

Needless to say, our next weekend project will be updating and consolidating the two bags into one actual emergency bag (with a much more useful cacophony of emergency related items) and an “activities” bag to address those occasions when you need certain items for entertainment or to handle current weather conditions.

Now that the kids are all out of high school, my need to “never let them get tired or hungry” has changed a bit!

Share with me what’s in your emergency kit.