Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
Power outage kit for a house with kids
15
items We lost power for two days after a summer storm when my kids were three and six, and I found out in the dark exactly how unprepared I was. A lot of you reading this are in Concord, Rutland, Cranston, and Huntington, where the grid goes down every sin...
A flashlight points one direction, and what you actually need at 9pm with two scared kids is a room that is just lit. I stand this on the kitchen counter and it covers the whole space. It eats batteries fast on the brightest setting, so we run it on ...
LUXPRO LED Portable Camp Lantern
Two in a pack matters because the second one goes to whichever kid is trailing behind me. Hands free is the entire point when you are carrying a laundry basket down dark basement stairs. The strap is too big for a small head even pulled all the way t...
LUXPRO 2pk Rechargeable Headlamp
Four small banks sitting on one charging base means everyone gets their own and I stop refereeing whose phone matters more. I leave the base plugged in all the time so they are always topped up. Each bank is only good for about one phone charge, so t...
4200mAh Multihub Base with 4 Power Banks - heyday™
Nothing else on this list works without these, and they are the thing I always forget until the exact moment I need them. A sixteen pack works out cheaper per battery than the little four packs by the register. Check what your lantern and radio actua...
Energizer MAX AA Batteries 16pk - Alkaline Battery: 3000mAh, Single-Use, 1.5V
Real candles plus a six year old plus a dark hallway is a combination I am not willing to do. These give the same soft light and I can leave one in the bathroom all night without thinking about it once. They are dimmer than they look in the product p...
12pk LED Votive Candle Set White - Room Essentials™
A full freezer buys you about a day and these stretch it further. I keep two frozen at all times and move them into the fridge the second the power cuts out. They only hold cold about twelve hours in a fridge that keeps getting opened by kids, so thi...
Igloo 2pk Ice Block Refreezable Ice Packs - Small
I bought a real kit after spending ten minutes digging through a junk drawer for one bandage by flashlight. Having it all in one grab and go box means my husband can find it without calling me. It is light on anything for actual burns, so I added bur...
Easy Care Complete First Aid Kit
The electric one on my counter turns into a paperweight the second the power goes, which I did not think about until I was standing there holding a can of soup. This one is under ten dollars and it is the difference between eating and not. The handle...
OXO Steel Can Opener
This is on the list because the hardest part of an outage with kids is not the dark, it is the four hours of them being bored and scared. One deck by lantern light fixed more of that evening than any gadget here did. It gets ugly fast with competitiv...
UNO Card Game
If the water goes out with the power, or you just do not want to burn through the hot water tank, these keep everyone feeling human. The store brand is about half the price of the name brand and I honestly cannot tell the difference. Flushable is gen...
Flushable Cleansing Wipes - Fresh Scent - up&up™
This is the one thing here I hope never earns its keep. When the cell towers went down in our last storm this was how we knew when it was safe to go outside again. Cranking is genuinely tiring and buys you only a few minutes of play, so I keep it cha...
Leaton Hand Crank NOAA Weather Radio
An August outage in a house with no AC gets miserable within about two hours, and moving air is most of what makes a hot room bearable. I set this in the kids' doorway at night and they actually sleep. It is not strong enough to cool a whole room, so...
Gazeled Battery Powered Fan
Five in a pack means one lives in each car and two stay in the closet, and they cost almost nothing. When somebody has to go outside in the rain to check on the sump pump, this is what you grab on the way past. They are thin and mine tore at the shou...
Hagon PRO Disposable Rain Ponchos Adults 5 Pack
The damage in our last outage did not happen when the power went out, it happened when it snapped back on and killed our modem. Everything expensive lives behind one of these now. It will not save you from a direct lightning strike, and the little pr...
TESSAN Surge Protector Power Strip
If you are on a well like we are, no power means no water at all, and nobody warned me about that before it happened. This folds flat in a cupboard and I fill it whenever a storm is actually in the forecast. It is floppy and awkward to carry once it ...
Collapsible Water Storage Container