Basic 72 Hour Kit--Week 9--Clothing

This week’s addition to your 72 hour kit is both super easy and difficult. How’s that? Every kit should have clothing. These are clothes that fit each person and clothes that can sit in a 72 hour kit and possibly not ever be worn. Let’s talk about the items to include before we discuss how I pack the 72 hour kits for my family. Absolute essentials are pants (preferably jeans or something equivalently durable), a pair of socks, and a long sleeved shirt (this cuts down on space because it is good for cold weather and warm weather when you roll up the sleeves).

My children grow like weeds so keeping them in clothes is difficult, but keeping the 72 hour kits up to date was nearly impossible until I stumbled upon this solution. A little background first, I received hand-me-downs from cousins for my oldest son and I didn’t think any child of 3 should have 16 pairs of pants and even more shirts. I was gathering items for my first 72 hour kits at the time and I decided to put a grey sweat suit that was a size too big for him in his 72 hour kit with one white long-sleeved T-shirt. A year later when I rotated our 72 hour kits I had another sweat suit and shirt from those same cousins to put into his kit that was a size too big and the other clothes that were now too small were put into his little brother’s kit. Five children later I am still rotating those same sweat suits because they are generic colors so they will work for my boys and girls. Each year I look for those deals at Target (just because it is my favorite store) that I can buy a plain colored sweat suit for $15 or less and add it to my oldest son’s kit. My only caution is to purchase the boy sweat suits and not the girl ones because the cut is DEFINITELY different between the two, but girls look fine wearing boys pant (and can still look like girls) but boys don’t look great in girl pants.