14-Day Emergency Kit: Building Two Weeks of Supplies at Home
Plan on 14 gallons of water per person, 56 for a household of four, plus two weeks of food you’d eat anyway. The American Red Cross recommends two weeks of water and food for home, beyond the three-day bag you’d carry out the door, and CDC asks you to try for a two-week water supply. You don’t have to buy it at once. Finish the 72-hour kit, then add a little each grocery trip.
Two weeks at a glance
| Supply | 72-hour kit, per person | 14-day home supply, per person | Household of four, 14 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Water (1 gallon a day) | 3 gallons | 14 gallons | 56 gallons |
| Non-perishable food | 3 days | 14 days | 56 person-days |
| Medications | 7 days (Red Cross list) | As much as your prescription and pharmacist allow | Per person |
| Cash in small bills | A few days of basics | Your call, still a small amount | One envelope for the house |
Water and food: American Red Cross (3-day supply for evacuation, 2-week supply for home; 7-day medication supply) and CDC (1 gallon per person per day; try to store a 2-week supply). Cash: Ready.gov advises a small amount at home in small bills and names no dollar figure.
If you’re starting from nothing, start with the water in your 72-hour kit. It’s the line you can’t improvise, and the one CDC sizes most precisely.
Why two weeks at home
Three days covers an evacuation. Staying home through an emergency can take longer, so the Red Cross sizes the home supply at two weeks. Honolulu adds one thing to the two-week standard: its emergency management department asks residents to build a 14-day disaster supply kit and to take it along if they move to a friend’s home or a hurricane refuge area (City and County of Honolulu). So treat the two-week supply as mostly staying put, but packed so you could load it into a car.
Build up from three days over about ten weeks
Don’t buy two weeks of supplies in one trip. Ready.gov’s low-cost approach is to add an extra item you already use each time you shop (Ready.gov), and that works for food you’d eat anyway: canned beans, peanut butter, oats, shelf-stable milk. One way to pace it:
- Weeks 1 to 2: finish the 72-hour kit first. It’s the part you’d need fastest.
- Weeks 3 to 6: add water a few gallons at a time until each person has 7 gallons, plus a week of food.
- Weeks 7 to 10: bring water and food to 14 days per person.
- After that: refill medications as early as your plan allows, and add the household extras from the Ready.gov list, such as a fire extinguisher, sleeping bags or blankets, and a change of clothes.
If cost is the obstacle, Ready.gov points families to community food banks as a way to stock an emergency supply.
Storing the water
CDC calls unopened, commercially bottled water the safest stored source; watch its expiration date. If you fill your own clean containers instead, replace the water every six months (CDC). Set a reminder for the swap on the same two dates each year.
Food gets rotated instead of replaced: eat the oldest cans in normal meals and put the new ones at the back. Ready.gov’s maintenance list adds a cool, dry spot for canned food, sealed containers for boxed food, and a yearly look at what your household needs now.
The money side of the same plan
The cash in the kit is for the first days, when Ready.gov warns that cards and ATMs may not work. Anything beyond that belongs in an insured savings account, measured in months of essential expenses rather than days. Next, size that cushion, then pick the account to hold it.