Upgrading Items in Your Emergency Kit

There are two main reasons to upgrade items.

Upgrading items with better versions
Replacing items that are either faulty or have expired

Upgrading Items With Better Versions in your Emergency Kit

This is a slippery slope.

Let’s be real. There will always be better gear out there you can upgrade to.

Do you need to? In most cases, probably not.

If the item still functions as it is supposed to. Is still within an expiry date if it has one. What is the benefit of upgrading?

Remember an emergency kit, no matter the type, is there just in case you need it.

If you have multiple emergency kits for different locations or scenarios. It might make sense to either switch items around or to upgrade one as you are building it, and move that item to another kit.

Replacing Items in your Emergency Kit Due to Expiring or Being Faulty

You will either find out things are faulty or expired when you have an emergency situation, which isn’t ideal.

When you go and check your kits on a periodic schedule. I talk more about that on the looking after your emergency kit page.

Faulty Items

Items can sometimes break or stop working for no apparent reason. Is it from poor storage conditions? Bad manufacturing? Or something else?

When it happens, you want to go through this process and think about these questions.

Should I have brought a higher quality item?
What can I replace this with?
Was there something I did that caused this fault?
Am I able to return it and get either a refund or a replacement?

If it was me and I came across a faulty item in my emergency kit. I would seriously consider if it was worth getting the exact same product or not.

I like items that work. I’m loyal to a product and brand… to a certain point. If it can’t do what it is supposed to, I will replace it.

Expiring Items

A lot of items will have expiry dates on them. If you don’t want to get caught out in an emergency with an item, that’s not as good as a new one, you really need to replace the expired items.

A lot of things will be OK after an expiry date. But they do exist for a reason. To make sure the product works as expected.

What items have an expiry date?

Food and water
Batteries
First-aid supplies
Glow sticks
Medications, etc

The main ones to keep an eye on in my opinion, is food and water. Nothing worse than opening something when you are hungry or thirsty and finding it has gone off.

Consuming food and water that has expired could cause your stomach problems as well. Not something most people would want, especially in an emergency situation.

Other items with expiry dates the item will probably not be as effective as it should be.

Batteries – These might lose their charge fully or not last as long as expected.

Glow sticks – They might fail to work, or the advertised light output or length of time might be diminished.

First-aid supplies – Items with adhesive on them might not stick anymore. Or items might not be as durable in general.

Medications – These can become ineffective too if left to expire before use.

Upgrading and Updating Items

As you can see, updating is more important when it comes to items with expiry dates. Upgrading items can have some benefits. But when do you do it?

If your new to building emergency kits you might not know what is a good item until you need to use it. You might only ever use an item in an emergency situation. So it can be hard to know what to upgrade.

Balance this out with the budget you have for items that are going to sit around most of their life.

The decision to upgrade is up to you. If you do some good initial research when it comes to items to go into your kits, this will reduce the need to upgrade, or at least the amount of times you need to do this.

This is why building your own emergency kits beats buying a pre made one.