What's in your Lights Out box?

[bellinisurge]

Following on from the discussion on here about whether or not candles are a good idea in a power cut - I think they are a risk if they are your only light source, I've decided to put a Lights Out box together. My assumption is that lights and heat go out in a power cut.

I'm assuming that I can find stuff in the house once I've got the lighting sorted so I don't need to pack my box with food or blankets.

I'm assuming a short lived rolling blackout that we are warned about in advance as well as an unplanned one.

I'm factoring in an unlikely but not impossible scenario of mobile towers going down so no mobile phones but, in this scenario, I'm magically thinking landlines might still be up.

1. Torches including head torches and milk bottle lanterns.
2. List of where useful stuff is - like hurricane lamps, garden solar lights, camping stove &windbreaker, whistle kettle, big umbrella if cooking outside, location of precooked food and hot water in flasks if we have advanced warning
3. Battery pack and cables for phones
4. Candles (yes, I will use them) including tea lights
5. Matches
6. Lighters
7. Radios (wind-up/solar charged one + battery powered one)
8. First aid kit
9. AAA and AA batteries

10. Duck tape because I'm a prepper (probably a comfort thing) 11. Hooks for the solar powered fairy lights to set up indoors (currently in garden getting the sun) 12. Hot water bottles (if not already in use) 13. Lifestraw (see 10 ) 14. Old fashioned rotary dial landline phone - also got one for my in-laws so we can talk to each other.

If you are not a prepper, I would suggest you just get your torches together with batteries and maybe a phone charger and cable. Have a torch outside the box in a place everyone knows about.

I've put some kids fluorescent stars on the box so it will show up easier with a torch when anyone goes looking for it.

If I haven't already bored you with it, here's a photo of a milk carton lantern. Nicer for kids. Less dangerous than candles #NannyState

The landline system is to be switched off soon. 2025, I think.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58233420.amp

Hooks for the solar powered fairy lights to set up indoors (currently in garden getting the sun)

I hadn't thought of that. I have battery run Christmas lights I'm going to dig out.

@stargirl1701 , yes. The landline is more hope than expectation. A "nice to have" not an essential.

@MrsDanversGlidesAgain , I got a bunch of reduced ones from Aldi. Plan to use them on the stairs. They aren't high quality

I've got packs of those 99p glow sticks in our box!

Cool idea. None of us in our house is too grown up to enjoy glow sticks.

First thing I have is a torch in my bedside table drawer so I can safely get to my blackout box which I keep in the garage.

In the box I have:

• Cleaned out milk cartons (used to replace kids nightlights)
• Head torches + batteries
• Diving torches (super powerful and we had them anyway, just keep them in the blackout box now rather than in the loft with the scuba gear)
• Hand crank radio with solar panel which acts as a radio, torch and power bank for charging phones etc
• List of local and national radio frequencies
• Manual aerator for fish pond
• Bicycle lights I can clip on to the baby's pram.

My blackout box itself is a large coolbox which we would also use to transfer some food out of the fridge to avoid opening and closing it too much. Freezer is always stocked with lots of ice packs.

That should get us to round 2 where we move on to heating etc, and the milky lights keep the kids happily in their bedrooms so they're not getting underfoot while we sort things out.

I think I might start with buying matches and putting them in strategic places I can remember. Already have candles scattered around and I know where spares are. Power packs are flat I know, from last camping trip so that's a reminder to charge. I keep a torch in my handbag (tiny but very bright) others may not work, need to check

I would personally simulate "power down" in advance of an actual power outage for the purpose of diagnosing the condition of your home security alarm. Switching off the circuit breaker/removing the fuse for any security alarm fitted to your property will simulate this adequately. Most home security systems have access codes and theoretically will activate in the event of a power outage. Simply add your personal access code into your keypad and disarm the system during a power outage to silence the alarm. If you try this in advance of widespread outages you'll know exactly what to do when the time comes instead of frantically trying to work out how to shut the thing up.

A grip

'Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.'

I couldn't be decribed as a prepper, but I remember the power cuts in the 70s and my mother filling oil lamps and replacing candles - things you don't want to be doing by the light of a torch if you can find it in the first place. And nothing's lost if we don't have power cuts, is it?

I thought they were suggesting a few 3 hour blackouts at times like 2pm?

We camp loads so I have a camping box so will just use that. Torches, camp lights, stove to boil water on for hot water bottles and cuppas, battery packs, decks of cards, board games etc.

We live in the countryside and get power cuts fairly frequently in the winter anyway so we are used to it really. I'm not doing anything different this year.
We have a generators so we can run essential things. It's expensive though, and a bit noisy so we don't attempt to power the whole house. In theory we could just run the generators all the time and carry on as normal but if you don't know how long the power is going to be off for that's a potentially very expensive strategy, and you risk running out of fuel,so we run them in bursts for showers, to cook, to keep stuff in the freezer frozen and run the wifi periodically.
We have an open fire in one room so tend to live mainly in there whilst we have no power, shutting off all the other rooms and drawing the curtains to keep the heat in. We always have multiple torches ready anyway and we've got a camping stove as back up for cooking (could be useful if fuel for the generators gets scarce.)
The other crucial bit of kit is uninterruptable power supplies for the computers, so they can at least be closed down safely. Switching stuff off is something that people tend to forget actually. Important to protect sensitive stuff from spikes when the power returns, but it's also a complete PITA if the power comes back on at 3am and you've not switched the lights, tv, radio etc off (or if you're out - nobody wants wasted electricity at current prices!)
One of the worst things about long power cuts is boredom in my experience, as we are all so dependent on electronics now. We try to get out during the daytime and I have a box of board games in the living room as they help pass the time in the evening.
I think the longest we have been without electricity is 5 days and we had a young baby then too. We handled that ok so I'm not too worried about this winter.

@user1471518104 why don't you pop over to the Style and Beauty threads and tell them they are wasting their money
Or the Royal Family threads and tell them the King is a lizard.
Or the Gardening thread and tell them it pisses down all winter so why bother.
There's loads of fun you can have all over Mumsnet

@SliceOfCakeCupOfTea yes, 3 hour rolling blackouts rather than multi-day nightmares. However, as I had a multi day nightmare last year - for which I was prepared but the family weren't - I thought a box with torches, batteries , candles and matches couldn't hurt.

If they're only going to be 3 hours I'll just put an extra jumper on and if we get notice I'll fill a flask with boiling water so I can have a cup of tea. Not really worth going to a great deal of trouble for such a short time. DH works from home so he'll be a bit irritated but we have a plug in phone and his laptop battery lasts longer than that so he should be ok.

My friend bought me a wonderbag so if the blackouts run through the evening mealtime we can still have something warm to eat

I know where stuff is in my home so if the lights go out I’ll use the torch on my phone (which never leaves my side) to find what I need.

Most of this looks like over prepping to me but I like the milk carton lantern and will deploy the head torch to this function if needed so thanks for the idea 😄

I should point out perhaps that I have MS. While I am mostly able to do all the stuff I need to do myself, sometimes I'm not. If the power went out and I was out of action, it would fall to DH to deal with. He's not a prepper and doesn't really know where everything is or what we have.
I'm also big on having redundancies built in to my preps so that I'm not pinning my hopes on one thing working.

It won’t fit in an emergency box, but we have just bought a calor gas fire.
Yes they do have a distinctive aroma, but I’d rather not freeze…

In my case it's not over prepping, just adequate prepping based on experience. We live pretty rurally in the Netherlands and have several blackouts every year. With 3 kids aged 5 and under it would silly not to be prepared, especially as we're both British so have no family over here to help, it's all on us.

Yep, as well as a grip, I have several large containers full of tap water as we are not on mains water and our borehole relies on an electric pump, and to be vigilant (organised) with keeping phones, iPad, laptop charged fully, and reasonable level of fuel in the car, so we can go elsewhere in a prolonged powercut. That's enough prepping for me.

@Fifiesta , my late Mum had one of those. I decided to put a list in the box of where bigger stuff is and what it is. Now that I have a bunch of kids fluorescent stickers, I am putting one on each thing that's out of the box but may be needed - not blankets, obviously.

Well, in looking for the battery powered lights I've just found all the candles I bought last year when we were told we'd have power cuts, as well as two small battery powered emergency lamps. Just need a handy box to put them all in and keep close.