This might be one of those things you’ve been meaning to do someday. Or you might have some of these items already in your car, but not all of them. That was me for quite a long time! In fact, in putting together this post, there’s a few things I realized I hadn’t updated recently in our emergency bag.

But having a fully stocked emergency bag in your car can give you peace of mind and helps reduce some of the stress of emergency situations.

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What to Put in Your Car Family Emergency Bag

Bag

First, of course, you’ll need a bag or some type of container to hold all your items.

We use an old, string backpack my husband got for free during a conference from when he was teaching. At one point we used an extra diaper bag. But I really like using something I can sling on my back so I have two hands free.

Whatever you pick, it needs to be able to fit everything for your family and it needs to be easy for you to carry.

We have something like this for our home emergency bag (which I’ll talk about in another post). Sadly the one we bought 6 years ago (and has held up SO well!) looks like it’s not longer being made, but it’s very similar to this one here.

Extra set of clothes

You’ll want an extra set of clothes for each person in your family.

This started as an essential to keep around when we were potty training, but it’s helpful for so many situations: I have a couple kids who get carsick, messes that happen, and wardrobe malfunctions. Don’t forget a set for each adult as well.

We keep a full set of clothes for each person. For the smaller kids, each fits perfectly into a labeled gallon ziploc bag (which then doubles as a place to keep dirty clothes until you can dump them into the washer). For the older kids, and for us as adults, we do a combo of a bag and then have some items just folded up in the bag.

A few practical things:

• Don’t forget the socks & underwear
• Use clothes that are not favorites, or buy a super cheap extra set from somewhere
• Replace any used outfits as soon as possible once they are used

Wipes

Wipes are useful for pretty much any mess that comes up. Even though I don’t have kids in diapers anymore, we still keep a pack of wipes in our bag (and several extra packs throughout the car).

Extra bags

It can be grocery bags, dog poop bags, or ziplocs, but having extra bags tucked away in your emergency bag can be so helpful. I’ve used them for dirty diapers, dirty clothes, trash bags, and so many other random things.

Water bottles

It’s always a good idea to have water on hand. You can get a set of durable, reusable waterbottles, or just use some basic plastic water bottles (just make sure to swap them out occasionally).

We prefer stainless steel water bottles when possible, but we’ve used the Zak brand for our kids over the years (like these Minecraft water bottles) and have been really pleased with how well they’ve held up.

It’s ideal to have one water bottle per person. If you’ve got a larger family like we do, you can even get a family set of water bottles.

But it’s still helpful even if you can only stick a couple in your bag.

First Aid Kit

It’s important to keep a first aid kit in your emergency bag, or at least in your car.

We have this large first aid kit that fits in the back of the car (next to a flashlight and jump cables). We bought ours years ago, and I can’t find it anywhere online now – but it’s a lot like this kit in that it’s very robust. It’s got everything from emergency foil blankets, dust masks, glow sticks, lots of and nearly everything else you can think of.

We keep a smaller one with in the front of the car as well so it’s easy to grab when we’re going somewhere or a kid gets a small scrape and we don’t want to pull out the full kit.

I bought a set of three of these a few years ago, and they have been SO helpful. I like that there’s a clip on them that makes it easy to attach them to whatever I need – backpack, purse, etc. And they are the perfect size to throw wherever I need them.

Towel

There’s so many reasons having a towel in your pack can be helpful. From quick clean for spills, to a quick way to wipe the windshield, to emergency cleanup for car sick children. Unfortunately we deal with that last one fairly often – a couple of the kids inherited my propensity for motion sickness.

The easiest option is just to grab an old towel from your house (behold, my very worn Star Wars towel from my childhood, hah!).

But if you don’t have one handy, you can either buy a cheap bath or hand towel or you can get a compact travel towel that’s easy to store and won’t take up much space in your emergency bag.

Flashlight and/or Headlamp

This is especially crucial if you’re ever in circumstances where you break down at night. We’ve always kept a large, high powered flashlight on hand, but recently picked up some handlamps which are so helpful because they keep your hands free. Just remember to swap out the batteries occasionally.

Snacks

Having food on hand in a true emergency is very important. But this is also helpful for non-emergency circumstances. It also saves you money, so you spend less on convenience foods in a pinch.

A couple tips:

• Make sure the snacks can handle whatever weather extremes you’ll experience (hot or cold)
• Swap them out every month or every couple months
• Make sure it’s food that your family actually likes to eat

Some of our favorites to pack are:

• Jerky sticks – these are our family’s favorites!
• Granola bars – be careful about anything that includes chocolate that can melt in the heat
• Go-Go Squeezes or other fruit pouches – we always buy these because our kids have some food intolerances, and Gogos have some of the best ingredients (and no weird fillers or extra sugar) that we’ve found
• Crackers, nuts, etc.

Roadside Emergency Equipment

We have these tucked into a couple different compartments inside our van rather than in our emergency bag – but if we’re talking about emergency kits for the car, this is super important!

Think through things like:

• Jumper cables
• Portable tire pump – We’ve had this one for about eight years now, and it’s come in handy many times. It plugs into your 12V socket in your car
• Flares
• Everything you need to change a tire
• Knee pads or kneeling pad/mat – for that tire change or if you have to get under your car for anything
• Tie-down ratchet straps
• Fire extinguisher

You can piece what you need together yourself like we did, or you can buy a kit online. Depending on the kit you purchase, it can double as your first aid kit as well, but I’d recommend looking through the medical supplies and determine if it’s robust enough for your needs (or if you need to pick up a separate first aid kit, too).

Misc Items

These are going to be dependent on your family circumstances and the area you live in. This isn’t a comprehensive list, but here are a few examples to get you thinking:

• Blanket – Helpful for emergencies during winter. Either grab an extra one from your house that will fit, or get some compact emergency foil blankets
• Ponchos – Especially if you live in a rainy environment or during stormy seasons
• Winter jacket – if you live in an area where it gets below freezing, having a couple warm, emergency jackets in the car is super important. You don’t want to be unprepared if you break down. And consider getting one with high visibility reflectors if there’s a chance you’ll be putting on chains or dealing with something in the middle of the night in a snow storm!
• Large bottle of water – For extra drinking water or your engine, or a whole bunch of other situations. It’s never a bad idea to have extra in the car!
• Emergency cold packs – If you live in an extremely hot climate, you definitely want a few of these in your car. If you’re car breaks down somewhere it’s going to take a bit to get help, having a way to cool yourself down quickly when the AC isn’t running is really important.
  And these are also helpful if someone gets hurt and needs a quick ice pack!
• Masks – My parents kept these in the car when we were growing up because we lived in an area that had a lot of forest fires, and they wanted to make sure that if we had to evacuate when it was very smokey, we had a way to breathe safely. (While we had to evacuate several times, we never ended up having to use our masks – but we had people in our community who did!).
  Our full car first aid kit came with a set, but you can also get some off Amazon.
• Emergency Radio – We keep one of these in our emergency bag in the house, but we’re planning to get one for our car as well. Ours has a hand-crank flashlight, solar charger, and also serves as a power bank for charging devices.
• Anything else that’s helpful for your family – think through your climate and area, your family circumstances, and other relevant situations

Maintaining Your Emergency Bag

Okay, so this is the less fun part, but still super important.

It can be really easy to put together a nice, neat emergency bag, and feel really great about it. And that’s a great first step! But if you don’t maintain it, it’s going to be a whole lot less effective.

Seasonal

It’s not going to do you much good in the middle of winter if one of your kids has an emergency or accident, and you go to pull out clothes for them, and all you have is a tank top and shorts.

(Guess what I realized as I was pulling stuff out of our emergency bag to take photos for this post? Now that we’ve warmed up into spring, I need to swap out our winter clothes in ours!)

So make sure you at least do a check each season that:

• Appropriate seasonal clothes are in each bag
• Your child hasn’t outgrown the clothes you picked out

Stock Check

Do a thorough check of all the items in the bag.

• Are you down to the last couple wipes?
• Have you used up all the bandaids in your first aid kit?
• Have you used up your plastic bags or water bottles?
• Did you forget to repack a set of clothes for a kid after they had an accident? (This has happened to me…on more than one occasion! Thankfully I was able to use an older siblings extra clothes in a pinch, but I haven’t always done the best job of staying on top of maintaining the bag.)

When to check

I’d recommend checking either once a month or once per quarter/season. Whichever you pick, set it as a recurring reminder on your digital calendar so it pops up to remind you.

Having an emergency bag for your family gives you so much peace of mind! When unexpected circumstances pop up (whether someone gets car sick or there’s a more serious emergency), having one less thing to worry about gives you space to handle the situation with much less stress.