Lights Out!

Happy Wednesday everyone!  I am back from a mini-vacation in sunny Florida with my two besties.  I had the best of time, loved every minute and was blessed to have the time with them both.  But back to reality now right? LOL!  That's ok, I enjoy my life and my family so its not all bad!

Just a quick postie for you today because today is catch up day again.  I got home late Monday night and spent yesterday ripping through the house cleaning because NOT MUCH gets done when I'm gone.  So I had to clean, do laundry, unpack, get groceries and try to catch up on emails and such.  So today is project day again...trying to get some things done before I have to take my daughter to the orthodontist to get her braces off.  She's VERY excited, after a year of having them on she is excited to get them OFF LOL...and get her teeth bleached pearly white!  But no worries, I have a TON of projects I'm working on before we head off for Spring Break later this month...which translates into lots of posts here at the bloggeroo!

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Ever have the lights go out?  Power Out?  With Spring & Summer on its way that means thunderstorms here where I live in Virginia.  That means sometimes we lose the power and that's NO fun...well sometimes it is if you are prepared.  So I have a "Lights Out" box that I keep in our laundry room.  Lights go out and we can grab that quick and easy.  Or if your kids are home alone they know what to do if the lights go out so they can be safe.

BUT FIRST....we have to be able to navigate to the laundry room or anywhere safely right?  If its evening and storming it is going to be very dark and I'm a clumsy person in the daylight let alone the dark!

So we have these nightlights/flashlights on every level of our house.  I love them!  They plug in and work like a nightlight BUT when the power goes off they are charged and stay on!  And then you can unplug them and use them like a flashlight to navigate with.

I couldn't find the exact ones I have in our Lowes store but these are super similar and around $8 each.  I'm sure you can find something similar in any home store or even Target or Walmart. (my hubby was the hand model...thanks hubby) I highly recommend having a few in your house.  I have one outside our bedrooms, one in the kitchen on main level and one in our finished basement/rec room.

I found this cute bin at Target so I transferred my goods to this one from a "plain" one!  Its labeled simply, no embellishments...it doesn't need it but you could of course decorate it however you please.  I sit it on top of our cabinets in our laundry room but you need to keep it anywhere that its out of the way YET easy to find when needed.

This is what I keep inside...what you decide to keep inside might be different from what we do of course.  But I've found these are the things we need the most during a power outage.  This is not an "emergency survival" box...those would be MUCH bigger of course and include food and such (we have that out in our garage complete with headlamps hahaha).  I have 3-4 flashlights (smaller ones but super bright), batteries for the flashlights, matches and some basic candles.  Now I wouldn't suggest to my teens to light up candles but we at least have a few in case we need them.  Playing games is always a good way to pass time when the lights go out so we usually light a few candles and place them in our glass hurricanes to light the kitchen table. 

We also have a couple of these lanterns on hand.  They are outdoor battery-run lanterns and ours are full-sized...if you camp you may have one of these already.  These are good to use in the bathroom or bedroom if the power is still out.  That way you can put them down and still have light in the room you are using without having to fiddle with a flash light.  We keep these out on our shelves in the garage, they don't fit in the box of course.  But they are always on the shelf and easy to find.

Last but not least on the reverse side of the box lid we have an emergency number list.  I covered our actual list with a blank one (so we don't get any prank calls from y'all hahaha) just so you could see it.  If the kids are home alone and for whatever reason they can't use their cell phones OR they just don't know the numbers.  My teens have everything programmed on their cell phones so they haven't memorized most of these numbers which is a bit of a problem and why I have them listed in the box.  Your kids may be too young to have cell phones so its a great way to have these numbers for them.  I included the electric company as well so we can report any outages easily without having issues finding the number ONCE the power goes out...I don't have it on my cell phone but you could do that too.

So that's it!  An easy way to keep LIGHT in your life if needed!  

What things do you do to prepare for unexpected emergencies??