In Case of Emergency (Car Edition)

Our first snowfall over the weekend made us realize that we had yet to move any of our “car supplies” into our new car.  As in, we didn’t even have an ice scraper in the car.  Luckily, our defrost is awesome so we got away with it, but it won’t always be like that.  So we decided to go through all of our supplies that have been sitting in the garage and put together an emergency kit for the car.  Hopefully we’ll never need it, but it’s always better to be prepared.

Here’s our jumble of supplies from our previous two cars.

Certainly excessive for one car, and you can tell we’ve been holding on to some of these items for awhile (like the Kleenex that look like they just walked out of a bar fight).  Is 5 scrapers too many?  In Minnesota, not necessarily.  They can snap in cold enough weather.  But definitely too many to keep in one car.

Of course we also had a small hoard of items that aren’t really “car” specific.  Apparently I harbor a fear of needing a pen and not having it, which might explain the amount of pens and pencils that came from my old car last spring.  Likewise with tape, hand lotion, and sanitizing wipes.  I also had a couple of old chargers and my old ipod tape deck hookup (which worked awesome in the Jetta for a fraction of the price of those fancier setups).  But alas, we no longer have a tape deck or the electronics that any of those chargers work with so we’ll have to drop them off at the recycling center on our next trip.

We also had a few first aid kits.  Unfortunately, except for the band-aids and gauze, most of the medicine expired a few years ago so we had to sort through all of that and make a pile of expired items.

The best find (that I forgot I had) was a AAA emergency kit that I had for years in my car and never once opened.  We ended up taking items from that and a selection of other random items we had floating around to make a custom kit.  Here’s what we ended up with.

In the end, everything fit into a small first aid kit and a larger organizer bag.  We also settled on one nice scraper and brush to keep in the car along with a window breaker designed specifically to shatter your window should you find yourself submerged in water in this Land of 10,000 Lakes.

It all fits very nicely in the back of the car in the storage compartment over the spare tire.

For the winter specifically, we’ll probably also add a few granola bars and perhaps a blanket.  We don’t really drive in very many remote places, but we like to think now we are prepared to do that if the opportunity presents itself.  What do you keep in your car?