Before anything has happened
I think I need to stock up. What should I do?
Probably less than you think, and probably different things than you have been told. Do not start with a shopping cart. Start with what your household would actually need if shopping became difficult for a while.
This page does not ask why you are worried. It asks how long you want your household to be able to manage, then walks you through an inventory, a buying order, a list of things to leave on the shelf, and the point at which you are done.
Before you read further
What this guide assumes
You have a reason, or at least a feeling, and you have some money you are willing to spend. You have not bought anything yet, or you have bought a little and want to know what comes next. Stores are open and you can get to one.
It also assumes you would rather not waste that money. Every step below is built to protect it: inventory before purchase, ordinary food before specialty food, systems before gadgets, and a stop point so you know when you are finished.
If the disruption already has a date, What to buy if you have three days is this page compressed into a schedule. If you are not sure anything is coming at all, read Something in the news has me worried first.
Step one, about twenty minutes
Count what you already have
Households routinely believe they have "no food" while holding well over a week of usable meals in the pantry, freezer, and cabinets. The inventory is the step that turns a vague fear into a short list of real gaps, and it is the step nearly everyone skips.
Food, in person-days
Open every cabinet, the fridge, and the freezer. Group what you see into meals rather than items. How many days could your household eat from what is here, allowing for the fridge and freezer contents to be used first? Write the number down. Note separately how much of it needs no cooking.
Water, in gallons
Bottled water, jugs, anything sealed and food-grade. Most households find a few bottles and stop counting. Write down the total and compare it to CDC's floor of one gallon per person per day for three days.
Medications, in days remaining
Every prescription in the house, with the count and the next refill date. Add glasses or contacts, medical supplies, infant needs, and pet medications. These are the items that cannot be substituted, which is why they are bought first in the next section.
Light and phone power
Flashlights, headlamps, lanterns, and the batteries they take. Power banks and their charge level. A radio, if you own one. Test each flashlight now rather than assuming.
Hygiene and household consumables
Toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, detergent, trash bags, feminine hygiene products, diapers, pet food, and litter. Count in weeks. These are the purchases a household regrets last and needs first.
Cash and documents
How much cash is in the house, and in what bills. Whether copies of key documents exist somewhere other than a phone. Ready.gov recommends copies of important documents in your kit and a small amount of cash in small bills.
The inventory is the shopping list
Whatever is short against the duration you choose in the next step is what you buy. Whatever is not short, you do not. A household that skips this step buys what the store is displaying. A household that does it buys what it lacks.
Step two
Prepare for a duration, not a catastrophe
You do not have to accept anyone's prediction to use this framework. Ask how long your household should be able to run without shopping, and pick the rung. The rungs get more expensive as they go, and each one delivers less safety per dollar than the one before it.
Rung one
72 hours
The jump from nothing to three days is the largest single improvement a household can make, and the cheapest. Water, food that needs no cooking, medications, light, phone power, and a radio. If you have never done this, do this and stop.
Rung two
Two weeks
Covers most outages, most storms, and most supply interruptions. This is where the pantry gets deeper and the household starts thinking about water access, sanitation, and cooking without power rather than just piles of supplies. CDC names a two-week water supply as the goal when it is possible.
Rung three
Ninety days
The top of this site's readiness ladder. A rotating pantry, a water system rather than a water pile, backup power for the loads that matter, and money set aside. Most households that get here did it over a year, not a weekend.
Past ninety days
Storage stops being the answer. A household that wants to be steady for six months or a year needs skills, repair capability, a water source, savings, and neighbors more than it needs another shelf. That is what the Self-Reliance section is for, and it is a better use of the same money.
Step three
Fill the gaps in this order
Work down the list against your inventory and your chosen duration. Each step names the point at which you do not need to buy anything for it. Take that seriously. Skipping a purchase you do not need is as much a part of this as making one you do.
Water
One gallon per person per day for your duration, per CDC, with more for pregnant women, people who are sick, pets, and hot climates. For a household of four, three days is 12 gallons and two weeks is 56. Commercially bottled water in its sealed container is the simplest form; Ready.gov advises storing it in a cool, dark place and replacing water you bottled yourself every six months.
You do not need to buy anything for this step if the inventory already meets the number. Past two weeks, stop buying water and read emergency water storage and water storage containers; the answer becomes containers and treatment, not more bottles.
Medications and the things that cannot be substituted
Refill prescriptions on the earliest day your plan allows and ask about a 90-day supply. Ready.gov notes that an emergency can make it hard to refill a prescription or find an open pharmacy. Add the over-the-counter medicines your household uses, infant formula and supplies, pet medications and food, and spare glasses or contact supplies.
You do not need to buy anything for this step if nobody in the household depends on any of these. Most households do, and this is the step that matters most. Prescription preparedness covers refill timing, insurance overrides, and refrigerated medications.
Food you already eat
Ready.gov's guidance is to choose foods your family will eat, favoring canned foods, dry mixes, and staples that need no refrigeration, cooking, water, or special preparation, and to include a manual can opener. In practice: buy your normal groceries two or three weeks deeper. Rice, pasta, oats, canned beans and vegetables, canned fish and chicken, peanut butter, crackers, shelf-stable milk, cereal, dried fruit, nuts, cooking oil, salt, coffee. Keep a share of it eatable with no cooking at all.
You do not need to buy anything for this step if the inventory already covers your duration. Buy specialty emergency food, if ever, only after two weeks of ordinary food is on the shelf. The pantry guides in grains and starches, proteins, and canned goods go deeper.
Light, phone power, and a radio
A flashlight or headlamp per person with spare batteries, a power bank sized to recharge each phone at least once, and a battery or hand-crank radio. Ready.gov's basic kit lists a battery-powered or hand-crank radio and a NOAA Weather Radio with tone alert, plus a cell phone with chargers and a backup battery.
You do not need to buy anything for this step if the flashlights tested fine and the power banks hold a charge. Emergency lighting and power banks cover what to look for when you do buy.
Hygiene and household consumables
Toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, detergent, trash bags, feminine hygiene products, diapers and wipes, pet food and litter. Buy them to the same duration as the food. These are the items that stores run short of first and that a household cannot improvise well.
You do not need to buy anything for this step if your normal shopping keeps these weeks deep already. Many households do without realizing it.
A small amount of cash, in small bills
Ready.gov's advice is a small amount of cash at home in a safe place, in small bills, because ATMs and card readers may not work. Enough for a few days of groceries and fuel. This is not a withdrawal of savings, and stocking up never means emptying the account.
You do not need to do anything for this step if that cash is already in the drawer. If the reason you are stocking up is money itself, household savings is the page that protects the rest of it.
The other list
Do not buy this yet
Every purchase should answer one question: what household problem does this solve? If you cannot answer it in a sentence, leave it on the shelf. These are the items most often bought in a hurry and least often used.
A generator, until you know what it needs to run and where it can go
CDC's rule is never inside a home or garage, even with doors and windows open, and more than 20 feet from any window, door, or vent. A household with no safe place to run one has no use for one. Size it on a calm day with the power needs calculator and the generator guide.
Freeze-dried buckets, until two weeks of ordinary food is on the shelf
Expensive per calorie, unfamiliar to eat, and dependent on water and heat you may not have. A deeper pantry of food you already cook does the same job for a fraction of the cost and gets eaten either way.
Pallets of bottled water, until you have thought about weight and space
Water weighs about eight pounds a gallon. A month for four people is more than a thousand pounds. Past two weeks, the answer is containers, a source, and treatment, not more cases in the hallway.
A large power station, when the job is a phone and a lamp
Match the battery to the load. Most households' real need in an outage is phones, a light, and possibly one medical device. Portable power stations explains how to size one when you are ready.
Fuel to store indoors
Gasoline, propane cylinders, and charcoal do not belong in living space. Fuel is a system decision with its own safety rules, covered in propane basics and the Energy section. Decide it with time, not in a checkout line.
Anything labeled as essential by someone selling it
The test is the household problem it solves, not the word on the box. If the answer is a scenario rather than a need, it can wait.
If you rent or live small
Apartments stock up differently
A house lets you store more. An apartment requires you to plan better. The buying order above still holds, but the quantities are bounded by space, floor loading, and a building you do not control. Density, rotation, and the ability to leave matter more than volume.
One rule is absolute in a small space. No charcoal grill, camp stove, or generator inside an apartment, hallway, stairwell, or any enclosed space. CDC's guidance is never to burn charcoal indoors, never to use a portable gas camp stove indoors, and never to run a generator inside a home or garage. The answer to an outage cannot be a carbon monoxide emergency.
Preparedness in an apartment
The hub: what the tenant controls, what the building controls, and how to plan around it.
Small-space storage
Where supplies can actually go in a 900-square-foot home.
Apartment water storage
Weight, leaks, and a realistic reserve for an upper floor.
No-cook meals
Eating well when the stove is off and the grill is not an option.
Step four
Know when you are done, then stop
You have enough for the duration you chose when your household can drink, eat, take its medications, see at night, charge a phone, stay clean, and pay for a few days of essentials in cash. Check those seven against the inventory. If they hold, you are finished, and buying more adds cost and storage problems faster than it adds safety.
Then spend an hour turning groceries into preparedness. Group food by type. Put dates where you can see them. Use the oldest first, so the reserve becomes the pantry you cook from rather than a pile you forget. Write down where everything is and tell the household. Put whatever money is left back into savings, where it covers the problem you did not predict.
Food rotation
First in, first out, and how to make it a habit rather than a chore.
Meal planning
Build menus from what you stored, so it gets eaten.
How to prepare without wasting money
The longer version of every rule on this page.
Household savings
Where the rest of the money goes, and why that is preparedness too.
Where to go next
If your situation is more specific than this
If the disruption is already underway rather than expected, the Help gateway has the action plans: Grid Down, Financial Collapse, Pandemic, and the hazard plans.
What to buy if you have three days
This page as a schedule, when the disruption has a date.
Something in the news has me worried
Whether to act at all, and the no-regret list.
Feeding the household on less
When the reason you are stocking up is the grocery bill.
Supply interruption checklist
Before, during, and after a shortage, on one page.
Food during disruptions
Cooking, keeping food safe, and stretching what you have.
Water
Storage, sources, and treatment, when the answer stops being bottles.
Last reviewed: September 26, 2026. Water quantities cite CDC; food, medication, radio, and cash guidance cite Ready.gov; generator, charcoal, and camp stove placement cite CDC. This page is not medical or financial advice. Quantities are starting points for an ordinary household and should be adjusted for medical needs, infants, pets, and climate.