How to Prepare a Home First-Aid Kit

A first-aid kit is one household item you don't want to be lacking when you need it. There are pre-made kits out there that are perfectly fine as far as their contents, but you can save quite a bit of money by creating one yourself.

1) Start with your general equipment and utensils.

These include a bottle of water, bulb syringe, candles, chemical-activated hot and cool packs, CPR face mask, flashlight, latex gloves, matches, scissors with curved tips, small blanket, small towel (serves as buffer to hot and cool packs), soap, thermometer, and tweezers.

2) Next, you'll need to add a variety of bandages.

Things you'll need in this category include adhesive tape, elastic bandages, roll of gauze, sterile cotton balls, sterile gauze pads, and safety pins for wrap bandages.

3) Third, you're going to need medications and lotions.

These including aspirin, ibuprofen, antacids, antihistamine, decongestant, acetaminophen, sugar or glucose solution, calamine lotion, insect repellent, syrup of ipecac, and sunscreen.

4) Fourth, you'll need antiseptics.

Have a bottle of rubbing alcohol (70%), alcohol wipes, hydrogen peroxide, and insect sting swabs.

5) Last but not least, buy a small notebook

This is to serve as a place to store important contact numbers outside of 9-1-1(such as your family doctor and your local poison control center) and medical information such as allergies and a list of medications anyone in the family is taking. While traveling, keep a similar list near your driver's license as well.

More Tips:

• Be sure to check your kit periodically for anything that expires. Since we all have busy lives, pick specific times of the year such as daylight savings time or when you change out your smoke detector batteries. If you have an opportunity, taking a first-aid/CPR class can be very helpful knowledge as well.
• To save money what my husband and I did for our kits was buy all the needed supplies at once at a wholesale club store, allowing us to create one kit for our house and one for each of our vehicles for slightly more than it costs to buy one pre-made kit retail. By buying in bulk, you can split up a lot of boxed items such as bandages, alcohol wipes, etc.