Stock up on preparedness items during the post-halloween sales! Get a list of great items to store for emergencies.
Seasonal sales are great times to pick up product that might be useful to you in a preparedness situation. I know it’s not quite halloween yet, but many stores begin doing their sales before halloween even arrives to clear out product. Even if stores in your local area do wait until Nov. 1 to put product on sale, here is a list that you can have in mind beforehand to make the most out of post-halloween sales!
And if you are a family that doesn’t celebrate halloween (like us), don’t turn your head at the selection. More and more stores are expanding their Thanksgiving/fall offerings in this same area and you can take advantage of the same sales. They’ll go on clearance at the same time since they will want to clear out all this product for Christmas.
- Candy – Candy can be a great comfort item and can be stocked in your long-term food storage easily. Even chocolate can be vacuum “canned” to keep it from going bad quickly (or you can freeze it til the next candy-giving occasion to help save some money for your preparedness goals). You’ll just need a jar attachment for your vacuum sealer machine.
- Glow Sticks – These are must-have items. Not only for minor local power outages, but in bug out bags, in your car, in a backpack, for a post-emergency situation, and for long term outages. I prefer a paqlite mini since it can be recharged, but you can’t beat the post halloween sales for glow sticks. (btw…paqlites also come in room sized sheets which you really can’t do with a single glowstick).
- Face Paint – now don’t walk away thinking I’m crazy, but grab a few of the camo makeup kits for kids. It won’t be as good as the real thing, but it would be handy to have, just in case. Be sure to keep an eye out for the spray on hair coloring, too. You may even be able to pick up a few realistic items to help with urban camouflage.
- Lighting – You may be able to find great LED lighting items that would help in a power outage – lanterns, small LED candles for inside of pumpkins, etc. While this would need to also include some long-term storage options for batteries, LED lights last much longer than typical bulbs, so make a great storage option in case. You might be able to find decent flashlights in this section, too. Candles would also be another item that you might be able to find on super clearance. I don’t advocate having candles with scents, and many candles used for holiday decorating are really cheap and burn fast, but you might find some great ones in the decorating sections of large box stores or hobby shops.
- Linens – if you don’t care what your towels and rags look like, this might be a good time to pick up some super cheap linens to keep in your closet.
- Bakeware/Kitchenware – You’ll find storage pieces, bakeware, food, dinnerware and more in many stores. As the season becomes more popular, more becomes avaialble.
- Paper Goods – also another great item to have stockpiled in case water is an issue, paper plates, napkins and cups might be at a great price to pick up to store.
Updated 2015 – I’ve noticed more and more that stores are carrying the small hay bales for decorating probably made of timothy hay. Has anyone read anythingon the safety of growing in these? I’m thinking of the cheap clearance prices they’ll come in and how they’d make good mediums for small plantings and even mushrooms!
Using Sales Cycles to become better PREPared!
What other items can you think of that might be valuable to you?
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Candles!!
I hadn’t thought about candy as a comfort item… hmmm, might have to stock up on that 🙂
We go to know a farmer who grew pumpkins as a side $$ maker, After Halloween the leftover pumpkins were thrown away. He gave us 2 trunk loads for free on Nov. 1, So lots of fresh canned pumpkins & loads & loads of roasted, dried pumpkin seeds. A few seeds even made it into our emergency day packs.
How awesome!
Waste on those pumpkins make great compost too. Just make sure it heats enough to kill the seeds.
Candy could be a great bartering item as well.
That’s true!
I bought packs of fishnet pantyhose from the costume dept. I use them to hang cleaned black walnuts from the rafters in the basement to cure. They’ll also be used for hanging veggies from the garden at some point.
great idea!
I am new at all of this; this post has been mulling around in my head quite a bit–mostly because this girl loves a sale. What about reflective tape & glow in the dark stickers etc. so you can better see/find things in the dark or your trunk. Those carving type knives maybe. My problem is knowing the difference between something really useful item & hoarding junk.
You definitely have to learn to pick your battles. Better knifes would work than the little pumpkin knife (they usually aren’t very sturdy, etc.), and you have to decide if glow in the dark stickers can actually be helpful (usually not great because the effect doesn’t last long or isn’t bright enough or degenerates over time). But keep thinking!
Thanks for this list – a good reminder. Found you from Homestead Barn Hop.
Lea @ http://www.adropofthis.com
Liquid latex, spirit gum, etc…. You may want to look a little more “beat up” on occasion in a disaster. Maybe a unique mark for someone to focus on so they do not remember specifics of how you look. Or to cover up a memorable feature you may have.
Im looking to buy the little tea lights candles like you use to heat food on serving tables. You can use clay flower pots and a loaf pan and make great little heaters for small area . I’ve got my pots ready, it works.
I have a question. I think you published an article about printing articles from the Internet but deleting all the ads and pictures before printing. I hope my memory is correct. Would you re-publish that article? By the way, I have some vision problems and the grayish ink being used her is very hard for me to see. I find that many websites are using a gray or blue ink instead of black and I have so much trouble seeing! It is frustrating!
Thank you for anything you can help me with.
Judy Bohne
Hi, Judy, My posts don’t disappear after a day – they’re always there. https://momwithaprep.com/create-a-printable-pdf/ You can always use the search feature on anyone’s blog to find a post you didn’t bookmark.
I’m sorry you find reading my blog frustrating. I am one who has a hard time with the high-contrast of pure black & white. There are controls on your monitor where you can adjust the contrast on sites that are a little harder for you to read. Give that a try and it will probably help!
I have used those little bales of hay. You don’t want to use them, I know they are cheap after hollowed but they are not worth it. They are full of seeds that can and will grow. I used a couple of them to cover some patches in my yard that I reseeded and I ended up with a blanket of large (not sure what type) seedlings covering the whole area.
Kimberly
Thanks for sharing your experience!
I was going to say something similar. We used large bales of straw left over from a friend’s archery range. It was a nightmare. I don’t know what people do to have success with the straw planting but we had a really hard time just cutting into the bales to make holes for growing the plants. Then we had an infestation of mice. And on top of it, all our plants were up higher than they normally would be so what little grew soon was destroyed by wind and weather. Oh and keeping them wet and together was awful. The whole experience was so terrible that I will never do it again. We just moved our garden instead of trying to make the plot we were using functional (too many rocks/too much clay).
Strings of mini-LED lights are sometimes on sale after Halloween, and definitely after Xmas. These use a very small amount of power and the LEDs last for years. The clear/white lamps provide a surprising amount of light and are especially useful along stairwells and in cellars where a misstep could result in serious injury. The red lamps provide less light but are very useful when you only need a bit of light and wish to preserve your ‘night vision’. Also, dark colors such as purple provide even less light but are still useful along those stairwells etc if you can get by with a tiny bit of light and need to maintain blackout conditions to avoid attracting attention.
When the pricier items (usually $20 to $30) are on sale at 75% off (or more) you might want to pick up some of the motion-activated items that light up and make scary noises when a person walks by. For five bucks or so, these allow you to place intruder alarms near doorways, halls, and stairs inside your shelter at very low cost.
It’s a good idea to stock up on rechargeable NiMH batteries — I have found Rayovac Platinum and also the Eneloop brand to be the best — and a solar battery charger or two so that you can continue to power the motion-activated devices (as well as your flashlights, radio, walkie-talkies, etc) if the grid goes down.
For the person who has difficulty reading the text: Highlight blocks of text by holding down the mouse button and dragging the mouse over the text on these pages…. the text becomes bright white on a black background. Hope this helps.
Best Wishes to all ~ Karl V.
Thanks, Karl — do you regularly find batteries on clearance at any time of the year? I never do!
I am just starting to think about getting prepared. what should I start with? thanks!
Start with an emergency binder to make sure you have all of your important papers together if you have to evacuate for any reason have enough food and water for three-five days for emergencies, a 72 hour kit will get you started for most issues happening today.
I get all the gourds and pumpkin cheap and feed to my chickens. They keep for a good time, nice treat for them during the cold boring winter.
Thanks for your idea!