My 72 hour kit comes in two deffel bags and one bucket, bag one is supplies and equipment (toiletries, kitchen, flashlight, sanitation, shelter , it weighs 35 pounds. Bag 2 is clothing and sleeping stuff, it weighs about 15 pounds, the bucket has a 3 day supply of food and weighs about 20 pounds. Water is packed in multiple small containers (2 liter seltzer bottles).

My wife has a medical condition that limits her lifting to 20 lbs or less. I need to really cut back on stuff to make that weight limit. Any ideas what I should cut & keep for a family evac kit?

kitchen???? pots pans? upgrade to titanium...

Also would help if you had a list so we can go over it?

Matt

That's a good cut and it will be difficult or costly to reduce the weight without reducing the number of items. This is for 3 or 4 folks, right? And does not include water weight.

Are you trying to get the entire kit to 20lbs? Just to make sure I'm not overlooking the obvious, what is the overall effect if you break your "heavy" bag into two bags, each under 20lbs?

If you're trying to get the entire kit to 20lbs, I do not believe that is feasible. Water (for planning) should be about a gallon/day/person (and that's not a rich ration). Figure 8 x 3 = 24lbs just for one person. 72lbs for 3 and so on...

What fraction of that weight is conventional food? Freeze dried is OK for a few days (I get fat-hungry really quickly) and the retail-packaged portions are a joke for normal sized adult males, but it really drops the weight significantly while retaining some familiarity and acceptable taste and texture.

Like Matt said, I could offer a better opinion for your consideration if you expanded the list some.

Going very far with weight reduction while retaining function is normally an expensive proposition. How about a folding pneumatic-tired cart instead? 300lbs is no big deal in most trafficable terrain with those.

I look forward to seeing what your final weights get down to - this should be fun (for us at least!)

Tom

What are your most likely scenarios? Could wheels be involved? You can pull a lot more than you can carry.

Sue

Combine two of the ideas above - break your kit down into 6 units of 15 pounds each AND have a wheeled cart ( wagon? Handcart?) to pull in car is not available.

We have gone exclusively with the "Wheeled" Backpack design. One for each member of the family and a couple for extra "supplies". Each member can actually handle two packs when rolling or one on the back and one/two rolling. They pack under 20lbs. Leave them in the cars if need be and all members have their own "stuff" and there is backup gear if needed.