15 Emergency Essentials You Don’t Want to Be Without

Plastic Shopping Bags

Don’t discard those plastic shopping bags – save them for an emergency.

If a natural disaster is bad enough to suspend regular garbage pickup for several days, plastic bags with no rips or tears in them are a good way to store used disposable dishes, empty cans, dirty diapers, and other stink-inducing, vermin-attracting forms of garbage until it can be thrown away for good.

Tie each bag shut to keep the stink in and the bugs out.