Is Your Family’s First Aid Kit Ready?

A few weeks ago, my husband asked me if I had a tissue. “Sure,” I said. Of course I had a tissue. I had a backpack full of useful stuff, right? I dug through my bag, rummaging for a tissue underneath discarded grocery lists, schedules, and reminders. Past about twelve pens. Beyond my wallet, a few random toys, crumpled wrappers, receipts, a couple small books, and a collection of brochures we’d picked up over the past several months. Not a tissue in sight.

But aha! There was my trusty first aid kit at the bottom of the bag. Surely…

“What do you have in there, anyway?” My husband asked, curious now about all of the rummaging.

“Hang on,” I said as I unzipped the bag full of last winter’s cough drops, band-aid wrappers, a few unused band-aids (do I get credit for those?), Neosporin, an epi-pen, and a CPR mask. But, alas. No tissue. Not even a used one! (I mean really, what kind of mom doesn’t even have a used tissue in her bag?)

My husband, now having lost complete faith in my preparedness, looked incredulous. “You don’t have a tissue in there with all that other stuff?”

Nope. No tissue. Not one. And a shameful collection of mostly useless “other stuff” that I’d been lugging around for months, the weight of which I’d actually, on occasion, complained about.

This tissue-incident unfortunately occurred at the very beginning of a round of the flu that swept through my family. We were all vaccinated, thankfully, and so we each got a slight variation of relatively mild symptoms. Still, the flu strikes fast. By the time I realized my home supplies were just as depleted as the first aid kit in my backpack, we were full-swing into the illness.

Every winter, I forget how hard it is to rush out to the store when someone is already sick. For one thing, symptoms always seem to strike first in the middle of the night, at bedtime, on Christmas, or in the middle of a snowstorm.

For another thing, I hate having to get a sick kid into the car for supplies. It would be so much better, I always tell myself, if I had a well-stocked kit on hand before the illness struck.

That way, the sick kid could just be resting on the couch, their temperature monitored with a trusty thermometer (unlike mine, which was out of batteries, of course) with a box of tissues, a dose of medicine if needed, a blanket, and a good movie. Not in the car, miserable as we schlep out into a cold morning for supplies.

A Well-Stocked First Aid Kit

What does a well-stocked first aid kit look like? Some people argue that the best first aid kits are those we pack ourselves. Others opt for the fully stocked kits ready for purchase. Every family is different when it comes to health and wellness, so it’s a good idea to know your first aid kit options and prepare in advance.

Whichever option you choose, you can take comfort in knowing that even just having a well-stocked kit available can be a real confidence booster when injury or illness strikes.(1)

Before we begin, it’s important to note that none of the information in this post should be interpreted as medical advice, diagnosis, treatment or a substitute for medical care. If you or a family member have symptoms, it’s important to contact your doctor or nurse advice line for information about how to use first aid supplies appropriately on a case-by-case basis and to find out if the symptoms warrant an appointment or trip to the urgent care or emergency department.

First Aid Training

I also urge you and as many eligible family members as possible to become trained in First Aid. Training in First Aid skills like Stop the Bleed and CPR not only helps to develop skills, but also significantly boosts confidence and willingness to step in when someone needs care.(1,2,3)

And, if you’re wondering if First Aid training is important and effective for kids to learn, the research shows that, happily, it is! Kids and teens do a great job learning (and re-learning) the skills necessary for First Aid and CPR. (3, 4, 5)

Not only that, but research shows that, for school-aged kids and adolescents, training in first aid can actually have a protective effect that helps to prevent injury.(6) It gives kids a sense of awareness as well as agency. Undergoing the training seems to send the message to kids that: Hey, this is your body. Take care of it. That’s your family. Those are your friends. Take care of them, too. You are capable.

In other words, once kids are trained in first aid, they’re aware that they might be the first person to respond if someone gets sick or injured. They will be the ones to act. They can even begin to understand they can help prevent some injuries and illnesses from happening in the first place. It’s incredibly empowering.

Plus, training First Aid skills together as a family can be a great way to kick off your journey into family wellness. The Red Cross offers courses online and in-person, and many local fire departments and community centers will provide first aid and CPR training for free. It could save a life—including yours or that of a loved one.

Homemade Kits

Homemade kits are, of course, fully customizable, including the carrying case. This option has its upsides: full choice in your preferred type of bandages, wraps, gauze, medication, etc. The downside, however, is that sometimes this option can be expensive.

For example, if you want to include single-use, travel-sized triple antibiotic ointment packets in a custom portable first-aid kit, you’ll need to buy a whole bunch of packets (they’re not sold in ones, twos, or threes), and that applies for all of the supplies in your kit. On the flip side, you can re-stock easily when necessary—you just need a larger area to store your extra restocking supplies.

Another consideration for custom kits is the carrying case itself. I sometimes use a zippered makeup pouch as a case for my travel first-aid supplies (I especially like the kind with compartments), and my son makes tiny travel first-aid kits out of mint tins that are perfect for hiking.

Pre-packed First Aid Kits

Pre-packed first-aid kits are great for expediency and to make sure you cover all your bases. You might not think of carrying supplies for treating a burn, for example, if you’ve never encountered a burn. I have a pre-packed kit that came fabulously stocked (while also small enough to easily fit inside my backpack) and even has a pocket-sized wilderness first aid guide.

Having a pre-packed kit also saves you the time of packing, of course, and you can be pretty sure that there’s a good assortment of supplies at the ready for a variety of injuries and mishaps.

On the other hand, a downside of pre-packed first-aid kits is that you’re not really certain what’s in there unless you take measures to find out—beyond scanning the content list at the time of purchase.

If you do decide to go with a pre-packed kit, I recommend you to open it up, take all of the items out, figure out how they’re used, and then put them all back in the kit—in a way that makes sense to you. If, for example, your kit has medications stored on top of band-aids, but you’re pretty sure, based on your own history and activities, that band-aids will be more frequently used, don’t hesitate to swap the order.

Here are a few of my favorite examples of pre-packed kits:

Hart Outdoor Weekend Kit

Adventure Medical Kit Mountain Series Hiker Kit

Rhino Rescue Small First Aid Kit

Hybrid Kits

As a family health and wellness aficionado, my favorite way to build a first-aid kit is by combining custom and pre-packed—I use my favorite parts of a pre-packed kit and supplement with my choice of additional contents.

Always remember, it’s your kit, no matter if it arrived pre-packaged, you built it from scratch, or it’s a combination of both.

Organizing your kit

Whichever type you opt for—fully custom or pre-packed (or hybrid), having a good system for keeping things orderly and serviceable is a must. It’s a bad situation to open up your kit for a band-aid only to be met with a first-aid kit explosion. An overstuffed or disorganized first-aid kit can create an unwanted challenge when you’re trying to find supplies, repack, and simultaneously calm an injured child.

This is where pockets come into play. My current pre-packed kit came with labeled pockets (swoon), but you can easily label the sections, pockets, or pouches of your own custom kit with a permanent marker and some athletic tape. If your kit has no pockets, you can also add tiny ziplock baggies to help organize, like these.

Restocking and Expiration Dates

With any luck, your family will remain injury-free until all of the contents of your kit expire. If you do use your kit, however, you’ll learn quickly that you need to replenish the contents, which of course you’ll immediately do unless you’re like me and you don’t realize how depleted your supplies are until someone asks for a tissue.

When you initially inspect or pack your kit, and again at a regular inspection and restocking date in the future, take note of expiration dates and schedule ahead for future inspections. Assign a restocking and serviceability check date for your future self (six months in the future, perhaps, or just before the first expiration date of an item in your kit—whichever comes first), write that date on a piece of athletic tape, and attach it to the outside of your kit, just like you would for a fire extinguisher.

Home supplies

At home, I have three first-aid baskets, all stored in a single cabinet.

One holds bandaging supplies, like wound wipes, band-aids, ace wraps, triple-antibiotic ointment, moleskin, gauze, and tape.

The second basket holds extra supplies for each of my family members’ everyday carry (EDC) first aid kits, including travel sized triple-antibiotic ointment packets, individually wrapped wound wipes, small blister kits, moleskin squares, athletic tape, and small rolls of gauze.

The third (and highest on the shelves, for safety) holds the items I know I’ll need when someone gets bitten, stung, or sick, including medications, a thermometer, itch cream, chapstick, and, of course… tissues.

References

1. Andrade EG, Hayes JM, Punch LJ. Stop the bleed: The impact of trauma first aid kits on post-training confidence among community members and Medical Professionals. The American Journal of Surgery. 2020;220(1):245-248. doi:10.1016/j.amjsurg.2019.11.028

2. Consunji R, Mekkodathil A, Abdelrahman H, et al. Can “STOP THE BLEED” training courses for laypersons improve hemorrhage control knowledge, skills, and attitudes? A systematic review. European Journal of Trauma and Emergency Surgery. 2024;50(6):2775-2798. doi:10.1007/s00068-023-02422-6

3. Ko J-S, Kim S-R, Cho B-J. The effect of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) education on the CPR Knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, and confidence in performing CPR among elementary school students in Korea. Healthcare. 2023;11(14):2047. doi:10.3390/healthcare11142047

4. Onbasilar U, von Groote T, Brülle R, et al. Skill retention after school-based CPR Training – a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Public Health. 2025;25(1). doi:10.1186/s12889-025-25024-w

5. Zenani NE, Bello B, Molekodi M, Useh U. Effectiveness of school-based CPR training among adolescents to enhance knowledge and skills in CPR: A systematic review. Curationis. 2022;45(1). doi:10.4102/curationis.v45i1.2325

6. Reveruzzi B, Buckley L, Sheehan M. School‐based First Aid Training Programs: A Systematic Review. Journal of School Health. 2016;86(4):266-272. doi:10.1111/josh.12373