One of the main hallmarks of any sort of disaster, no matter how small, is that something tends to hurt. This doesn’t have to be an earthquake with broken bones, either. Consider the following examples and see which you think might be a “disaster".”

It is 2am, and your 6 year old daughter appears in the door of your room, with blood flowing freely out of her nose crying, because she got her third bloody nose this week, and it won’t stop. You take her hand and guide her to the bathroom, as you try not to wake up your spouse who has a huge meeting tomorrow, only to find that your daughter has already been in the bathroom trying to “fix it” and there is bloody toilet paper all over the place, and your nice white towels aren’t so white any more.
You are at a pool party about 10 miles from your house with several families from your kids’ school. Your son climbs out of the pool, and lays in the nice warm grass, rolling around. He loves it, because you have no grass at your house (this is California, who has GRASS?). After a few minutes, your son runs up to you with panic in his eyes, itching like crazy, because he has a mild (but red and itchy looking!) rash. Who knew he was going to get hives from grass? Or is it from the chlorine in the pool?

Are those “disasters?” For me, they are. For me, the thought of not having a solution at hand to my daughter’s bloody nose, or some Benadryl I keep in the glovebox to fix my son’s rash always makes me worry. Was anyone gonna die? Did I stop a terror attack, or save anyone from a falling building in an earthquake? Of course not. But being prepared for the little, common stuff is as important in many cases as the “big stuff”. Plus, even in a big disasters, kids still get blisters and get boo-boos on their fingers. Adults still slip with the screwdriver trying to pry open paint. Pets still decide to make friends with a porcupine. Just because the emergency is big doesn’t mean the injury will be.

So let’s talk about First-Aid kits.

NOTE: When I first wrote this Topic, I sort of rambled. I didn’t have a full appreciation of how far reaching this whole First Aid kit thing is, and I (foolishly) attempted to write it all in one big topic. I am changing the way I write that, and am editing this topic to be about my personal (big) First Aid kit. I am working on updating this topic right now. (March 7, 2023)

There are many types of First Aid kits

A First Aid kit you stick under the kitchen sink will be quite different from one you wear as a combat marine. Those will be different for one you take hiking, or keep in the trunk of your car. I believe that you really cannot have too many, and that the right first aid kit at the right time can mean life and death.

I am not here to tell you what to do or what to buy. As I first wrote this topic, I thought I could make some sort of list, and cover everything. As I wrote (and wrote and wrote), I realized that’s impossible. You need to consider different first aid needs for different use cases.

So for this topic, I am going to cover how I went about building my “main” first aid kit. But to be clear, there are other types, which I will link to over time.

First Aid Kit for Home (big, not portable, and probably looks like your kitchen cabinet, or a bathroom closet)
Big, super kit. For when you have space and will be FAR from home for a long time and you know it (like a week long offroad trip in a 4x4 vehicle.
A First Aid Kit for the trunk of your car. See the Topic I wrote on Preparing the Trunk of your car!
First Aid kit for kids- Check out the topic I wrote on this: Give your kids a REAL first aid kit.
An EDC First Aid Kit (comes with you everywhere in your laptop bag or backpack) EDC = Every Day Carry
A medium sized, “do it all” kit. Might come in the trunk, but could get carried if you were bugging out.

I am going to focus on that last one here primarily in this topic, but there’s a lot to think about when designing a kit.

Things to Think About when Designing your own First Aid Kit

Making first aid kits is an absolute art. No matter how many I have made, I am always missing something I want. Pre-made first aid kits are solid starts, but I will give you three things to think about:

If you don’t customize it by adding stuff that is specific to your family (or you, or your activities), they don’t help that much. For us, an example of this is BENADRYL. My son is allergic to… lots. We go through Benadryl by the gallon. So having a first aid kit without Benadryl is dumb (for us). And the pre-fab ones don’t have it. Also, most Benadryl comes in liquid form, which is heavy. So I always use the Children’s Tablets (which are kinda hard to find).
Unless you pay a lot of attention, you will not REPLACE stuff you used from the kit when you use it, and you won’t have it next time. And this is a much worse problem than you might think, because you tend to always use the same stuff again and again. Luckily, there’s a good solution to this from My Medic, but as long as you pay attention, it doesn’t have to be those MOD things.
If you don’t know what’s in the kit, you won’t know how to use it.
Don’t put stuff in there you don’t know how to (or won’t) use. Some people have crazy kits with Chest Seals or insane combat tourniquets. If you can’t (or won’t) use that stuff, skip it.
There is a BIG difference between your home first aid kit, and what goes in a “Bug Out Bag” (or the trunk, etc). Most of this page is talking about general kits (as I explained). You will need to prioritize a lot in a bugout bag if you build one.

I am not a doctor, and none of this is medical advice. I cannot prescribe medicine, and am not an army medic or anything. I have taken a LOT of first aid classes, some wilderness first aid and the like, but I am not a substitute for a real doctor. And all of the walkthrough on this topic would look a lot different if you had advanced medical training vs. someone who is uncomfortable pulling a splinter.

NOTE: It is important to know that you can almost always use your Healthcare FSA (Flexible Spending Account) if you have one at your company to pay for First Aid Supplies. Basically everything on this page that I bought, I bought using an FSA. Some years I had some money left over, and I added things to my First Aid stockpile with that money. I will write a separate topic on this at some point, most likely.

What I built for myself (Medium Sized “Do it All”)

I have a LOT of first aid kits. I have a huge Pelican case with a ton of things in it that I take when I travel off road in my truck. I have first aid kits in the trunks of my cars. I have a small EDC first aid kit I keep with me when I go to the office. But the backbone of my first aid game is the kit I am going to show you below. This is slightly too big for daily carry, but I have one of these hanging next to my go bags, and this is what would come with me if we had to vacate our home. It comes on ski trips, where we might get stuck. It comes on roadtrips. It comes any time we will be “out of range” of easy care. So I think this serves as a nice example of how to build a first aid kit. you might think of this as overkill (and it might be), but I will walk you through it.

My first aid kit on my coffee table. That is a little longer than 14 inches, about 8 inches wide, and about 6-7 inches “thick”. Not a small one, but not ridiculous, either.

As you can see, it is a reasonable size. and I have a fancy set of EMT shears on the outside. This kit (the red one) is what My Medic calls a MYFAK Large. “My First Aid Kit”. The red one above is one I bought a few years ago, and the bag style is an older style. Here’s a picture of a newer version of that in black (the black one is the one that goes in the trunk for car we take to the mountains when there’s a chance of getting snowed in somewhere in the Sierra Nevada). The Tan one on the left is an example of My Medic’s Wound Closure Kit. Which is less of a first aid kit, and more of a set of tools.

You can also see the black one nestled in the back of our station wagon above. Again with the wound closure kit for scale. You can see that the black one and the tan one are the newer design, and the red one is an older velcro style. Both have the same stuff, and fit the same amount of stuff.

Here’s an “exploded” view of my kit, first with only the stuff that came with it (I think… sometimes it isn’t perfect over time).

And here are the things I added (on the left in the picture).

My Medic First Aid Kit MYFAK Large with extras

Now, as you can see, there’s a LOT here. This is a very comprehensive kit. One of the bummers about First Aid kits is frankly that bandages and gauze (which you need a LOT of) take up a ton of space. And when you add tape, COBAN, and things like ice packs, the packs can get hefty.

My Medic (which is the base of my kit) makes two versions of their Large MYFAK.

The STANDARD - The base kit with most of what you need
The PRO - Adds things like a tourniquet, Quick Clot, more tools, and a bunch of other stuff. Basically the more high dollar items. You can start with the base and add on to get to the Pro if you like. THe bag is the same though

I started (the red kit) with the PRO. You can easily get a visual explanation of what all that stuff is in the kit by looking at the My Medic site, so let me focus on the stuff I thought was important to add to my kit. Here’s a more zoomed in picture.

Stuff I added to my kit base First Aid kit!

OK, so let’s go in order from the top left to the bottom of that picture. The links will take you to check out a price for each if you like, or to read more about each thing. Some of the stuff like Advil I didn’t link, because I hope you don’t need to have me tell you where to get OTC medicine.

Base Kit = My Medic MYFAK Large Pro
A Pulse Oximeter - That one happens to be a Braun model, but there are many types
Quick Clot
3M brand Coban - this is that brownish roll of tape. It is used to wrap around to itself, and to be able to unwrap. There’s no adhesive, but it sticks to itself. VERY good for bandaging over gauze or Quick Clot. The idea is you can get the desired level of compression.
Crystal Light Drink Mix with Caffeine
Blood Stop - These are smaller versions of the same stuff as Quick Clot. Good for smaller cuts (like on kids) and you can put it under a band-aid, and it is less expensive than a big sheet of Quick Clot
BleedStop (for bloody noses) - Similar stuff to Quick Clot, but in a foam “stick” to go up your nose.
Goody’s Orange Headache Powder - I get headaches, and this fixes them
More Clean and Prep Mod (I use these a lot)
Medication mod (has tylenol, ibuprofen, and OTC stuff) - You get these from My Medic
Superskin (more than what came in the kit.. notice the red pouch is opened)
Leatherman “Raptor” EMT Shears - These are super cool. Honestly too expensive, and you don’t really need them, but I couldn’t help myself
Splinter Out sterile splinter removal kits. Read more about these below
Uncle Bill’s Sliver Tweezers (in the little tube)
Extra Burn Shield - REALLY good stuff if you get burned. I figure a burn injury is fairly likely in a disaster, so I stock up on these, despite burns being somewhat uncommon in my house normally.
Really nice 50 SPF sunscreen
Bonine (the little tablets) - Motion sickness pills
Eye drops (I like Systane Gel, and I showed the box)
Advil - Two tubes full
Tylenol (the little purple tube is Acetaminophen)
Pedialyte Drink Mix. There are hydration mods included with the My Medic kit, but I like these for kids)
ChapStik and Vaseline Lip Balm
Polysporin (we use this a lot, so I don’t always use the little individual packets for a heavier kit)
Benadryl (somehow not shown here, but it is in there. Adult and Children’s)
Sting Kill (also not shown, but important for our family)
Tick Removal kit (not shown, it is in one of those pouches)

So let’s work through why I include each of these things.

A Pulse-Oximeter

A Pulse Oximeter is one of those things they stick on your finger when you go to the ER (Emergency Room), or for a checkup. It uses a beam of light on your fingertip to estimate the oxygen saturation in your blood as well as check your pulse. Basically, you can use it to check to make sure your lungs and everything are working well. If you measure it and you have 99% (or 97% etc), then you can be pretty certain you are getting enough oxygen. These became popular in Covid, because it is a way to figure out if your lungs are in trouble, hopefully before you have shortness of breath. I have several of these, and they have given my family additional information, especially when I have a kid who wakes up coughing. Not a substitute for medical care, of course, but it sure helps.

You can also read all about them on the FDA website.

The basic one we use is one like this (I actually have a few different versions. A Braun, an Innovo and a “Zaccurate” but I like this Innovo a lot). It is pretty cheap, takes AAA batteries (two of them), and has a nice little lanyard. You can easily tuck it in to your first aid kit, and it can help with all sorts of “what is going on here” diagnosis. Even if you just use it to get a pulse on someone, it is worth it.

That little guy just goes on the tip of your finger! Easy!

Now, one of the “not to great” things about the Pulse-Ox is that they don’t fit kids very well. They make them for babies (I remember being paranoid about out kids not breathing in the crib) but those are usually things you strap on to infant feet. But they also make them for kid fingers. Same deal as the Innovo one above, but just a little smaller.
Now, those take pulse and measurements “once”. Meaning you have to press the button each time. If you want a fancier one, that is theoretically more accurate AND can read real time, and “monitor” and all that, you can get a more deluxe one. And you can get different sized finger tip things for it, and all that. But the one above works really well, and is way cheaper.

Here is a picture of my son as a hand model showing the Zacurate one in use.

Splinter Removal Tools

My kids (and I) are splinter magnets. Theirs tend to be wooden. Mine tend to be metal (working on cars as a hobby has its downsides). But not having to use the same tweezers that you use for your eyebrows when your daughter comes running up with a splinter sticking out of her hand if worth all the dollars.

People have LOTS of personal preferences on Tweezers. You choose your own. And you can get nice ones at the Drug store, honestly. I keep a few sets:

Some basic, sharp tweezers. You probably have some at home, so clean up the ones you like and put them in your kit. Or get some more like that. I don’t really want to recommend one of these.
Some lighted “pointy” ones. These have sharp points for “digging” out splinters. They also have a magnifier and light.
Tick Kit - I hate ticks, but we have a dog, so we get them a lot. Having a good tick kit is clutch.
Splinter digger/flicker. These are single use, super sharp tools (they are sterile and wrapped individually) and they work GREAT for splinters.

In my kit, I have (in addition to the basic/nice ones that come with the kit) the following tick removal things:

In the one picture you can see the Tick Removal set (with instructions!) and in the other, you can see the small Uncle Bill’s Sliver Gripper as well as the Splinter Out. The pack of Splinter Outs comes with a few of those metal things, packed in sterile packs, and you can use them to lift the end of a splinter out, so you can grab it. They work magically well, and I strongly recommend them. They are super sharp though, so not a thing for a kids first aid pack.

Tick Removal Kit (Check price HERE)
Uncle Bill’s Sliver Gripper (Check price HERE)
Splinter Out set (Check price HERE)

I really hope you never have to use a Tick Removal tool, by the way. Ticks seem to especially love my wife, and we go hiking with our dog in a lot of places that have tons of ticks. They are horrible little animals.

Some good Medical Scissors

Look, most pre-fab first aid kits include medical scissors (I think the real term is "EMT Shears”). They do not have to be fancy AT ALL. Just sharp and easy to cut with. the vast majority of the kits from MyMedic have nice ones like this.

These are less than 3 DOLLARS and work very well. No need to get crazy. If you DO want to get crazy, I will admit to having treated myself to THESE bad boys. The Leatherman Raptor. They are cool because they have a sheath, and have a bunch of other tools (including a very nice “ring cutter” for getting rings off swollen fingers that I am glad I have never had to use!). If you are treating yourself, shop around a little on that one. The price varies widely. MyMedic has them too. Check out below for a picture of mine, and I even made a little stop motion GIF showing how you take them out of the sheath, and flip them open. The sheath works for the shears both open and closed, and they have a glass breaker, a seatbelt cutter, a ring cutter, and more. They are SUPER nice, but also kind of overkill.

Give your kids a (real) first aid kit

NOTE: When I originally wrote this Topic, I included the kid first aid kit topic in here. I have since realized that doesn’t make sense, and I should have made it its own topic. Which I have since done. So click the URL above to be taken to my thoughts on “Giving your kids a real first aid kit!”

First Aid Kits - Intro