We recently had a multi-day power outage. Ugh. It luckily wasn’t so cold we needed to go find a hotel to stay in (or stay overnight with family elsewhere), but it was chilly, inconvenient, and annoying. We have done a lot of preparation for power outages, though, because we often get a handful a year during really windy storms around here. We found ourselves pleasantly surprised with the utility of a couple of things and wanted to share with other folks. Most of these serve two purposes, but work really well in a power outage situation. I’ll describe what we got them for originally and how we use them in a power outage. (PS – we bought all of these on Amazon, and I’m sharing these links as Amazon affiliate links).

Lights
Sure, your phone has a flashlight, but if you’re spending hours without power, it makes a surprising psychological difference to have at least a little light in the room(s) you’re spending time in.

Our first go-to is the fact that our bigger batteries (more details on them below) have decent lights that can be turned on. Point it toward a wall or set it upright and point to the ceiling, and you have enough light to see the room by. And your brain is going to be less stressed. Win.

The other lights we have had for years are high powered, rechargeable LED waist or head lamps. I *love* these, which I got for ultrarunning. The ones we got come in a pack of two, and what I do is deconstruct them and link the two bands together, essentially making one band that has both lights and backlights on them. I point one toward the front, and one to the back. The battery pack and red light part that usually goes on the back is facing the sides. These are really bright, and good enough to wear around my waist when running or walking in the dark, and I don’t use a headlamp with them. So that’s why we had them, and they’re usually the second light source we go to in a power outage. Scott will wear one as a waist lamp or pendant lamp as he moves around. The other thing we realized this time is that you can hang it over a standing lamp and the light reflects off the wall really well (and at height), which is a nice complement to any other lower light sources you have.

Some of our small battery power banks we use for charging phones or little electronic devices have lights, too, that are more similar to your phone’s flashlight. I wouldn’t buy these for the sake of these lights, but it’s handy to know if any of your power banks have lights so you can use them in a power outage, too.

The last set of lights I’ll mention are new in our collection this year. We got them for our pantry, which doesn’t have lights. These are motion sensor lights that trigger when we open our pantry door and stand there looking in the pantry. They flip off after a few seconds in auto mode. They are rechargeable, but we found that they lasted for months on auto without needing recharging. Once we hit the power outage, Scott pulled one out of the pantry and realized it magnetically attaches to the light fixture in our bathroom. There’s four brightness settings, and you can also switch it to stay on. So if you are in the bathroom and using that room, you can switch it to “on” and it’s a great light source, then switch it back off (to motion sensor mode) when you’re done in there. We thought they were so useful that we went ahead and ordered a second set to use in the house and leverage for a future power outage.

Heat

We were lucky this time that it was only 40-50F for most of our power outage. That being said, we did get chilly and it got chillier every day. I tend to run cold anyway and use a heating pad at the foot of my bed normally, so without that…brrrr. We’ve gotten all of these things over the years to make hiking and walking and skiing in the cold and wet more comfy, so like the lights these all have primary uses beyond power outages, but they doubled up nicely to serve us during the outage, too.

(By the way, heating pads have changed since we were kids. I resisted getting another or a new heating pad for about a year. Because the heating pad I had was ~10-15 years old and one of those old style plasticky ones with a blue scratchy fabric cover over it. I hated the plastic. Then I finally looked online and was shocked that they come in different colors – I could get purple! – and sizes and they aren’t plastic anymore. Woohoo! So, I now own multiple heating pads in different colors and sizes. Mentioning that in case anyone else has a historical heating pad and doesn’t know there are better options now! The one I got isn’t listed anymore, but this one looks similar, other than color choice (which might be under a different listing).)

A heated vest is one of the things Scott used the most. We originally chose this one (there are a ton of options from different brands and different styles) because we wanted one that could heat the back as well as the front. This one you can turn on each of those independently, and there are also three different levels of heat. If you’re chilly but don’t want to be bundled up inside in a coat with sleeves, this is a great choice. (I wear it a lot on wet days for outside activities, putting it on under a rain jacket).

The other thing we use a lot and used in the outage to stay warm is fingerless heated gloves. We have big, full finger heated gloves, too, but those are more like bulky ski gloves and don’t work well for me (because I have especially small hands). In fact, we have two sets of full finger heated gloves, because last year we bought a small pair for me to use for cross country skiing…and they were way too big for me. Scott adopted that pair, and we found another pair that was a smidgen smaller. They’re still bulky and make it hard to do anything, but when hiking or skiing in the rain, they’re perfect. Otherwise, when on walks where I want to use my phone or at home in power outages, I like the new fingerless heated gloves we got. Again, if you have small hands like I do, measure your hand and check the measurements on heated gloves (fingerless or full finger) when you order, most of the “small” to “small/medium” or “one size fits all” are huge on me. The ones I got are a little big through the palm and wide on the fingers, but because they’re fingerless, they’re still functional. I’ve actually surprised myself with how often I’ve been wearing them on slightly wet days when heading out for a walk and are on the list of “I can’t believe it took me so long to discover/figure out I should buy these”, just like the modern era heating pads. If you get cold at work and your hands get really cold, these are the kind I would look for. But I also highly recommend them for outdoor activities, too.

Food prep and heating

Speaking of heat, let’s talk food. After multiple days, even if you have available ready to eat food, it gets old. We bought a 12 volt DC hot plate in a zipper bag (check the picture if that description doesn’t make sense) to use on long car trips and for after big hikes and ultramarathons, when I wanted to be able to eat and refuel on a long drive home. It works awesome in the car for things like a frozen dinner or a shallow tupperware container of stew or chili (check the size of your tupperware to make sure it fits; shallow square ones work best in the one I got); but also warming up savory biscuits or sandwiches or scones or leftover pizza. Pretty versatile, and easy to clean even when using between a gluten eater (Scott) and someone with celiac. This is also one of our go-to’s for if we have an extended power outage and want hot food if there’s nothing in the area and we don’t want to or can’t drive to an area with power. Ready to eat canned soup or stew into a tupperware into the hot plate container, and like light in the room…it’s just going to make everything else feel a little less stressful than it would be otherwise.

Battery and batteries and batteries galore

We have two large (250Wh+) power stations, and lots of smaller (5-30Ah / 20-100Wh) power banks. One of the power stations has a working AC inverter, allowing us to power a heating pad for a few hours, recharge the more portable power banks, or keep all of our electronics powered/charging all night. The other used to have an AC inverter, but its cooling fan sounded like a helicopter, so we weren’t too sad when its AC outlet broke. Now we just use its built-in light, its 12V DC auto outlet (e.g. for the hot plate), its USB ports for charging electronics, lights, or smaller power banks, and/or its 12V DC barrel plug outlet to charge the power station whose inverter still works.

The smaller “phone charger” power banks are pretty much interchangeable with the ones you probably already have. Some of them (like the Anker one) support wireless phone charging, and serve nicely as a plugged-in wireless charger until you want to unplug them and take them with you. A couple of the larger ones (like this one, which we recently got) support USB-C PD at high enough wattage to keep my laptop’s battery from draining while I use it, or even (slowly) charge it.

Keeping batteries topped off is a bit of a chore during a long outage. What we found works best with two power stations is:

• Keep a 12VDC to AC inverter in the car, and use it to recharge one of the large power stations at a time (via its AC to 15VDC adapter), and any smaller power banks that you’ve used up (via USB). (You probably don’t want to try to plug in multiple 15VDC adapters at once, or you risk blowing your car’s 12VDC fuse/breaker.)
• Keep the other power station in the house for AC needs, to keep other electronics, lights, and small power banks topped off. When its battery gets low, swap the two power stations.

If you live in a sunnier climate, these kinds of power stations can be recharged via solar panels, but for a Western Washington November windstorm, we didn’t even bother getting our solar panel out of our camping bag. If you plan to use PV, you might want to buy an integrated kit to ensure optimal compatibility between the PV panel and the power station’s charge controller.

Outside of a power outage situation, Scott mostly uses these power stations as range extenders for his e-bike. He has two e-bike batteries, so can take both of those and a power station in the saddle-bags and charge one battery off the power station while using the other one. On a long ride without too much pedal assist, he can fully drain a power station to get an extra ~15mi of range.

Ice and keeping things cold (and safe)

While we are talking about power outages, we’ll share some of what we found works for us in terms of managing our fridge and freezer, too. This is less on the “here’s things you can buy” list and more “here’s information your brain can consider in the future” if you have an extended power outage.

Before the power goes out, we make sure we have lots of frozen ice packs (and/or ice) scattered around your freezer.

When the power goes out:

• Eat ice cream until you’re full. The ice cream will be a lot tastier before it melts.
• Take a hot shower: the hot water won’t stay hot for more than a few hours.
• Put a few of the ice packs in the fridge to keep it cold.
• Leave the fridge door mostly shut. You can quickly grab things out as needed: just don’t stand there with it open deciding what you want to eat. The objective is to keep the temperature from rising too much at once, as it takes a lot longer than normal to cool back down just from ice packs.
• When you’re tired of ice cream and get hungry, eat leftovers, etc. out of the fridge (cold, or heated up on the 12VDC hot plate).

If the power is still going to be out by the time your ice packs melt:

• Drive to a nearby area that still has power, and buy a few bags of ice from a convenience store, Walmart, etc.
• Pour the bagged ice out into gallon ziploc bags: the bags it comes in will leak when it starts to melt.
• Put at least two gallons of ice in the fridge and two gallons in the freezer.

When the power comes back on:

• Check that you still have un-melted ice in both the fridge and freezer. If not, your remaining food may not be safe. (40F is when bacteria can start to grow, which is why if you’re in doubt, you should toss it out. But if you keep frozen packs frozen… you may not have to toss everything out.)

Electric vehicles as a power assist

We have an EV (a used 2018 Tesla Model 3), and it worked quite well. It can’t power the whole house like an F150 Lightning or a Cybertruck, but with a 12V to AC inverter, can recharge power banks of all sizes, without having to worry about running the battery down or idling the engine to avoid it. The battery lasts for weeks if we don’t drive it, or longer if we leave Sentry off. If we go anywhere, we can charge at our destination or Supercharge on the way. And even with 500k people without power, the nearest powered Supercharger was only a 10m drive from here.

What we wished we had (and didn’t, yet)

The main thing we were missing was having fast enough Internet. We had cell service, so we could hotspot with our phones, but during the day when everyone’s doing that it’s unusably slow for working from the laptop. Zoom still worked via phone, but in order to get any “real work” done, we wanted “real” Internet. This time around, we got that (and hot showers) by driving up to Scott’s parents’ house, where they never lost power. But to be ready for next time, and for back country hikes and long road trips, we ordered a Starlink Mini. It’s a bit pricier than a regular Starlink dish, but is only about the size of a laptop, works off a power bank, and can be easily used in the car. We got the $50/mo 50GB plan, which we can pause and reactivate at any time, paying $50 only for the months we want to use it. We’ll likely post an update later once we use it a bit. (If you want a Starlink referral code for either a regular Starlink or a Starlink mini, this referral code gives you one month of free service.)

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TLDR: it’s nice when you have things that can pull double duty in regular life and in power outages. Our list includes a lot of lights; a lot of heating options; batteries galore; and strategies for keeping our food cold or hot as desired.

If you have any favorite double duty tools or solutions we should get, that you love for power outages and other use cases, please comment and describe them so we – and everyone else – can check them out!