What breaks first, and what to have in the cupboard for it

Power cuts

Short power cuts are common, and most winters a storm leaves some homes without power for a day or more. Here is what tends to happen, in order, in a modern house.

Hour 0 to 2

Lights, Wi-Fi, the oven, the induction hob and the heating pump all stop, including gas central heating, because the controls are electric. Ring 105 (free) or check the network's live map; it will give you an estimated restoration time. Find the torches. Don't open the fridge or freezer: a closed freezer holds safe for about 24 hours, a full one for 48.

Hour 2 to 8

Phones drop below 50%. Mobile masts have backup batteries measured in hours, so the signal may fade. The house starts to cool. Children get bored and anxious in the dark; this is the moment the lantern, the cards and the hot chocolate from the camping stove earn their money. Any digital landline is already dead.

Day 1 to 3

The freezer is now a problem; cook or bin. Cash matters because the local shop's card machine is down too, if it's open. Anyone on the Priority Services Register gets a welfare call. Cold becomes a risk for babies and older people; see keeping one room warm. If you have a petrol generator, the rules are: outside, ten metres from windows, never in a garage. Carbon monoxide killed people doing exactly that in Spain in 2025.

• Lantern, head torches, charged power bank, wind-up radio: the four basics for a power cut. All on the start here list.
• A plug-in light that comes on automatically when the power fails, on the landing. So you're not on the stairs in the dark looking for a torch.NiteSafe plug-in light that comes on in a power cut ad
• Camping stove, gas, CO alarm. Hot food and hot water bottles. Window open.GREEN HAVEN camping stove + 4 butane in my kit adorCampingaz Camp Bistro 3 (CP250) adorCampingaz Camping Chef 2-burner ad
• Know your network operator and have the 105 number written down. In the south east it's UK Power Networks; elsewhere, enter your postcode at the Energy Networks Association.

When the water goes off

A burst main, a pump failure or a contamination notice. Water companies are obliged to supply bottled water after 12 hours (10 litres per person per day), via collection points in car parks and home delivery for Priority Services customers. That first 12 hours, and the trip to a collection point, is what your stored water is for. The loo will flush once and then stop; the bucket toilet on the start here list is for exactly this.

Full quantities, purification and the bath trick on the water page.

Storms

The Met Office names storms days ahead and the Emergency Alerts system now warns phones in the path. The problems usually come from what the wind does: trees on power lines, roads closed, schools shut, trains stopped. The useful preparation is almost all free and happens the day before.

• Charge everything: phones, power bank, laptop, the children's tablets, the lantern. Fill the car with fuel while the pumps work.
• Fill the 25 L container and the kettle; freeze a few bottles of water. Frozen bottles keep the freezer cold and become drinking water later.25 L food-grade jerry can with tap ador6 × 25 L stackable jerry cans ad
• Bring in the trampoline, the bins, the garden furniture. A trampoline in a 70 mph gust is a projectile.
• Ring your parents and go through their list. The older relatives section has it.
• Agree the school plan: who collects if the school closes early and you're both in London. Write it down with phone numbers.

Floods

The Environment Agency says around 6.3 million homes and businesses in England are in areas at risk of flooding from rivers, the sea or surface water, and its polling found 45% of people had not looked up the flood risk for their home (Environment Agency, 13 October 2025). Checking yours takes five minutes on the Environment Agency's long-term flood risk check. If the answer is "very low" for rivers, sea and surface water, you can stop reading this section and spend the money on a better power bank. If it isn't:

• Sign up for free flood warnings at gov.uk, by phone, text and email. Warnings can be sent to a relative on behalf of someone vulnerable.
• Know how to turn off the gas, electricity and water, and which room is upstairs with the grab bag in it.
• Keep documents in a waterproof pouch upstairs, not in the sideboard.
• Never walk or drive through floodwater. 15 cm (six inches) of moving water can knock an adult over, and 60 cm (two feet) can float a car.
• Floodline is 0345 988 1188, 24 hours.

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Money and paperwork: cash, cheques and printed statements

In the Iberian blackout, card readers, cash machines, contactless payments, tolls and fuel pumps stopped working across two countries within minutes. Most UK outages are far smaller, but the same thing happens to the corner shop's card machine in a local power cut. Three low-tech things keep you able to pay, and to show what you had, until the systems come back.

Keep some cash at home

Be Ready lists cash, a mix of notes and coins, in case electronic payments or cash machines are disrupted. The Bank of England makes the same point: when other systems aren't working, cash is the practical fallback. UK Finance says cash is now 8% of payments, and in LINK's 2026 survey 17% of people said they keep any at home. The government doesn't set an amount, since it depends on what your household needs for essentials; LINK, which runs the UK's cash machine network, suggests about £50 per adult and £25 per child. Keep it in small notes and coins, because a shop with no card machine may also be short of change. Put it in a tin in a drawer and leave it there.

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A cheque book, as a back-up

Cheques haven't gone. Many high-street current accounts still come with a cheque book, or let you order one online or by phone in a few days. Not every account does, though: Lloyds won't send them for basic, savings or youth accounts, and app-only banks such as Monzo don't offer them at all. Be realistic about where a cheque works. Cheques were only 0.2% of UK payments in 2025, and most shops and supermarkets no longer take them. Their use in an outage is paying people who know you, such as a tradesperson, a landlord, a childminder or a club, if cards and bank transfers are down for a while. A cheque still has to clear once the systems are back. Keep the book in the documents pouch, never in the same place as your cards, and never sign a blank one.

Print a bank statement every few months

Every few months, print a recent statement for each account that matters (current account, savings, credit card, mortgage or rent) and put it in the documents pouch with the date on top. If online banking were down for a long time, you'd have a record of what you had and what was due. Your bank keeps its own records, so this is a back-up and a quick reference rather than your only proof. Most banks will post paper statements if you ask. Statements are a gift to fraudsters, so shred the old one when you file the new one, and keep the pouch somewhere sensible. Write your bank's phone number and your account details on the paper numbers list too.

Sources: Be Ready checklist; Bank of England, May 2026; LINK, October 2026; UK Finance Payment Markets 2026; Lloyds and Monzo help pages.

Where it all lives

Keep a grab bag by the front door (documents, cash, torch, radio, power bank, foil blankets, medicines, a change of clothes each, baby things); a kit box in the hall cupboard with the stove, lantern, batteries, first aid and the loo; and the food in the kitchen rotating through normal meals. Details and the mouse problem are in the storage section below.

The four places

Why hard boxes, not bags

Clear, stackable, lidded boxes do four jobs: you can see what's in them, they stack in dead space, they keep damp out, and mice can't chew through them in a night the way they chew through cardboard and bin bags. The Really Useful Box range is easy to find in the UK; the 35 L is the kit box, the 64 L and 84 L are food boxes.

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Mice, rats and moths

From October, rodents move indoors. Anything stored in a garage, shed, loft or outbuilding is at risk, and a mouse can get through a gap the width of a pencil. Inside the house, a few rules cover it:

• Never leave dry food in its supermarket packaging. Paper flour bags, cereal boxes and plastic rice bags are the first things mice find. Decant on the day you shop into airtight tubs, glass jars or a galvanised metal bin with a lid.
• Tins are fine as long as they stay dry, so the seams don't rust.
• Flour can carry weevil eggs: 48 hours in the freezer when you buy it kills them.
• Keep boxes 15 cm off a concrete floor on a shelf or a couple of bricks, and check behind them monthly for droppings or gnawed corners. Bin anything they've touched.
• Pet food left out overnight is a rodent magnet. Lift the dog bowl.

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Damp, heat and light

Ideal is 10 to 15 °C, dark and dry. The airing cupboard is the worst place in the house; the cupboard under the stairs is often the best. Light and heat turn oils rancid and make plastic bottles taste. Damp rusts tins and breeds mould on cardboard. If the only space is a cellar or garage, use sealed boxes, off the floor, and check them more often.

Documents

Copies of passports, birth certificates, insurance, the medicine list, the pet paperwork and a list of account numbers in a waterproof, ideally fireproof, pouch in the grab bag. Photograph them to the cloud as well. Originals in a small fire and water chest if you own one; a biscuit tin upstairs if you don't.

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The six-month check

Do this when the clocks change. Charge the power bank and lantern, test the torches and the CO alarm, rotate the water, swap the children's clothes for the next size, look at every date, replace what you've eaten. It takes about twenty minutes, twice a year, and keeps everything in date and working.