ITEM USES FOR THE DOLLAR STORE SURVIVAL KIT
The Dollar Store Survival Kit Blog I did was well received but also brought up a lot of great questions from many of you. I love the interaction from all of you and appreciate your comments. I may not always reply or comment, but I do see them.
Your deep thoughts on the various subjects are why I do this to help everyone learn and become better survivalists. So, I received many good questions about some of the Dollar Store Survival Kit items. I will explain it a bit further here, elaborate on the things, and classify them by the Core 4 of Survival, but some items are multi-use.
Paring Knife is your cutting tool to help with many survival tasks you will encounter, try to get one that\’s as sturdy as you can find.
Shower Curtain is an Outside the box shelter for you. It\’s roughly six ‘ x six’ and can make a nice keep-the-water-off lean-to for you or roofing on a makeshift shelter. It can also be used as a rain poncho, water collection, or as part of a solar still to create water.
50 Ft Paracord has a lot of uses, like helping with shelter building, used as a fishing line with the inner strands, traps, or tying stuff together.
300 Ft Twine Ball also has a lot of uses, like Paracord, but if you cut a small piece off and use your knife to fray it up, it can help in your tinder bundle for starting fires.
Beef Jerky/Cheese Sticks (Bait) mainly grabbed this to start as bait, even though it is food, so once you get something with it, you can now use it to greater nourish yourself and get more bait with it. Sure, you can kick over logs and such, but this gives you a jump start in fishing and trapping.
Waxed Dental Floss is something I used in the Army to sew stuff up with; it is very strong and can be used as a fishing line or for traps as well.
2 Lighters because two are better than one! LOL! Obviously, for fire.
Box of 300 Matches again, always hedge your bets with fire; these are 300 good backups to the lighters. I will place them in the Ziplock bags to stay dry.
Sterno Can is another great item for a few reasons, and NO…we aren’t catering here. LOL! But you could use it to help get a fire going by smearing some of it on your tinder bundle in damper conditions to help it out. If you have an enclosed shelter, it can act like a candle and light the area, as well as warm up the inside temperature of the shelter by between 5 to 10 degrees than it is outside.
Bag of Cotton Balls and Jar of Petroleum Jelly you can use cotton balls alone in your tinder bundle to help with fire by pulling them apart, or better yet, dip them in the petroleum jelly and place them in a Ziplock bag for later use. When you have the cotton balls like this, with petroleum jelly on them, they burn a lot longer like this, almost like a candle.
Altoids Tin and Cotton Bandanna The Altoids tin is a favorite for storing survival items, but more so for making charcloth. You puncture a small hole in the top, and you can place a 1 x 1-inch swath of the cotton bandanna in it; several at once, put it in the fire till smoke rushes out the small hole, and you now have charcloth that lights easily with just a spark to make a fire. The bandanna can be used as a strainer over your water collection cup or bottle to help keep out the floaties. It can be used as a head wrap or face covering.
Sewing Kit Tin, the tin can be used the same as the Altoids tin, but the contents of needles, safety pins, and thread can not only repair and stitch things but can be made into fishing items.
Bag of Paper Clips I grabbed them mainly as makeshift fishing hooks, but let your imagination come up with other uses.
Colored Ziploc Sandwich Bags can help you organize your items for easy finding and keeping. They can keep your items dry. You can even place green vegetation inside them, zip them tight, put them in the sun, and watch the process as it will provide you with fresh drinking water as the sun does its thing. They are small, and larger bags would produce more water collection, but these will do the job, and you have enough to lay out many.
2 Rolls of Electrical Tape are always suitable for sealing, patching, and repairing things and are always handy to have on hand. Two rolls make it go further.
The Candle is mainly used as a light source, wax to seal things up, or a heating source in your shelter.
A flashlight with Batteries is obviously used to light your way!
Scripto Red Marker is a good way to leave messages in a survival situation, and the red color stands out.
28 Oz Metal Tomato Can (Cooking Cup) consumes the contents perhaps in a soup, but after that, it becomes a good cooking cup for you.
Small Metal Tool with Can Opener, Screwdriver, and Cutter is an additional tool for you to use with an extra cutter now!
32 Oz Stainless Steel Water Bottle with Lid a BIG SCORE HERE!!! The water bottle is made of single-walled stainless steel makes it ideal for purifying water by boiling it, and having a lid for it makes it portable for you.
Small Pink Backpack is a great way to store and carry your New Dollar Store Survival Kit. Ok, Pink is not so manly, but hey, it\’s a color that stands out, you won’t lose it in the woods, and it will definitely alert folks that you are there!!! LOL!
You will find many useful survival items at any Dollar Store; if you just think outside the box, keep your eyes open! A good kit needs to cover all your survival needs and be functional. I found putting this together actually a good mental exercise for me and, honestly, a lot of fun. You can think of it as a Survival Kit Scavenger Hunt,\” but in the end, YOU get a Survival Kit on a budget that will work for YOU!
