What to put in an emergency binder

What an emergency binder is

It is one folder, paper or digital, with everything someone would need to look after your household if you could not: who to call, what medicines people take, where the policies are, and copies of the documents that are hard to replace. It is not where you keep originals.

The checklist

• ✓Household and contacts: everyone in the home, emergency contacts, an out-of-area contact, doctors, school, work, neighbours.
• ✓Medical information: conditions, medicines and doses, allergies, blood type if known, insurance cards.
• ✓Copies of documents: passports and ID, birth and marriage certificates, wills and powers of attorney, property deeds or your lease, vehicle documents.
• ✓Insurance: policy numbers, insurer phone numbers, and your home inventory.
• ✓Money: which banks and accounts you have and how to reach them. Never write passwords or full card numbers in the binder.
• ✓Home details: where the water, gas and electricity shut-offs are, utility account numbers, and trusted repair contacts.
• ✓Pets: vaccination records, microchip numbers, a recent photo, and the vet's details.
• ✓Your plan: the household emergency plan, meeting places and evacuation routes.

Build it in an hour, in this order

A binder you finish beats a perfect one you never start. If you only have an hour, do it in the order you would need it in a hurry:

1. 1.Contacts, including the out-of-area contact and your doctors.
2. 2.Medicines, doses and allergies for every person.
3. 3.Insurance policy numbers and the insurers' claim lines.
4. 4.Copies of ID for everyone in the household.
5. 5.Everything else, a section at a time, over the following weeks.

What not to put in it

The binder is meant to be grabbed and handed to other people, so treat it as something a stranger might read. Leave out passwords, PINs, full card numbers and security answers. Write down where things are and who to call instead: "the bank is X, the account is in my name, call this number" is enough for someone helping you.

Where to keep it

Keep the binder somewhere you can grab it on the way out, and keep the originals in a fire-resistant box or a safe deposit box. A scanned copy in secure cloud storage means you can still reach everything if the binder is lost.

Tell one person you trust where it is. A binder only you can find is half as useful.

Make a short one for whoever looks after your home

A babysitter, a house-sitter or a relative caring for an older parent needs a smaller version: who lives there, medicines and allergies, the doctor, the vet, where the shut-offs are, and who to call. A single page by the fridge covers most of it.

Keep it current

Review it twice a year, when the clocks change or when you check your go bags. Update medicines, phone numbers and policy details, and replace anything that has expired.

From the Stelaah Store

• ✓Disaster Readiness and Home Inventory Kit. A 33-page fillable PDF workbook for household disaster preparedness and an insurance-ready, room-by-room home inventory.
• ✓2027 All-in-One Planner Premium with Life Binder. The 2027 all-in-one hyperlinked digital planner with 80 templates plus a 12-page life binder for emergency, medical, insurance, document, car and pet records.
• ✓Stelaah Lost and Found Memory System. A free Excel lost and found memory system with a 2-page PDF: a record of where important objects, documents, warranties and receipts are kept (never passwords themselves).