How to Build Your Emergency Binder

—Why do I need an Emergency Binder?—

Right. The most obvious reason is in case of an emergency. Typically you want this binder quick to grab, and stored by your 72-hour kit (bug-out bag). If you have to evacuate, you can hold all of your family’s phone numbers, financial information, and medical information to help if there is a medical emergency.

Emergency Reasons:

Stolen identity– This allows you quick information on all the cards you have, and their phone numbers so you can quickly call and cancel them as quickly as possible.
Kidnapping-I really hope this NEVER happens to anyone! But, in case it does, there is a Child ID kit in your emergency binder… you can use that to give the cops right away when you are frazzled and in a daze with what’s happening. This allows you to give them ALL The important information they NEED to help your child the best and FASTEST way possible.
Medical Emergency– When I have to take my kid the emergency room, they want to know all their medical history… and with 3 kids… sometimes I can get confused and forget who’s allergic to what, and when surgeries happened. (My children are younger, and wouldn’t know). Also, you may not be psychological with it if you just escaped a burning fire and need to provide that.
Proving who you are after a disaster and photos to help find missing family members
Phone and policy numbers so you are able to call and get the benefits you need.
Replacing your important documents that may have been ruined in your home.

Non-Emergency Reasons:

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—How to build your Emergency Binder Steps 1-5—

1. Gather your materials

The first step is to find a binder. 3 Ring binders work the best. You may choose a bright red color so you know which one it is, or your might choose a plain-colored one to blend in with others. Either way, grab a binder.
Find some sheet protectors, or order some from Amazon… They have a large variety and I love prime shipping in 2 days!
Find or buy an electronic storage device (This SanDisk Ultra 32GB micro is what we bought from Amazon… It would allow us to input that card into our phone to look at information). The size you want will vary on how many personal property pictures, tax returns, credit reports, etc you may have.
Print off the emergency binder printable

2. Print off the checklist (page 3) and start making a “need to copy” list

Print off the checklist of all the documents you’ll need.
Cross off the ones you have, and don’t need copies of.
Put a * by the ones you’ll need to make copies of.
Put a X by the ones you’ll need to spend time digging around finding
Last but not least, put a D by the ones you’ll just keep a “digital” file of

Start placing the “need to copy” material in a pile. And place the other items you already have by your binder. We’ll get to organizing it later.

3. Email Friends and family template

You’ll want a list of close family and friends’ phone numbers and addresses to keep in contact. For those of you who don’t have their address, copy and paste the text below to help them understand what you need and why.

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—How to Build your Emergency Binder Steps 6-10—

6. Take photos

It’s time to grab your phone, or camera, and start taking photos of everything in your house. Here are some tips:

Start with one room at a time
Kitchen- open up a cabinet or drawer, and take a photo of everything in that cabinet or drawer (if there is stuff hidden behind items, try to slide stuff around so you can see it all). Also, be sure to take photos of all appliances.
Dining Room- photo of your table and chairs, decorations and anything else in there.
Bathrooms- be sure to get photos of the upgraded vanities, toilets, showers, etc.
Bedrooms- include all of your furniture. We store tons under our beds, so be sure to photograph whats in those bins.
And finally, the closets and hallways- the best way is to snap one or two photos of all of the clothing hanging up, and then another of everything on the shelves or floor.

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7. Download and Organize the Photos

Now, it’s time to organize them. This shouldn’t take long since you went room by room. So, first, you need to download all the photos to your computer, and put them onto your Emergency Binder Storage Device. The best way to organize photos is to…

Have a file labeled “photos”.
Create a file inside that for “possessions”.
Next create more folders inside that labeled for each room.
Now, drag all your kitchen folders into the kitchen file, bath room photos into the bathroom file, and so forth until you’ve organized each of them.
If you want to create a specific folder for each family member, that might be a good idea too. You can update the photos by adding toys from birthday and Christmas into each “personal” folder.
Finally, create a “family” photo folder and add in some recent pictures of your family.

8. Finish filling out your family contact page

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—How to Build your Emergency Binder Steps 11-15—

11. Start with the emergency information

Start by filling out the items below and later we’ll work on the rest.:

Evacuation checklist- Here is a great read for more info about how to be ready for an evacuation.
Family meeting spots
Emergency numbers- most of this information you should be able to find local numbers from the internet
Family contact- hopefully you’ve been able to get most of this information from the past few weeks.

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—Finishing up How to Build your Emergency Binder Steps 16-20—

16. Get everything together

Grab that checklist you filled out and organized in the very first post. Gather all of your copied documents and the other documents you have. Grab your binder, sheet protectors, and Emergency Binder Storage Device.

17. Emergency and Personal Information

Place these pages in sheet protectors in your binder. This is the order I recommend, but you may choose to put it in any order you would like.

Evacuation Checklist
Family Meeting Spots
Map of your City
Emergency Numbers
Family Contact
Personal Information for EACH MEMBER, ID kit, and copies of important documents listed
Personal Info Cont. and copies of important documents listed

Lastly, it may be a good idea to keep your Adult and Child ID Kits at the very front of your binder. These are great for quick grabs and references in case someone gets lost.

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In case you missed the other steps, here they are:

Why do I need an Emergency Binder? (published Jan 1, 2018)

How to Build Your Emergency Binder Step 1 (published Jan 8, 2018)

How to Build your Emergency Binder Step 2 (published Jan 15, 2018)

How to Build your Emergency Binder Step 3 (published Jan 22, 2018)

How to Build your Emergency Binder Step 4(published Jan 29, 2018)