Cupboard: what to keep so a bad week stays a bad week

A ready cupboard holds three days of basics: drinking water at 2.5 to 3 litres per person per day (GOV.UK Prepare), tinned food you can eat cold with a tin opener, a torch and radio with spare batteries, a charged power bank, and your regular medicines. Most households already own half of it.

Why a cupboard is enough

Most disruption in Britain is ordinary. The power goes off for an evening, a burst main leaves the taps dry, a storm keeps everyone at home for a day. The government’s own Prepare campaign asks every household to keep water, tinned food, a torch, a radio and a power bank — not because anything dramatic is coming, but because these are the things that turn a bad day into a mild inconvenience.

Plenty of the country is partway there. LINK’s Cash Index found 49% of UK adults keep a battery-powered torch and 47% keep tinned goods (LINK Cash Index, published May 2026). The gap is rarely money; it’s just that nobody has put the things in one place and checked the batteries.

Where to start

Start with the UK home emergency kit — three tiers, from a £60 supermarket trip to a full ready home. If you only do one thing today, buy 9 litres of bottled water per person and put it under the stairs. That’s three days at the survival minimum, for less than a coffee each.

Then work down the guides below in order. Each one tells you the standard it meets, what it costs, and when we last checked the facts.

The cupboard rules

• One place, everyone knows it. A box or bag in a cupboard beats supplies scattered round the house.
• Only keep food you’d actually eat. Rotate it at the clocks change, twice a year.
• The torch lives near the door, so you can find it in the dark.
• Check dates twice a year — when the clocks change in March and October.

Changelog

• 26 August 2026 — page created; launch set of cupboard guides published.