When the power goes out after a hurricane, the screens go dark and families are suddenly face to face with nothing but time. Here's everything Florida families have learned about making that time count.
If you've lived in Florida long enough, you know the routine. The storm passes, the sky clears, and then the real waiting begins. Power out. No air conditioning. No internet. No television. Just heat, humidity, and a family looking at you wondering what happens next.
Living in Florida since 1984, we've been through it all. Seven days without power. Two weeks. Once, nearly a month. What we learned is that the first 48 hours are adrenaline — you're cleaning up, checking on neighbors, assessing damage. But by day three, when the physical work is done and the waiting sets in, that's when you need a plan. A deck of cards and a lantern on the kitchen table saved our sanity more than once.
The American Psychological Association identifies loss of routine and boredom as primary contributors to post-disaster anxiety, especially in children. When the screens go dark, families are suddenly forced into something rare in modern life: unstructured time with nowhere to go and nothing to watch.
That can either fall apart — stress, arguments, kids climbing walls — or become something you actually remember warmly. The difference is preparation. Having a box of games ready before hurricane season starts isn't just practical. It's an act of caring for your family's mental health.
Here's what experience teaches you: one deck of cards isn't enough. You need at least three. One deck belongs to the adults — they'll be playing canasta, poker, spades, or cribbage late into the evening after the kids are asleep. One deck belongs to the kids — go fish, war, crazy eights — and it will take a beating. And the third deck is your spare, because cards get lost, cards get bent, cards get sticky in Florida humidity. A single deck shared across a family of four for two weeks will not survive intact.
Waterproof plastic-coated decks are worth the extra dollar or two — they clean up, they shuffle better in humidity, and they last. Buy three before hurricane season and store them sealed in your hurricane kit.
The perfect hurricane game. Easy to learn, complex enough to keep adults engaged for hours. You're building sets and runs — requires just enough thinking to keep your mind off the heat.
Ages 7+ 2–6 playersA Florida staple. Played in pairs, Spades generates the exact right amount of trash talk and teamwork to bond a family under stress. Two-player variant works great too.
Ages 10+ 4 playersIf you have young kids, this is the go-to. Fast rounds, no complex rules to remember, and the laughter comes quickly. Keep a Uno deck in your hurricane kit specifically.
Ages 5+ 2–8 playersFor the little ones under 6. War especially — even a 4-year-old can play it, and it keeps them occupied long enough for the adults to catch a breath.
Ages 4+ 2–4 playersThe grandparents' game that every generation rediscovers after a hurricane. Needs a cribbage board, which you can make from paper. Beautiful game for two players during a long quiet evening.
Ages 10+ 2 playersWhen you want quiet — everyone plays their own hand of solitaire, racing to finish first. Sounds mundane but becomes genuinely competitive at 10pm on night five without power.
Ages 8+ 1–4 playersEvery hurricane prep guide says "get a board game." One board game. That's wrong. Kids get incredibly bored, and a bored kid in 95-degree heat with no air conditioning and no screens is one of the harder situations a parent manages during a long outage. By day three of the same game, no one wants to play it anymore.
Five or six board games isn't overkill — it's the right number. Rotate through them. Monday is Scrabble night. Tuesday is Clue. Wednesday you break out the dominoes. Thursday someone picks. When you have variety, the games stay fresh and kids actually look forward to them instead of groaning. This is experience talking, not theory.
The Florida porch game. Double Six or Double Twelve — Cuban dominoes, Mexican Train, or block. Works for ages 6 to 90, every combination of players. The game that never gets old because the tiles come out different every time.
Ages 6+ 2–8 playersSlow, quiet, satisfying. Perfect for the evening hours when everyone is tired but not sleepy. The lantern illuminates the board perfectly. Junior Scrabble for kids under 10. One of the best thinking games there is — and thinking games are what you want after a stressful day.
Ages 8+ 2–4 playersMystery solving by lantern light — the atmosphere practically writes itself. Kids love the deduction, adults get genuinely competitive. Takes about 45 minutes per game, which is exactly the right unit of evening time when you're managing energy carefully.
Ages 8+ 2–6 playersFive dice and a score pad. Fast, loud, accessible to any age. The tactile element — rolling physical dice, watching them tumble — keeps fidgety kids engaged in a way that card games sometimes don't. Tournament format across multiple rounds fills an entire evening.
Ages 7+ 1–8 playersFast, competitive, self-contained. Each game runs about 20 minutes — exactly right for the 7–14 age group that can't sustain a 2-hour game but needs real engagement. Run a house tournament: winner plays the next challenger. Keeps it going for hours.
Ages 7+ 2 playersA hurricane is the perfect time to teach a kid chess — you have nothing but time, nothing to interrupt you, and the full attention of both players. Checkers for younger kids: fast, zero explanation needed, completely satisfying. One board plays both games.
Ages 6+ 2 playersAnything requiring apps, batteries, or electronics. Games with many small pieces that vanish in low light. Games with complex rules nobody fully remembers — a family arguing over rules in the heat is worse than no game at all. This is also not the week for games that create real competitive anger. Keep it fun.
Storytelling and reading aloud are as old as human beings sitting around a fire. And they still work, completely unchanged, by lantern light in a Florida living room with no power and nowhere to go. There is something genuinely magical about it — adults and children both respond to being read to in a way that almost nothing else provides. Your thinking shifts away from your situation. The stress recedes. You're somewhere else entirely, following characters who have problems very different from a downed power line and a warm refrigerator.
If you have never read aloud to your family as a whole — not just to young children at bedtime, but to everyone — a power outage is the occasion that naturally creates it. Somebody picks up a book, starts reading, and people gather. It does not take long before everyone is listening.
Pick a book everyone can enjoy — adventure, mystery, a classic novel, a collection of short stories. One person reads for 30–45 minutes while everyone else listens. Short story collections work especially well because you finish one in a single sitting. For families who enjoy it, reading aloud by lantern light is one of the most genuinely relaxing things available during a power outage — the mind goes somewhere else, the stress quiets, the room settles.
The library is your prep tool here. Check out 8–10 books of different lengths and genres before hurricane season. Free, no power required, and a good novel by lantern light is hard to beat.
Here's the thing about reading aloud: some people love it and some people genuinely don't, and forcing it on the ones who don't creates friction instead of relief. But the underlying idea — a story playing while you rest in the dark, taking your mind somewhere else entirely — is something almost everyone responds to. That's what audiobooks give you, and if you think ahead before the storm, they're already on your phone and ready to go the moment you need them.
Download them from Audible or Amazon before hurricane season. One per day is a minimum if you have a long outage — personally, 20 to 30 downloaded and ready is not excessive. They are always there, always ready, need nothing but phone battery and earbuds or a small speaker. A good audiobook narrator is as good as a great reader in the same room, and everybody gets to listen to exactly what they want.
Assign one audiobook per evening as the family listening hour. Or let individuals listen independently through earbuds while others play cards. The flexibility is the point.
Before hurricane season: open your Audible or Amazon app, download 20–30 audiobooks across different genres — something for the adults, something for the teenagers, something for the kids, a few thrillers, a few classics, one or two that are genuinely funny. They live on your phone, they take no space in your hurricane kit, and they cost nothing extra if you have an Audible subscription. This is one of the easiest and highest-value hurricane prep steps there is.
One person starts a story with a single sentence. The next person adds one sentence. Keep going around the table. No wrong answers, no wrong directions. By sentence ten you're usually somewhere completely absurd and everyone is laughing. This works from age 4 to 94. Zero materials required. It can go on for hours. And the stories that come out of a family sitting around a lantern after a hurricane — scared, tired, slightly punchy — are sometimes the funniest things that family will ever produce together.
If you have kids in the 8–14 range, the classic flashlight-under-the-chin scary story experience becomes genuinely atmospheric after a hurricane. The power is already out. The neighborhood is dark and quiet. The wind occasionally moves through the trees outside. The conditions for a good scary story couldn't be better if you tried. This is also the age group that benefits most from having something to laugh nervously about — it processes fear by dramatizing it, which is healthy and effective.
One person asks questions from memory — sports, history, pop culture, Florida facts. Everyone writes their answer on a piece of paper. The person who asks the most questions without looking them up wins. This is how every generation entertained themselves before the internet. It still works beautifully.
Someone names a subject — a hurricane, a manatee, your house before the storm, what you wish you were doing right now. Everyone draws it for five minutes, then you compare. No artistic ability required. The worse the drawing the louder the laughter.
Pick a category — animals, foods, cities in Florida, things in the garage, names of people you know. Go through the alphabet. Each person names something in the category that starts with the next letter. Sounds simple. Gets hard fast after the letter Q. Kids love it because they can win.
Here's the real-world evening setup that Florida families have settled on after multiple storms: during the day, when the generator is running, you plug your power banks in and charge them fully. When the generator goes off for the night — either to save fuel or just to let the neighborhood sleep — those charged power banks become your evening power supply. Phones plug in. Tablets plug in. A small Bluetooth speaker runs off one. Kids get an hour of downloaded video before bed. Adults get phone battery for the next day's calls to the insurance company.
The power bank is not a luxury item. It is the bridge between the generator and the morning. Get at least two high-capacity ones — one dedicated to phones, one to tablets and other devices. Keep them both charged before every storm season, not just when a storm is coming.
Three waterproof card decks ($24), one set of dominoes ($12), two 20,000mAh power banks ($60), one rechargeable lantern ($30), one good book for reading aloud ($15) — that is the complete kit. Under $150. Fits in a waterproof bin. Carries a family of five through a month without power.
Popcorn. That's the answer. A simple bag of popcorn kernels costs almost nothing, stores forever without refrigeration, and can be made on a camp stove or gas burner in a covered pot — no microwave required. But here's where it gets good: you don't just shake salt on it and call it done. You season it. You caramelize it. You make it an event.
Pour hot caramel over a fresh batch and let the kids get their fingers in it while it's still warm and sticky. Dust it with cinnamon sugar. Hit it with Old Bay — which is a Florida/Southern classic that most people don't discover until a hurricane forces some creativity. Sprinkle on Cajun seasoning. Mix in some M&Ms for the sweet-and-salty crowd. The popcorn is the same. The seasoning is the whole experience. And when you set a warm bowl of something good-smelling in the center of the card table, the whole atmosphere shifts. It's game night now, not just making do.
All of these store indefinitely and cost almost nothing. Mix them into melted butter or oil right after popping and toss while the kernels are still hot:
A bag of mixed nuts, a bag of dried fruit, a bag of chocolate chips or M&Ms, and a bag of pretzels. Combine in whatever ratio your family likes and store in a sealed container. Trail mix doesn't need refrigeration, keeps for weeks, and is endlessly customizable. The act of mixing it together is itself an activity for kids — give each person a scoop of each ingredient and their own bowl, and let them combine however they want. Everybody's mix is different. Everybody thinks theirs is best.
Rolled oats, peanut butter, honey, mini chocolate chips, and a little vanilla — stir together, roll into balls, set them in a cool spot for an hour. No oven required, no refrigeration needed for a day or two. Kids can make these themselves with minimal supervision, which is the point. The making of the snack is the activity, and the eating of it later is the reward. These taste far better than they have any right to given how simple they are.
Graham crackers, chocolate bars, marshmallows. This is almost too obvious to mention except that it is genuinely magical for children every single time, no matter how many times they've had it. Roasting marshmallows over a camp stove burner or a grill requires some supervision but produces a level of excitement in kids that is completely disproportionate to the simplicity of the snack. It also reliably produces the best mood of the day. Keep graham crackers and marshmallows in your hurricane kit specifically for this.
A jar of peanut butter is one of the most versatile items in a hurricane snack kit. Crackers and peanut butter. Apple slices and peanut butter. Celery and peanut butter. A spoon and peanut butter at 10pm when everyone is restless and hungry. Peanut butter on a banana that you slice and roll in honey and granola. High protein, no refrigeration, universally liked across ages, stores for a year. It is the anchor of the hurricane pantry and it deserves to be.
Keep a sealed bin dedicated to hurricane snacks: popcorn kernels, the full seasoning collection, trail mix ingredients, graham crackers, marshmallows, chocolate bars, peanut butter, honey, rolled oats, dried fruit, nuts, and a good supply of chocolate in whatever form your family prefers. None of this requires refrigeration. All of it stores for months. And when the power goes out and the card table comes out, the snack box comes out with it — and that single act tells your family that this is going to be okay.