{"id":3563,"date":"2011-08-25T14:00:23","date_gmt":"2011-08-25T20:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/royceeddington.com\/?p=3563"},"modified":"2011-08-25T14:07:49","modified_gmt":"2011-08-25T20:07:49","slug":"finding-batteries-and-flashlights-when-theyre-sold-out-at-walmart-and-target","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/royceeddington.com\/?p=3563","title":{"rendered":"Finding batteries and flashlights when they&#8217;re sold out at WalMart and Target"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Living in the Texas valley has given me firsthand experience with dozens of hurricanes. From the moment they change from a tropical depression to a category 1, it&#8217;s time to get ready for the worst.<\/p>\n<p>Every single time a hurricane heads my way, the WalMart and Target stores throughout the valley quickly sell out of batteries and flashlights.<\/p>\n<p>Seeing bare shelves at a mainstream store was pretty intimidating when I first moved here, but I&#8217;ve since found there&#8217;s plenty of places to go to get flashlights and batteries before a big storm hits.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Hunting and Outdoors stores! This is actually my first stop when a hurricane is coming in because they carry a massive variety of flashlights, lanterns and batteries. (<strong>Cabelas<\/strong>, <strong>Academy<\/strong>)<\/li>\n<li>Hardware stores! Tons of batteries and construction-level flashlights abound! (<strong>Lowe&#8217;s<\/strong>, <strong>Home Depot<\/strong>)<\/li>\n<li>Kids toy stores. Often overlooked, these stores always have lots of batteries and some passable flashlights. (<strong>Toys R Us<\/strong>)<\/li>\n<li>Arts and crafts stores. A seriously overlooked stash of batteries can always be found here, but they carry mediocre flashlights at best. (<strong>Michaels<\/strong>, <strong>Hobby Lobby<\/strong>)<\/li>\n<li>Home accessory stores. They have a massive battery wall, but they&#8217;re usually hidden somewhere in the store among the appliances and bed accessories. (<strong>Bed Bath and Beyond<\/strong>)<\/li>\n<li>Office supply stores. They do have most batteries and they&#8217;re usually on an endcap display near the front of the store so you can run in and run out. (<strong>Staples<\/strong>, <strong>Office Depot<\/strong>, <strong>Office Max<\/strong>)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Radio Shack<\/strong>. Yes, their custom batteries are overpriced and stink on ice, but they usually do have a lot of them.<\/li>\n<li>And finally, &#8220;scent and body&#8221; stores. Places that have soaps and candles and things that smell usually have a wall dedicated specifically to candles. Yes, they&#8217;re all probably going to be scented, but they&#8217;re also all massive glass encased urns of solid wax, they will burn for hours, and these places always have plenty of stock. (<strong>Bath and Body Works<\/strong>, <strong>Yankee Candle<\/strong>, <strong>Williams Sonoma<\/strong> and <strong>Cracker Barrel<\/strong>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you have around $300, though, I highly recommend investing in a generator from Sam&#8217;s, Costo, or one of the home improvement stores in the area. You can get a decent generator in the $300 price range, and with a few gallons of gasoline, you can have actual plug-in power. Fans, microwave ovens, and lamps are awesome to have on when the rest of the city has been dark for over 12 hours. If you do get a generator, be sure to&#8230;<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Get a high-gauge extension cord since the generator will be outside your home and you will need to run an extension cord inside to your home to plug everything into.<\/li>\n<li>Set up the generator BEFORE the storm! There&#8217;s some small things to put together before a generator can be run for the first time, and you definitely don&#8217;t want to be unpacking one of these things in the dark with no A\/C.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Hope this little trivia helps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Living in the Texas valley has given me firsthand experience with dozens of hurricanes. From the moment they change from a tropical depression to a category 1, it&#8217;s time to get ready for the worst. Every single time a hurricane &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/royceeddington.com\/?p=3563\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hurricanes"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pfyw-Vt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/royceeddington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/royceeddington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/royceeddington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royceeddington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royceeddington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3563"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/royceeddington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3567,"href":"https:\/\/royceeddington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563\/revisions\/3567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/royceeddington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royceeddington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royceeddington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}