You don't need to spend a fortune to get through a winter power cut safely. Most of the real risks — a dead phone, no light, a cold house and no easy way to hear what's happening — can be covered for well under £100 with a handful of sensible, no-frills bits. This is the kit we'd buy first if money were tight, and the order we'd buy it in.
The plan is simple: keep a phone alive, put light where your hands are, stay in touch with what the storm is doing, take the chill off, and have drinking water put by in case the mains is affected too. Every pick here is a genuinely cheap, dependable version of the job — nothing luxury, nothing that pretends to run your whole home. Spend the money on the things that matter most and skip the gadgets.
A quick note on honesty: cheaper kit means smaller margins for error. A 10,000mAh power bank tops a phone up two or three times, not indefinitely; a foil blanket is a stop-gap, not a duvet; a wind-up radio needs a minute of cranking now and then. Used sensibly, though, this is a solid first layer of protection that most households can afford in one go.
