I’m always on the lookout for new and useful preparedness products to share with you and at two of the preparedness fairs I have been to recently, there was a particularly interesting product for alternative lighting.
It’s a variety of reusable glowing products made by UVPaqlite. I had to pick up some of what they had to offer to test it out. They have a variety of shapes available. The super light weight Paqlite is a great area lighter. They also have a heavier duty mat, a variety of tubes and sticks, O-shaped necklaces, nightlights, and sticky dots.
How it works
The Paqlite products work by absorbing light from any other light source and then storing and emitting that light. They are reusable indefinitely and they don’t need electricity, batteries, or power of any kind. Just another source of light for about two seconds gets them charged up. Kind of like high powered glow in the dark stickers. Only brighter and shaped differently.
We tested them out at our house. I had the 6″ Tooblite (not pictured), the small Paqlite, a couple of nightlights, one of each color necklace, and a couple of the UVGloSticks. The light isn’t super bright, they will NOT replace your flashlights, but they work great for some ambient light. The kids spun the glosticks and necklaces around and made some pretty cool halos which could be used for signaling in the dark. The GloSticks were bright enough to read by when we put them right next to the page of a book. Here’s a picture that kind of shows the light level. Of course it’s taken with my almost awesome camera, so you don’t get the full light effect in this picture. I was easily able to find the doorknob out of our dark room with the small Paqlite. Click it to enlarge:
And they did retain their glow all night (I was up at 4 am with the baby and they were still going strong) although they were brightest in the first half hour or so after turning out the lights.
At first I thought I would want them to replace some of the glow sticks in my emergency kits, and that would work as long as I remembered to get them out of the dark cavernous belly of the kit so they could charge before I actually needed them. Then I thought I’ll just leave them in the bedrooms by the beds and we’ll always have at least enough light to find where we left our shoes. Then I thought maybe in the car kit. They’d sure keep the children entertained if we’re having to drive after dark. You all with the deep dark pit purses could hook one of the mini tooblites to your keys and they’d never get lost in there again! I’m thinking I need more of these.
One really great use for the sticky dots would be to use them as markers throughout your house. One on each side of a doorway or lining the baseboard of the hall or something like that so if the power ever went out you could easily find your way through your house using your glowing markers. Especially if you happen to be in one of those interior rooms with no windows like the guest bathroom. Sticky dots were, of course, one of the few UVPaqlite products I didn’t bring home. Guess they’re next on the list.
I am pretty impressed with the products from UVPaqlite. They provide a cost effective, durable, reusable, alternative light source that really has a lot of possible uses.
Keep preparing! Angela
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Practical Parsimony says
I don’t need to read, but getting through a doorway is a really good thing, getting through without hurting myself! I was shocked how dark it really was after the tornado took all lights from houses and street lights from us. Heck, I might put one of these on my white car which was invisible to me!!! And, it was in the driveway.