Build It or Buy It? What Travel Toiletries Really Cost Each Way

By Autumn Lido, Partner and Chief of Operations, Convenience Kits International

A travel toiletry kit is a set of travel-size personal care products packed together in one bag. There are four ways to end up with one, and they do not cost the same. You can buy a kit already assembled, buy travel sizes off a retail shelf and bag them yourself, buy loose components at wholesale and assemble in quantity, or buy refillable bottles once and decant from the full-size products you already own.

One disclosure before the arithmetic starts. Convenience Kits International sells both sides of this decision: assembled kits from $2.50 to $52.00¹, and a bulk pack of loose travel-size components with a six-item minimum and individual pieces from $0.25 to $7.90².

We make money either way. That is exactly why this guide can price both routes without a thumb on the scale, and why it says plainly where building your own wins.

What to Pack for a Trip: What Goes in a Travel Toiletry Kit

The authoritative packing list is not a travel blogger’s list. CDC publishes a travel health kit list and splits it into three groups: documents, medicines and supplies³.

On the supplies side it names:

• Hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol, or antibacterial wipes
• A first-aid kit
• Glasses or contact lenses with solution, plus eye drops
• Insect repellent with DEET or picaridin
• Sunscreen at SPF 15 or higher with UVA and UVB protection

• Earplugs, high-quality masks, and water purification tablets or a filter

  That is the health layer. The everyday layer is what most people picture when they hear travel essentials: shampoo, mouthwash, toothpaste, soap, deodorant, a razor and a comb, all in one bag.

  Two rules shape the whole thing. Every liquid has to be in a container of 3.4 ounces (100 milliliters) or less, riding in one quart-size resealable bag⁴. And CDC advises packing prescriptions "preferably in their original bottle"³, while TSA exempts medically necessary liquids from the size limit altogether⁴.

  Hold onto that second rule. It is the one place where the cheapest route on this page is simply the wrong answer, and we come back to it below.

Why the Question Comes Up Now

More people are running toiletries through a checkpoint than ever. TSA called 2025 a record year and projected 44.3 million travelers through checkpoints between December 19, 2025 and January 4, 2026, with a single-day peak of about 2.86 million on Sunday, December 28⁵.

Bag fees push the same direction. As of April 2026 the first checked bag costs $45 on Delta, United and Southwest, and $39 off-peak or $49 in peak periods on JetBlue⁶.

Avoid that fee both ways and you are flying carry-on only, which means every liquid you own has to clear the 3.4 ounce rule. If you check a bag, none of this applies and full-size bottles are fine. Worth saying out loud, because a lot of packing advice forgets it.

Then there is the failure rate. In a survey of 1,511 Americans conducted in September 2024, Radical Storage found toothbrushes and toothpaste were the most commonly forgotten items at 22%, ahead of electronics chargers at 19.1% and sunscreen at 18.3%⁷.

Respondents forgot an average of two essential items per trip and spent about $53 replacing them⁷. That matches what we hear: toiletries are the thing people forget, vacation or not.⁸

What to Check Before You Decide

Price is not the only axis. Five checks decide this question on other grounds, and four of them are free to verify yourself.

The limit is on the container, not on what is left in it

TSA's carry-on rule caps liquids, gels, aerosols, creams and pastes in containers of 3.4 ounces or less, all fitting inside one quart-size resealable bag, one bag per passenger⁴. The detail people miss: "If your liquids are stored in containers larger than 3.4 ounces, even if only 3.4 ounces remain in the bottles, you can't bring them through security."⁴

A TSA spokesperson's working definition of what counts is the most useful sentence in the whole rule: "if you can spill it, spray it, spread it, pump it, or pour it, then it's a liquid, gel, or aerosol."⁴

Fill the bottle as full as you can

A partly empty bottle leaks more on a plane than a full one, and there is a physical reason. Air trapped above the liquid sits at ground pressure while the cabin does not, so the bottle relieves the difference by pushing liquid out. As the University of Illinois Physics Van puts it, "if there is a very small amount of air, and this air is over-pressured with respect to that of the airplane, then a small amount of liquid leakage will relieve this overpressure"⁹.

More air space, more liquid has to escape before things equalize. Half-filled decanted bottles are the leak case.

Packing for other people is a different job than packing for yourself

Decanting your own shampoo is unregulated. Decanting bulk product into kits you hand to other people is not. Under 21 CFR 701.9, cosmetics shipped for processing, labeling or repacking are exempt from labeling rules only if the shipper operates the establishment, or if a written agreement between shipper and processor specifies the processing standards¹⁰.

Both parties have to keep that agreement "until 2 years after the final shipment or delivery" and produce it for inspection, and the exemption is void if the goods come out adulterated or misbranded¹⁰. This is a check to run, not legal advice. It is also the quiet reason schools, shelters and hotels usually end up with factory-sealed components.

The bag has a specification too

If the kits are going to a shelter or a disaster site, the packaging is not an afterthought. FEMA's 2022 Commonly Used Sheltering Items catalog specifies that hygiene kit components shall be assembled into a small, water-resistant plastic bag with a re-closable zip lock mechanism¹¹.

A paper sack or an open tote does not meet it. Notice that the rule for one traveler and the rule for a shelter shipment land in the same place: a sealed, re-closable bag.

Quality control is a station, not something people do in passing

The International Medical Corps' kitting manual recommends a minimum of 50 volunteers to assemble a minimum of 500 kits, with 30 to 60 people on assembly, 5 to 7 on quality control, and 5 to 10 on boxing and paperwork¹². The QC group's job is to "conduct[] a quality control check on each kit, ensuring each kit is standardized and has the right quantity"¹².

An organization with nothing to sell staffs that function anyway. On our side, quality control happens at three points rather than one: incoming components, assembly, and the seal⁸. Bottles that show any leak are pulled and not used, and there is a further inspection after the kit is assembled and before it is boxed⁸.

The Four Routes, Priced

Every price below was read from a live listing on August 15, 2026, and Convenience Kits prices were rechecked in October 2026. Retail and wholesale prices move, so treat them as a snapshot with the date attached, not as standing prices.

Route 1: A kit somebody already assembled

The range sold by the case to organizations runs¹:

• $2.50 an 8-piece kit, 50 to a case ($125.00 a case)
• $3.25 an 8-piece, 25 a case
• $3.00 an 8-piece, 30 a case
• $3.70 an 8-piece with Dove amenities, 20 a case
• $5.75 a 9-piece, 8 a case
• $6.15 a unisex kit, 12 a case

Always read the per-kit price with its case pack, or the comparison stops being like-for-like.

Consumer kits sell as singles. A 6-piece oral care kit is $6.70, a men's 10-piece is $7.80, a women's 11-piece with Pantene is $8.70, a women's premium 10-piece is $9.95, and the super premium lines top out at $48.00, $49.00 and $52.00¹. Kids and baby kits sit at $8.75 and $8.90¹.

Assembled kits are not only ours. One wholesale supplier published, in August 2026, a 6-piece travel oral care kit and a 7-piece travel hygiene kit at $0.75 each, a 10-piece at $1.25, a 15-piece at $1.55 on sale against a $2.00 regular price, 25-piece kits at $3.25, and a 35-piece at $4.00¹³.

Its outreach kits, which add a backpack, a blanket and socks, run $6.50 for 10 pieces up to $15.00 for 45 pieces¹³. Those are market prices for context, not a ranking.

Route 2: Travel sizes off a retail shelf

This is the route most people default to, and it is the most expensive per ounce by a wide margin. Listed at Target on August 15, 2026¹⁴:

• eos Mini Body Lotion, 2.5 fl oz, $3.99, at Target's own displayed unit price of $1.60 per fluid ounce
• Dove Deep Moisture Mini Body Wash, 3 fl oz, $1.99, at $0.66 per fluid ounce
• Dove Sensitive Skin Moisturizing Mini Bar Soap, 2.6 oz, $1.59, at $0.61 per ounce

Now hold the brand, the product line and the retailer constant, and compare the mini against the full size. eos Shea Better Moisture Body Lotion in Vanilla Cashmere was $9.99 for 16 fl oz, a displayed unit price of $0.62 per fluid ounce, against $1.60 for the mini of the same scent¹⁵. That is about 2.6 times as much per ounce for the same product from the same brand in the same store.

Dove is narrower and moves the same way. The 3 fl oz mini at $0.66 per fluid ounce sits against $0.40 for the 20 fl oz bottle at $7.99 and $0.36 for the 30.6 fl oz pump at $10.99, roughly 1.7 to 1.8 times¹⁵.

Two of the eos minis were running a "Buy 3, get 1 free on select beauty minis" promotion, which would narrow the eos gap if you used it¹⁴.

We just published the number that argues against buying travel sizes. It is true, and per ounce is still the wrong unit for a route you take three times a year.

Route 3: Loose components at wholesale, assembled in quantity

At wholesale, components get startlingly cheap. Published by one wholesale supplier in August 2026, by the case of 100¹³:

Take the cheapest of eight common categories and add them up: $0.10 toothbrush + $0.13 toothpaste + $0.12 bar soap + $0.24 shampoo + $0.26 conditioner + $0.09 deodorant + $0.21 body wash + $0.10 wet wipe = $1.25 a kit in components¹³. That excludes the bag, the freight and the labor. Keep all three in view.

Our own bulk component pack works the same way with named brands attached:

• Fructis Sleek and Shine Conditioner, 1.7 oz, $0.50
• Eucerin Baby Wash and Shampoo, 0.5 oz, $0.53
• Crest 3D Brilliance Toothpaste, 0.85 oz, $1.10
• Barbasol Pivot Twin Blade Razor, $0.75
• Oral-B Indicator Toothbrush, $1.80
• Soap dish, $0.25
• Zip bags, $0.30 to $2.50

The pack takes a minimum of six items². Kits contain name-brand products including Tresemme, Garnier Fructis, Nivea Men, Crest and Persil².

Here is the finding that surprised us when we ran the numbers. At the very bottom of the wholesale market, an assembled kit can list for less than the loose components that would go into it: the same supplier listing roughly $1.25 in cheapest-of-category components also lists assembled 6-piece and 7-piece kits at $0.75, and a 10-piece at $1.25¹³.

Those assembled kits are not built from the components priced above and are likely to use smaller or lower-specification pieces, so it is not a like-for-like swap. It is still a real statement about the category: whoever assembles at scale is buying components at a price a small buyer never sees.

Route 4: Refillable bottles you fill yourself

Decanting is refilling small bottles from the full-size products you already own. Per ounce it is the cheapest route on this page for a repeat traveler, and it removes the packaging entirely.

The route has three hard limits, and they are the reason it is not the answer for everyone. The bottle has to be 3.4 ounces or less and ride in the quart bag⁴, and it should be filled close to full or it will vent in the air⁹. Prescriptions belong in their original bottles³.

Weighing a real order rather than a packing list? Call 800-859-KITS or start on the bulk ordering page, and we will walk the case packs and price breaks with you.

The Line Nobody Puts in the DIY Budget

Every component price list on the internet leaves out labor. Somebody has to open the boxes, count the pieces, fill the bags and seal them.

What a hand packer earns

Packers and packagers who assemble by hand earned a median of $17.44 an hour ($36,280 a year) in 2025, and about 591,800 of them were employed in the United States as of 2024¹⁶.

Their listed tasks are the kit build exactly: "Examine and inspect containers, materials, or products to ensure that product quality and packing specifications are met", "Measure, weigh, and count products and materials", and "Seal containers or materials"¹⁶. Inspecting and counting is part of the job, not an extra.

Volunteer labor is not free labor. It is unpriced labor, and the sector publishes the price: Independent Sector and the Do Good Institute at the University of Maryland put the value of a volunteer hour at $36.14 for 2025, a 3.9% increase over 2024, released April 21, 2026¹⁷.

The method is BLS-based, using "the annual average hourly earnings (non-seasonally adjusted) for all production and non-supervisory workers on private non-farm payrolls", and state values range from $17.99 in Puerto Rico to $54.77 in the District of Columbia¹⁷.

What a real packing day costs per kit

Now put a real event against those wages. On August 19, 2023, 114 volunteers at Clean the World in Orlando built 6,000 hygiene kits within the first hour of a Maui relief kit build, each kit holding "fresh soap, shampoo or conditioner, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and more"¹⁸.

The arithmetic runs both ways, so here are both. At $36.14 a volunteer hour, 114 hours is $4,119.96, which divided across 6,000 kits is about $0.69 of labor per kit. Valued at the median hand-packer wage of $17.44, the same hour is $1,988.16, or about $0.33 per kit.

Read that as a favorable case, not a typical one. It was a large, sponsored, well-organized build in a dedicated facility, running far ahead of the roughly one-volunteer-per-ten-kits planning ratio a national relief organization publishes for a standard event¹². At a more ordinary pace the per-kit labor line is many times higher.

Our own kits are assembled either by a private contract packer or by an agency that employs people with mental and physical disabilities⁸. Both operate under the same quality control steps.

Put the two lines together and the picture changes. Components at $1.25 plus $0.33 to $0.69 in labor at high throughput lands close to the bottom of the assembled range.

At real scale, with a well-run event, the two routes converge. That is the honest headline, and it is a number a program director can check against their own packing day.

What Each Price Tier Actually Buys

Quantity breaks are real but modest. Our published ladder on the unisex 10-piece hygiene kit runs $49.60 a case at 1 to 9 cases, $48.88 at 10 to 49, and $47.44 at 50 or more¹⁹.

The budget 8-piece kit goes $125.00 for one case, $120.00 at 2 to 9, $115.00 at 10 to 49 and $112.50 at 50 or more, with pricing moving to a quote above 100 cases and again above 200¹⁹. That is roughly 4 to 10% across the whole ladder.

The bigger money is in the tier decision, not the quantity break. A kit built from no-name product runs about two to three dollars; a kit built from national brands costs more⁸. Stock kits are produced in batches of 5,000 to 10,000, and that batch size is what makes them cheaper, while a custom kit requires standing up its own production line⁸.

That is also the mechanism behind the counterintuitive finding above: whoever runs 5,000 at a time buys and assembles at a cost the person building 200 by hand cannot reach.

The tier is not only a price. Many nonprofit agencies buy from us specifically because we do not use off-brand product⁸. One nonprofit client asked us to leave out a particular institutional off-brand of toothpaste, because that brand is what recipients were issued during incarceration and in drug rehabilitation, and the smell of it puts them back there⁸.

Ben Lido's framing is that receiving brands they know and trust "gives them greater dignity, that they matter."⁸ For a traveler the same fact reads differently. As I put it when we were talking this through: "having a brand allows you to feel like you're home when you're away."⁸

Buying for a program, a school or a shelter? The Good Work page is the place to start, or read how bulk ordering saves before you price a packing day.

The Bag, the Logo, and the Setup Charge

The container and the branding are separate line items on every route, and DIY budgets almost always price the contents and forget the bag. We list 13 bag styles from $0.30 to $2.50, including an 8x8 zip bag at $0.30 and a 9x12 at $0.34, running up through canvas, vinyl, quilted, pebble-grain and ballistic nylon²⁰.

Custom kits start at 100 kits, with usual processing at "5-7 business days depending on size of order"²⁰.

Two decoration programs, with their minimums, rates and lead times²⁰:

Setup is where the budget goes sideways. A $60.00 screen setup spread over a 500-bag minimum is $0.12 a bag; spread over 5,000 it is about a penny. Add a color change at $20.00 or Pantone (PMS) color matching at $25.00 per color and a small branded run costs far more per unit than the quoted rate suggests²⁰.

What Buyers Get Wrong on Both Sides

1. Valuing a kit by adding up its pieces. Ben Lido: buyers "add up the components and they say, oh this isn't so valuable to me. What they fail to see is that what the customer is looking for is convenience. It's an impulse buy and it has everything all in one package. That's the value."⁸ The federal wage data above is what puts numbers behind that.
2. Assuming a nearly empty full-size bottle will pass. It will not. The rule reads the container's stated size, so a 6 ounce bottle with an inch left in it is still refused⁴.
3. Decanting halfway. Part-filled bottles vent in the air and push liquid out. Fill them as close to full as you can⁹.
4. Buying the liquids and forgetting the bag they have to travel in. TSA wants one quart-size resealable bag per passenger⁴. That is exactly why we put the bag in the kit instead of making the traveler remember it separately⁸.
5. Budgeting the build with labor at zero. Even at the pace of a very large build, the labor line is $0.33 to $0.69 a kit^{16, 17, 18}. At an ordinary volunteer-day pace it is much higher.
6. Buying the cheapest tier without asking what the recipient reads into it. See the toothpaste story above.
7. Shipping everything to one address and redistributing it yourself. Agencies and companies with multiple sites ask us directly: can you drop ship to our different locations, so we are not paying freight into one warehouse and then paying again to move it out⁸. Ask before you build the budget.
8. Pricing a custom build off the per-unit rate and forgetting the setup. Silk screen carries $60.00 per color before a single bag is printed, on a 500-bag minimum²⁰.
9. Treating repacking for other people as unregulated. It is not, and nothing goes wrong at the packing table. It goes wrong later¹⁰.

Which Route Fits Which Buyer

If you travel constantly and pack for yourself: decant. Refillable bottles win on cost per ounce, they cut the packaging, and you already own the products. Keep prescriptions in their original bottles and fill the bottles full.

If you travel a few times a year: buy an assembled travel kit. Per ounce it loses to decanting and it beats a retail travel-size run, but the real comparison at three trips a year is a few dollars against a shopping trip you do not take.

Who doesn't want to save time? If I can get all my toiletries packaged in a convenient pack to grab and go, I prefer that any day over going to individual stores to find the individual travel sizes.⁸

That store point is not a throwaway. Assembling your own means visiting more than one store, because no single store reliably carries every travel size you need in the brands you want⁸. And the bag outlives the trip: I keep several of mine going at once, one for first aid, one for nail products, one for cosmetics⁸.

If you are packing 200 kits for a one-time event: run the packing day. Components at roughly $1.25 plus your own labor will land close to the assembled range, and you also get the volunteers and a room full of people who chose to show up, which a purchase order does not buy. Staff the QC station¹², budget freight in and out, and check the repacking rules if you are decanting bulk product¹⁰.

If you are packing thousands, repeatedly, on a deadline: buy assembled. Batch economics you cannot reach by hand, plus speed. Kits in stock ship within 48 hours and often within 24, and when new kits have to be produced we can build 4,000 to 6,000 in a day, doubling that on two shifts⁸.

After a hurricane, a Florida relief organization needed hygiene kits for an entire community and we shipped 2,000 within 24 hours⁸. That organization has come back for every unexpected emergency since.

If the bag has to carry your logo: custom, with the setup math done before you commit to a quantity.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it cheaper to build your own travel kit or buy one already assembled?

It depends on who you are. For one traveler making one kit, buying travel sizes at retail is the most expensive route per ounce, decanting into refillable bottles is the cheapest, and a pre-assembled kit sits in between and buys back the shopping trip. For anyone making kits in quantity, components look cheaper on paper at about $1.25 until labor is added, and at the bottom of the wholesale market an assembled kit can list for less than its own components¹³.

What should go in a travel toiletry kit?

Start with CDC's travel health kit categories: documents, medicines and supplies, with hand sanitizer at 60% alcohol or more, a first-aid kit, vision supplies, insect repellent, sunscreen at SPF 15 or higher, earplugs and masks³. Add the everyday layer of shampoo, toothpaste, mouthwash, soap, deodorant and a razor. Then apply two constraints: every liquid at 3.4 ounces or less in one quart bag⁴, and prescriptions in their original bottles³.

Do travel-size toiletries cost more than full-size?

Yes, per ounce, and the gap is bigger than most people assume. At Target on August 15, 2026, an eos body lotion mini ran $1.60 per fluid ounce against $0.62 for the 16 fl oz bottle of the same product, roughly 2.6 times, while Dove's mini body wash ran $0.66 per fluid ounce against $0.40 and $0.36 for two full sizes¹⁵. Per ounce is the right unit if you travel constantly, in which case decant, and at three trips a year the difference is a few dollars.

What is the minimum order for custom kits, and what does customizing cost?

Custom kits start at 100 kits²⁰. Decal decoration starts at 50 bags at $0.75 each with setup included; silk screen starts at 500 bags at $60.00 setup per color plus $0.80 per color printed²⁰. Usual processing is 5 to 7 business days, decorated bags run 15 to 20 business days, and a $50.00 rush cuts that to 3 to 6²⁰.

Is a volunteer packing day cheaper than buying assembled kits?

At real scale the two converge. Components at roughly $1.25 plus $0.33 to $0.69 in labor at high throughput lands close to the bottom of the assembled range^{13, 16, 17, 18}.

A packing day also buys things a purchase order cannot: the volunteers, the engagement, the community. It costs coordination, a venue, a staffed QC station¹², and freight into and out of the site. Run it if the day itself has value, not only if the spreadsheet says so.

Does it matter whether the products inside are name brands?

The tier gap is real, roughly two to three dollars for a no-name kit against more for a national-brand kit, and the recipient reads it⁸. One nonprofit client asked us to leave out an institutional off-brand of toothpaste because recipients had been issued that brand during incarceration and rehabilitation⁸. Familiar brands also mean there is nothing to evaluate at the shelf, at home or on the road.

How fast can you get kits if you need them quickly?

Stock kits ship within 48 hours and often within 24, and new production runs 4,000 to 6,000 a day, doubling across two shifts⁸. After a hurricane, a Florida relief organization needed kits for an entire community and we shipped 2,000 within 24 hours⁸. Customization pulls the other way: a decorated run is 15 to 20 business days, or 3 to 6 with the $50.00 rush²⁰.

Start Where Your Answer Landed

Packing for yourself, browse travel kits, hygiene kits or the budget range.

Buying for a school, a shelter, a hotel or a company, order kits in bulk, build a custom travel kit with your logo on the bag, or start from a bulk pack of loose components if you decided to assemble. Call 800-859-KITS or 800-255-5436 to talk through quantities, price breaks, customization, drop shipping and lead times.

What buyers want has not moved in 35+ years: quality, value, and a partner they can count on⁸. Same for one kit or a hundred.

Sources

1. Convenience Kits International product pages (manufacturer), 2026. Per-kit prices, per-case prices, case packs and piece counts across the institutional and consumer kit ranges, read from the live site on 2026-08-15. https://www.conveniencekits.com/products/budget-travel-kits/
2. Convenience Kits International, bulk hygiene product pack (manufacturer), 2026. Six-item pack minimum, the $0.25 to $7.90 component price range, named brands and individual component prices. https://www.conveniencekits.com/bulk-hygiene-pack-custom/
3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Travelers' Health, Pack Smart, 2024 (page last reviewed September 10, 2024). Travel health kit categories, the supplies list, and the guidance to pack prescriptions preferably in their original bottle. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/page/pack-smart
4. AFAR, 2026, reporting TSA's liquids rule. The 3.4 ounce container limit, the quart-bag requirement, the container-capacity basis of the limit, the spokesperson's definition of a liquid, and the exemption for medically necessary liquids. https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-tsas-3-1-1-rule-for-liquids-in-carry-on-luggage
5. Transportation Security Administration press release, distributed via PR Newswire, 2025. Record-year framing, the 44.3 million holiday projection, the December 28 single-day peak, and the quote from TSA Senior Official Adam Stahl. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tsa-prepares-for-holiday-travel-season-to-cap-record-year-302648058.html
6. AFAR, 2026. Checked-bag fee increases at Delta, United, Southwest and JetBlue, with amounts and timing. https://www.afar.com/magazine/united-and-jetblue-airlines-to-raise-baggage-fees
7. Radical Storage packing survey, 2024. Survey of 1,511 Americans fielded September 2024: most commonly forgotten items and their percentages, average items forgotten per trip, and average replacement spend. https://radicalstorage.com/travel/travel-packing-statistics-and-most-forgotten-items/
8. Convenience Kits International, first-party practitioner interview, August 2026. Three-point quality control and leak inspection, who assembles the kits and under what quality control, the quart bag being packed in the kit rather than left to the traveler, batch and custom production economics, brand tier and the institutional off-brand request, Ben Lido on component pricing and dignity, Autumn Lido on saving time and multi-store shopping, Autumn Lido on toiletries being the item travelers forget, on a familiar brand feeling like home, and on reusing the bag after the trip, the multi-site drop-ship question, production and ship times, and the hurricane response.
9. University of Illinois Department of Physics, Physics Van ask-a-scientist, 2026. The mechanism by which trapped ground-pressure air forces liquid out of a partly filled bottle in flight. https://van.physics.illinois.edu/ask/listing/22048
10. 21 CFR 701.9, Exemptions from labeling requirements (Cornell Legal Information Institute), 2026. Conditions on shipping cosmetics for processing, labeling or repacking, the written-agreement requirement, two-year record retention, and the conditions that void the exemption. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/21/701.9
11. FEMA Commonly Used Sheltering Items Catalog, 2022. The specification that hygiene kit components be assembled into a small, water-resistant plastic bag with a re-closable zip lock mechanism. https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema_commonly-used-sheltering-items-catalog.pdf
12. International Medical Corps, kitting manual, 2026. Minimum volunteer and kit counts, station headcounts for assembly, quality control and boxing, and the description of the quality control check. https://internationalmedicalcorps.org/kitting-manual/
13. BagsInBulk wholesale hygiene kits and supplies category, 2026. Published component per-unit prices with case-of-100 quantities, and published assembled-kit and outreach-kit prices by piece count, read on 2026-08-15. https://bagsinbulk.com/collections/hygiene-kits-supplies
14. Target.com product listings, 2026. Travel-size product names, sizes, prices and Target's displayed per-ounce unit prices, read on 2026-08-15, including the "Buy 3, get 1 free on select beauty minis" promotion. https://www.target.com/c/travel-size-toiletries-personal-care/-/N-5xtzd
15. Target.com product listings with Target's own displayed unit pricing, 2026. Paired mini and full-size prices and unit prices for eos body lotion and Dove body wash, read on 2026-08-15. https://www.target.com/s?searchTerm=eos+body+lotion+vanilla+cashmere
16. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics wage and employment data for Packers and Packagers, Hand (SOC 53-7064), as published by O*NET OnLine, 2025. Median hourly and annual wage, national employment, and the occupation's listed tasks. https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/53-7064.00
17. Independent Sector, with the Do Good Institute at the University of Maryland, 2025. The $36.14 value of a volunteer hour, the 3.9% year-over-year change, the April 21, 2026 release date, the BLS-based methodology, and the state range. https://independentsector.org/blog/2026-value-of-volunteer-time-release/
18. The WASH Foundation, 2023. Volunteer count, kit count, one-hour window, date and kit contents for the Clean the World Maui relief kit build of August 19, 2023. https://thewashfoundation.org/disasterresponse/volunteers-built-over-6000-hygiene-kits-for-maui-disaster-relief/
19. Convenience Kits International, bulk ordering (manufacturer), 2026. Worked quantity-tier ladders for the unisex 10-piece and budget 8-piece kits, and the quote thresholds above 100 and 200 cases. https://www.conveniencekits.com/kits_bulk_ordering/
20. Convenience Kits International, custom travel kits (manufacturer), 2026. Minimum order quantities, bag styles and price range, decal and silk screen pricing, setup, color change and PMS matching charges, and production and rush lead times. https://www.conveniencekits.com/products/custom-travel-kits.htm