12 Camping Storage Ideas You Wish You Knew Earlier
Are you stuck somewhere in the middle of organized camping and looking for some great storage hacks, while stressing about: how do I store my food, kitchen gear, and clothes? How do I stay organized while camping? Where do I pack my tent? What are the best camping storage ideas?
Then read through this article, it just needs 5 minutes to blow your mind.
Camping Storage Ideas
- Bring Multiple-Function Items
- Trash Bin Hack
- Clothesline at Camp
- Hand and Dish Washing Station
- Create a Tented Mesh
- Colorful Portable Drawer Sets
- Repurpose Metal Cans
- Organize Cutlery with Bins and Baskets
- Simple Bathroom Bins
- Repurpose Pencil Box
- Bring Mason Jars in use
- Mini Container Repurposing
Well, I understand that initial years at camping are always overwhelming. Sometimes you feel like you should’ve brought your home along.
Because every second hour you find yourself digging through other’s stuff; unpacking then repacking your bag packs to find a particular top or pant that you don’t remember where you stacked during packing.
You must be wondering how far this stressful situation will take to get everything to its right place. Your wait is over now.
After years of research, I have gathered some ideas related to comping storage: food n kitchen gear storage, camping gear storage, tents n sleeping bag storage, cloth storage, and much more.
So hang on, and read all the tidbits to get what fits your needs.
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Packing Guide – Types of Bag Packs for Camping
Everyone’s camping storage volume depends upon their personal needs, lifestyle, and the number of camping members. However, you need to define few main categories to pack your stuff accordingly. You can use this division:
- Pantry storage
- Camping Food Storage
- Camping Shelter and Tent Storage
- Photography Gear Storage
- Personal items Storage
To make your packing easy you should know what options you have to choose from. As you work through designating specific places for your items you will realize it takes less time to find things at camping than it normally would.
Let’s dig into the packing options to get better camping storage solutions:
1) Camping Backpacks
A backpack is a customary storage idea. Because they are lightweight and have built-in pockets, so you would pick them without even giving them a second thought.
However, choosing water-resistant backpacks is one of the best storage ideas. But make sure you are not stuffing extra items in your backpack, keep it the size you can manage to walk with.
Since they offer plenty of pockets, you can store toiletries, skin essentials, and some snacks.
2) Dry Bag Storage
A dry bag is another essential kit for outdoor activities. They come in different sizes.
You can put a variety of your stuff in them, such as a 5-liter dry bag can utilize for snacks and coffee storage, 10-liter for lunch supplies or toiletries, 20-liter for sleeping gear or tidy tent, 30-liter if you want to take along kids bathtubs, and stuff toys which are lightweight but occupy space.
This will save you from peeking around.
Dry bags are ideal for camping clothes storage. If you don’t want to scan through the piles of everyone’s stuff, get yourself see-through dry bags.
You will do away with the need of tagging them by gear type.
And if you don’t like your clothes reveal off in see-through bags, get different colors for each family member.
Color coding is the best option to keep track of where-is-what.
3) See-Through Pantry Food Storage Bins/Containers
See-through storage bins and containers make perfect camping storage for both cooked and raw foods. Even on droopy camping days, I know you wouldn’t want to rely on extra snacks for lunch.
Try packing some no-cook good nutritious foods for quick lunch in these hard-sided containers.
These bins/ containers will not only keep your food upright, warding off leakage chances but also secure from any kind of campground critters like rats and raccoons.
However, I advise you to keep your kitchen gear like bowls, bottles, mugs, and pots, etc.
in a separate bin, and food items, snacks, spices n sauces, and other necessary cooking ingredients in other.
4) Camping Duffle Bags
Duffle Bags, due to their shape, offers excellent storage space. It is an efficient means of clothing and supplies storage.
The soft design of Duffel or duffel-backpack hybrid allows it to store plenty of oddly-sized gears. Another specialty is, it doesn’t take unnecessary space when it is half-packed.
If you are a type who like to carry bags with a variety of carrying options like drop handles plus shoulder strap and optional backpack straps, then this is a perfect ingredient for your camping storage recipe.
5) Fanny Pack
Fanny packs are a great way to keep your essential items handy and easily accessible.
The thing I love most about fanny bags is you can hang them on your shoulder cross-styled, and carry them with you all the time.
That is why I always like placing immediate stuff like a headlamp, knife, bug repellent, small tissue pack, sunblock, and some quick-energy snacks as my ready-to-go bag.
6) Compression Sacks
Compression sacks are space-saving, lightweight, tougher, and more resilient. Therefore, make a perfect storage bag for sturdy sleeping bags, down jackets, and winter coats.
Normally cold-weather gear takes up more space comparatively due to stocky warm and wool stuff.
These sacks help cope with limited space issues by reducing the size of bulky gear.
Sleeping and shelter gear, whether down bag or synthetic, have more volume, thus require space-saving storage organization.
That is why it is recommended to equate liters of the compression bag to the volume of the sleeping bag to make a good match.
These are some but useful storage bag-and-sack ideas. You can choose from them depending upon your requirement and type of camping.
For instance, if you are looking for clothes storage, then dry bags – storage without compression- will work best for you.
Smart Camping Storage Ideas
The main purpose of all storage hacks is to keep you organized at camping.
This target is achieved by gathering all the ideas together which can save space, prevent cramping, make your storage clutter-free, and arranged it in an orderly manner.
Besides the bag-pack guide, there is more to it – called smart-y storage. Let’s delve into some super-smart ideas to keep our camping yet more organized:
1) Bring Multiple-Function Items
If you spend most of your time outdoor camping, hiking, biking, cycling, or traveling, you crave to feel every place you stay, a place like your home.
But the fact is, you can’t bring all the supplies of a house there. Using multi-function items is a clever way to get most of the things with you in much-reduced sizes.
For instance stacked bowls, multi-tool knives, kitchenware, Firestarter sharpeners, or you can use trekking poles as tent sticks are few to name.
They can be kept in a Kitchen storage container for quick access.
2) Trash Bin Hack
When you pack your stuff you don’t think of packing a trash bin but when it comes to dealing with trash, it becomes an irritating pesky mess during camping.
Of course, you don’t want your trash mixed in with all your other items and occupy any storage space.
Utilize extra/used-up zip locks or grocery bags, which can solve this problem.
Yes, it is that simple but it will ward off any threat to your storage origination.
3) Clothesline at Camp
In case you fall short of food containers but have leftover food, you can put them in a zip-lock bag and hang them on a clothesline with safety pins.
The clothesline can be used otherwise like hanging your wet gear, bathing suits, life jackets, and washed clothes.
4) Hand and Dish Washing Station
At the camping site, you can’t have your dishwasher unless you brought along your IV.
Therefore, making quick storage by setting up a 5 Gal water bottle with a tap as a dishwasher at a heightened place like an even surfaced stone or on your picnic table if you have extra.
You can use it as a dishwasher by placing a dishwashing liquid alongside to keep your bowls and pots clean.
Or as a hand-washer by placing a hand wash with a towel alongside.
5) Create a Tented Mesh
Be even more organized and create a tented mesh. Tent mesh is a net hanging with a piece of durable fabric and some connectors.
It holds your gear, fanny bag, headlamp, tissue, things like these above you, near the ceiling of the tent, and saves space on the ground.
Please note: The size of the tent depends upon the family and persons that will be staying inside the mesh. You must keep this in mind while buying the tent for your next amazing camping experience.
Camping Storage Ideas from Reusable Items
1) Colorful Portable Drawer Sets
Colorful portable drawer sets are made of plastic and can be used for reading and drawing books storage, diary and journal storage, color pencil, and pen storage.
Due to compact and colorful drawers, things can be organized without getting wet.
You don’t even need to invest in them as you can easily find one at home. You can always repurpose it.
2) Repurpose Metal Cans
Recycling coffee metal cans is very common. Because metal cans are water-resistant and secured with a lid, which is why they make perfect storage.
Old coffee cans that you can easily find at your home are frequently used to store food items, snacks, cereals, chips, and toilet tissue.
You can use metal cans instead of keeping lots and lots of plastic bags in your kitchen storage container.
Read more about: 21 No-Cook Foods You Can’t Ignore
3) Organize Cutlery with Bins and Baskets
You can use dollar store small baskets to organize your cutlery; spoons, forks, and roasting sticks, and save your other packs from pokes and wholes.
Small and compact-sized bins will store much of your necessary stuff without occupying more space.
4) Simple Bathroom Bins
If you are sensitive about your skin and can’t compromise your skincare routine, you would want all your skincare products with you even camping.
Skincare products and bath items such as shampoo, face wash, and hand wash can be stored in bathroom bins and baskets for compact storage.
5) Repurpose Pencil Box
A pencil box is one of those things you can use as a camping cutlery storage idea by repurposing it.
It can serve as a great storage hack for spoons, forks, and roasting sticks.
This way you can prevent your packing bags from piercing and take along sharpy items without any jerk.
6) Bring Mason Jars in use
Everybody knows how useful mason jars are. Similarly, they can be great camping food storage besides being a blender and shaker.
Their tight lid prevents the liquid from spilling. Before lid tightening, if you cover it with a plastic food sheet, it can become even more useful.
You can use mason jars to store food items such as beaten eggs, pancake mixes, or soup mixes. According to the need just take the liquid stuff out and cook it quickly.
7) Mini Container Repurposing
If you love spices and herbs on your food, and can’t help bring all the jars along, it can be a little hassle.
Instead, transfer the required amount of salt, pepper, oregano, sesame, and dried herbs into small containers, tag them and throw them in a pantry container.
You are all set to enjoy your food with spices.
It was a detailed guide to how you can store your most of camping gear yet stay organized. But the process of organization doesn’t stop here.
Keeping your gear properly organized at home is crucial to maintain this organization and smart storage. So that whenever you need to go camping, your gear is all organized ready-to-grab.
Additionally, you can always try some more hacks yourself to make your camping experience better as you learn from the past camping experience. Buying useful backpacks and tidy tents is an investment that will benefit you in the long run if you truly love camping.
Another helpful trick for camping storage ideas is to make a checklist of all the items required during camping. Categorize and classify them by gear type and usage.
Write down precise notes: what to place/store where to get organized for future traveling.
Also, Read about: How To Make a Generator Quiet for Camping
Once your go-to resources along with the guidelines are prepared, you will always be stationed to set out for sudden camping plans.
Happy Camping!
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