We just got back from another camping trip this last weekend. We have camped fairly often the last few years especially since Lucy joined our family. Camping is a great economical way to travel but can definitely feel overwhelming and takes a lot of prep work. Today I’m sharing 10 of best tips for making camping easy for you and your family and some ways to make camp life a little bit easier.
1. Camping Bins
One of the best things I ever did was get some bins to keep our camping stuff in all together. I was getting annoyed with our camping stuff slowly taking over our storage room so I re-purposed some stand alone drawers (similar here) to store our smaller camping items. I have one drawer that is for food and food prep type stuff and another bin that is more focused on tools and other helpful camp stuff. If you have a bigger family or are way into camping you might want to invest in larger buckets or totes that can hold more things. Since our camping collection is still quite small, the drawer system is working for us. Another plus with the drawers is that they are easy to pull out and access what is inside and they stack on top of each other which really frees up space.
2. Pack Tent Last
When packing your car to leave on your camping trip, if you’re planning to tent camp, make sure to pack your tent and other tent supplies (tarp, stakes, mallet, etc.) last and put them in an easily accessible area. When you get to your campsite one of the first things you will want to do will be to set up your tent. So making it the first thing you can get to will make your camp set up a lot faster.
3. Have a Tent Broom
Even though we have a no shoe rule for the tent, there still is always dirt and rocks and grass and other junk that ends up in the bottom of the tent at the end of a trip. In my camping bins I keep a handheld broom (similar here) so that as we are getting ready to pack up and leave camp, I can easily sweep out the bottom of our tent so it is (fairly) clean for our next trip.
4. Get Some Solar Lights
I saw this hack on Pinterest a while ago and it is one of my favorite camping tips! Buy some solar yard lights to take with you on your next trip. They soak up the sun during the day and when it gets dark they can light up the area around your camp really nicely. I got mine from Walmart for really inexpensive and I know Dollar Tree carries them as well. My favorite way to use them is to put one at the entrance of our tent and then put others next to the guide lines for our tent and rain fly so that we don’t trip over them, especially in the dark! (Similar lights here)
5. Bring Clips
I got these large clips at the dollar store that I keep in our camping bins and they are so helpful! I originally got them with the intention to hold down our table cloth for the picnic table at our camp site but we have used them for so many other things as well! On our last trip, it rained really, really hard the first night we camped so we woke up to some bedding pretty wet and damp. So we used the clips I had packed to anchor our bedding and blankets to a structure at our camp site so they could dry during the day and wouldn’t blow away while we were away from camp. (Similar clips here)
6. Pencil Box Storage for Plastic Utensils
Remember those plastic pencil boxes from elementary school? Well they make for a great storage system for camping! We keep a variety of plastic knives, forks and spoons in a pencil box that we keep in our camping bins so we always have utensils to eat with. One thing that I like about using plastic utensils while camping is that you can easily wash and reuse them if you want but if they break or you don’t want to wash them they can easily be tossed in the trash when you’re done.
7. Bring ALL the Plastic Bags
I always keep a variety of plastic bags in my camping bins. I like to keep a variety of grocery bags, various sizes of Ziplock bags as well as a few large trash bags. I always am glad I packed them! We use the grocery sacks for trash around camp and holding wet things when going home. Ziplocks come in handy to keep things dry, packing lunches for a hike and so many other things! And we like to keep large trash bags if we are staying somewhere for longer term to contain our trash and they can make a decent poncho in an emergency.
8. Freeze Water Bottles for Your Cooler
Freezing your plastic water bottles can be a great way to help keep your cooler cold and as they melt, you have nice cold water for hikes or other activities. I also like to freeze our Powerade that we often bring camping too. It helps keep our cooler cold and as it melts is a great refreshing drink after a hot hike.
9. Pancakes In a Bag
A great, easy breakfast while camping is pancakes. We have some pancake mix that you just have to add water to that we use often at home if I’m not making from-scratch pancakes. Before we leave I just portion out the dry mix into a Ziplock bag and write how much water needs to be added. Then when it is time for breakfast while camping, I just add the water to the bag, zip it up and mix the powdered mix and water together in the bag by squishing it around. Then when your griddle is heated and ready all you have to do is pour the batter out of the bag. You can cut off the corner of the bag if you wish, but I just unzipped a corner of the zipper and poured it out from there. I did that so I could reseal the bag and not have it leak everywhere while the first batch of pancakes were cooking.
10. Rethink S’mores!
No camping trip is complete without some s’mores! But s’mores don’t have to be the standard graham cracker, chocolate and marshmallow combination. I always like to bring a variety of fun treats to make s’mores with. In addition to bringing marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate I like to bring peanut butter cups, fudge striped cookies and chocolate covered graham cracker cookies. If you’re looking for another fun camping treat, bring some Starbursts and roast those over the fire.
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