Monday 25 April, 2022

Organizing Your Backpacking Gear with Plastic Storage Boxes


When you first start getting into camping and backpacking, you may not have a lot of gear. A lot of people start out by borrowing gear from family or friends who go camping more often. But as time goes by, you may find yourself accumulating more and more backpacking gear. Before you know it, you […]


When you first start getting into camping and backpacking, you may not have a lot of gear. A lot of people start out by borrowing gear from family or friends who go camping more often. But as time goes by, you may find yourself accumulating more and more backpacking gear. Before you know it, you have sleeping bags, blankets, tents, tools, cooking supplies and other gear scattered all over your garage or basement.

Trying to figure out how to organize your backpacking gear? There are a lot of options for organizing camping gear at home, but one of your best choices is a simple plastic tub.

You can store practically all of your backpacking supplies in a plastic storage box for camping. You may think that a lot of items would be better hung up—bags for example. But even these tend to be most convenient if you just pile them up inside a plastic tote for camping. You can also store quilts, blankets, shelter materials, kitchen gear, large tools, and clothing this way.

What should you do about smaller supplies? Hygiene stuff, small tools, and personal effects can all be kept inside smaller plastic containers, which in turn can be stowed inside your larger boxes.

Here are a couple additional ideas to help you make the most of plastic totes for camping:

• If you go camping on long trips sometimes but head out for quick backpacking jaunts other times, you might consider having a box for each type of trip. One can contain common supplies you always need, while the other can contain more specialized supplies you only require for longer outings.

• Do you go on backpacking trips with other members of your family? You can each have your own box of supplies. Label them with your names and every person can be in charge of his or her own supplies.

The advantages of packing up your camping gear in plastic containers go far beyond merely cleaning up clutter and getting organized. Yes, it will free up a lot of space—but it will also save you a lot of time! A lot of people who use this system say that they are able to get their trip preparation time way down this way. Since most of the work has already been done in advance, when you decide you want to head out, you can get everything ready in a half hour or less.

This is awesome if one of your barriers to getting out more is all the time you need to invest in preparation. Since you will have that out of the way, you can literally head out at the drop of a hat if you want to. This makes it easy to take advantage of unexpected open days or good weather. There are additional benefits if you happen to be a prepper as well. It does take an initial time investment to get organized, but over the long run, it will pay off in more time spent camping and hiking!

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