Improvise And Make Your Own Homemade Camping Gear
Many people, when they decide to start camping, can’t wait go out and spend lots of money on expensive camping gear. On the other hand, is that what camping is all about? My family and I were camping before I can even remember it. I wasn’t even a year old so I grew up doing this. I’ve gone camping where the men had to use chainsaws to cut down trees to get to where we were going. We would camp for two weeks or more at a time sometimes. All of the fancy camping gear wasn’t available then like it is now. It was made from scratch or items were improvised.
When you think of camping, do you think of roughing it in the woods? If you do then making homemade camping gear is for you Yet how can you be roughing it when you have the most expensive, state-of-the-art camping gear giving you all of the same luxuries as home? This camping trip, save that hard-earned money and make your own camping gear. That’s right, more and more campers are taking to homemade camping gear because they want to know what it really means to be roughing it, which is what everyone had to do 40, 50, 60 years ago and before .
The Basics Food Shelter and Water
When you go camping, you really only need three things: You need food, which can be easily brought along in the form of quick and convenient protein or granola bars, or you can bring hotdogs and grill them on long sticks or wire coat hangers in front of your campfire. Second you need water, which can be brought along in canteens or water bottles and you need shelter, as in a tent.
After those three things, everything else is extra and it’s just stuff that you’re going to be lugging around everywhere and that you probably won’t even use. So, in making homemade camping gear, you’re only looking at the above three things if you really want to rough it.
One of the first things I made when I was old enough was a homemade grub box. It was made from leftover plywood, used hinges and hasp that I scrounged up. It worked well because it kept the water and the critters out I still have it to this day.
But my families first grub box was leftover heavy wax coated poultry boxes. I don’t know if they still use these but they are heavy cardboard boxes with removable lids that are covered in wax to make them very water resistant. These use to be used to ship frozen poultry to stores. The poultry was packed down in ice in these boxes. We would get them for free from the grocers and wash them well and let them dry. We packed almost everything in these boxes.
When it comes to homemade camping gear, look around your house for anything you can use. For instance, a shower curtain can be strung up with shoe laces and carried as a pack to hold your food and water bottles full of water. When it comes time to camp for the night, you can turn your shower curtain into bedding or you can string it up to a tree and to the ground and use it as a makeshift tent. There you have it, you have just made homemade camping gear and you never had to leave your house to get it.
Other homemade camping gear ideas include using a bucket and a plunger as a clothes washing basin, filling tiny paper cups with sawdust and dipping them in paraffin wax as fire starters and even using a garbage bag with holes poked into it as a shower or with a large hole poked into it for use as a poncho during harsh weather.
With just a little imagination and the things you already have laying around your house, you should be able to gather enough homemade camping gear to have one great time in the great outdoors. I hope to have some diagrams and instructions posted here later as to how you can make your own homemade camping gear. Until next time.
