What does car camping conveniently really mean? Do you like having what you need on hand? Are you prone to having to dig through your whole pack for the one thing you want to use? Little inconveniences can add up quickly when out on a car camping adventure, and turn a great trip into a lousy one fast. Here are a few car camping conveniences we can’t travel without.
Hands-free lighting
Tell me: how many times have you held your flashlight (or phone) with one hand and completely struggled to accomplish whatever task you need to get done because you only have one hand available?
It is so frustrating! I always seem to need one hand to lift, and the other to dig for whatever I was looking for and a third hand to hold the flashlight.
Maybe you think, I’m smarter than this, I have headlamps! Hands-free with no worries in the world. But if you go car camping with a partner, how often do you two look at each other and accidentally blind the other person with your headlamp? That’s not convenient either.
Consider purchasing a hands-off lighting device like our Luci Lights! We hung these up in a circle around our car and the way they illuminate the car is incredible. No more trying to hold your flashlight under your chin while you dig through your car. These string lights will aid you in finding what you need with much less hassle, and really step up your car camping game.
We can even play cards and read books without having to set the light down to turn a page or blind one another when we look in each other’s direction. What’s even more fun about them is they have three different light settings! We love this thing so much, it made our Underrated Car Camping Essentials list.
Toiletry bags
If you are car camping I’m going to assume you don’t have a sink, toilet, or running water in your car. If you do, send us an email! We’d love to see it!
However, for us, we have to actually get out of our car in order to brush our teeth and get ready in the morning. Often this means a short walk to the public bathrooms (when they have running water) and doing our morning routine there.
Instead of needing to fully wake up and locate where our toothbrushes and other toiletries are, all we do is roll out of bed and grab our toiletry bag. No shuffling stuff around, no digging through our suitcases, nothing. Simply grab and go! We hang them up in our far back windows and it’s the perfect little space for them.
The great thing about the bags we use is they are so easy to make! They even have a closing mechanism that doubles as straps to hold them. If you can’t or don’t want to make them, any small bag you can find will do, preferably with a zipper or some way to close them so the contents don’t spill out.
The goal is simply to be able to organize your space and add some car camping convenience. This small item has saved us an amazing amount of time, and we never lose our brushes or contact solution halfway through the trip either.
Setting out your clothes the night before
There are two things that make the car camping experience way more convenient if you do them before you set up the bed and go to sleep for the night. The first thing is getting the clothes you want to wear the next day out before you go to bed.
Dylan and I struggled with this when we first started car camping. We always put our backpacks underneath our bed set-up so we couldn’t get to them easily when we got up in the morning.
Instead of having them readily available so we could change right when we woke up, we had to wake up, get out of the car, grab our backpacks, take out our clothes, and then get back into the car to change. It was such a process!
Instead of dealing with that “process,” make your life easier for yourself! Have your clothes ready for you to put on the night before you need them when you’re already walking around and outside of the car.
Your future self will thank you for letting them stay in that comfortable bed just a little longer. Also, this means you won’t have to open the car door on cold mornings and can just slip into fresh clean clothes while still enjoying the warmth of your bed.
Fill up your water bottle
The second thing you should do before you set up the bed and get in for the night is fill up your water bottle. While this one might seem like a no-brainer, it is such an inconvenience that we believe it is worth mentioning.
Our water storage is at the back of our car completely inaccessible when we are in bed. So not only do we have to get out of the car if we want to fill up our water, but the other person can’t be on top of where we need to get to either!
There’s simply no feeling like being completely parched in the middle of the night, your partner is asleep, and you know that there is no way you can get water until the morning. But you also can’t fall back asleep. Just fill up the dang water bottle before you go to bed!
You should probably pee before getting in bed for the night, too.
Stay at a campsite with running water
For the ultimate convenience factor, you want to stay at a place that has running water and flush toilets! A great benefit of being at a campsite with water is that you don’t have to pack as much water. Extra water for washing camp dishes or brushing your teeth can add up to a lot of water depending on how many people you have and how long you stay.
Not only that, but it is so nice having flush toilets at your campsite and not feeling a breeze caress your bottom like when you use a pit toilet. On top of that, the smell is generally a lot better.
For me, I just appreciate it when I can go to one place to brush my teeth and put in contacts in the morning. It definitely gives me a sense of normalcy when we’re on the road.
Wrap-up
These little tips might not seem like much, but it’s usually the little things that can suck a whole lot of fun out of the car camping experience. If you take all of these considerations into account, your car camping days will be way more convenient (and enjoyable) than they used to be!
But remember, convenience isn’t everything. If you would like more tips on how to make camping more comfortable, check out our other post here.
