The Lazy Campers

#camping  #outdoors #thelazycampers

My husband and I come from families who love to camp. When I was a child a large portion of our family holidays were camping in some remote part of Southern Africa. For my husband it was annual family holidays caravanning, for weeks, around the Eastern Cape of South Africa. So camping for us as a couple came very easily and is a lot of fun, time for us to connect and time to relax.

Now when I say camping, please be aware that I mean real camping: setting up our own tent on a piece of ground, blowing up an air mattress and being out in the elements; not glamping where all the luxuries (and more) of home accompany you on your trip. We enjoy camping at a variety of places: backpackers, municipal campsites and nature reserves.

My husband and I are fairly lazy people: we like to have exciting weekends away with the least amount of effort, and often plan weekend getaways at the last minute. This was proving difficult with camping considering you need to take all your necessities (of which there are many) with you.

After a good few camping trips where we had forgotten to pack plates or a knife or a lighter or some other obscure item from our kitchen or even the mattress pump, we decided something had to change. So, for our wedding we had our wedding registry at Outdoor Warehouse. This turned out to be a brilliant idea!

We put all the camping things that we needed onto our registry and my mom-in-law’s friends very kindly bought most of the items on the list as well as a plastic box to packaged it all conveniently. From then on camping was a whole lot less effort. On our next few camping trips we made sure to take a piece of paper and a pen with us to write down other items we were missing in the aptly named “Camping Box”. When we got home from each trip we would buy the missing items and add them to our camping box.

Two years later the camping box is well stocked, in fact we now have two camping boxes: one with kitchen-type-things and another with commonly used camping items such as a mattress pump, rubber mallet, small compact gas stove, power extension cable and camping lights. Now camping is so much easier, we pack the car in half the time and don’t need to worry about forgetting anything because all the essentials are in the camping boxes.

Rule no 1: Nothing from the camping boxes may be used at home… ever!

By following this rule we never have the problem of forgetting to put things back in the boxes and then not having them when we go camping.

Rule no 2: If something in the box runs out replace it as soon as you get home.

By keeping to this rule we ensure that the next time we go camping we still have everything that we need. If we leave buying run-out items for too long we will undoubtedly forget about them and then not have them on our next trip.

Being the Lazy Campers we are, we have tried to make packing for camping trips as easy as possible for ourselves so that we are not discouraged by the packing and unpacking of the car. We have found camping far more enjoyable now that we know that once we have set up camp all the small things that we need are with us.

WHAT IS IN OUR TWO BOXES?

Kitchen Box:
- 2 tin plates
- 2 tin bowls               
- 2 tin drinking cups
- 2 tin wine glasses
- Travel mugs for tea & Coffee
- Salt & Pepper
- Braai (BBQ) spices
- Chopping board
- Serviettes
- Lighter
- Braai tongs
- Scissors
- Tin opener

- Bottle opener/ wine cork screw
- Cutlery set (Knives, forks, spoons, steak knives, sharp knives, wooden spoon)
- Camping pot set
- Dish washing liquid Soap
- Dish cloth & scourer sponge
- Dish drying towel
- UNO card game

- Spatula

Box 2:
- Rubber mallet
- Mattress Pump - Gas stove - Spare gas tin canister - Loo Rolls - Bin bags - Multi-sized sink plug - Microfibre bath towels - Camping lights - Torch - Bug repellent - Fire lighters - Caravan adapter power extension cable