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Guest
Guest
I was repacking some tripping gear and thought about the various household stuff that gets replenished or replaced after a trip.
Zip lock bags. I love Zip-lock bags in various sizes. Tiny ones to hold the week’s worth of Starbucks Via packs, bigger ones to wrap the cheese, oatmeal packs or sandwich rounds. Dozens of reusable purposes, and when they are finally trashed they become auxiliary trash receptacles.
Rubber bands. I use rubber bands for all kinds of things. To bundle the tent or tarp poles before putting them in the stuff bag. Wrapped around the tarp stakes, and around the removable headrest for the wind chair. To hold the lid on the Jet-boil and keep the stove/fuel inside the pot when jumbled and jostled in the blue barrel (the poorly secured lid is one design flaw in the JetBoil storage system)
A dozen of more rubber bands. Which, when not in use, need to go somewhere. I wrap them around my canteens to keep them handy and out of my pocket, from whence I know they will eventually fall unseen on the ground. I keep a couple of spares wrapped around the canteen as well, which also makes it easier to pick up and grasp that stainless steel cylinder with cold/gloved hands.
(CAUTION: rubber bands are not suitable for long term storage; they will degrade and stick to whatever they’re wrapped around. And brightly colored ones are easier to see on the ground when you do drop them)
Bleach. Good old laundry room bleach, to add to the dishes in the rinse bucket, especially on group trips. Powdered bleach helps with odor control on wag-bag trips and doesn’t eat some container lids the way liquid bleach does.
Pillow case. I’m a wuss, and I hate sleeping with my head on a stuff bag or unraveling tee shirt packed with spare clothing. Gimme a soft micro-fiber pillowcase. And a small micro-fiber sheet too; I can sleep under it on hot nights or lay it over a sandy/dusty tent floor. The micro-fiber stuff is lighter, more mildew resistant and dries much faster than cotton.
Kitchen scrubbie. I cut them in halves or thirds. On long trips or with real cookery they get groady and probably make a better petri dish than instrument of cleaning. I reserve one piece of clean sponge for cleaning zippers in dusty/sandy environs.
Plastic trash bags. And a couple of spare plastic trash bags. Handy for making an emergency poncho, cutting open to make an interior ground cloth for a wet tent or wrapping up a wet fly. I need to replace the mega contractor trash bag (6’ tall x 4’ wide) I carried as an emergency bivy/tent innie; it was cut open as an innie for someone’s wet tent on a spring trip. I’d rather come off a trip with one spare trash bag than one too few.
Time for a grocery store gear run. What’s in your cart?
Zip lock bags. I love Zip-lock bags in various sizes. Tiny ones to hold the week’s worth of Starbucks Via packs, bigger ones to wrap the cheese, oatmeal packs or sandwich rounds. Dozens of reusable purposes, and when they are finally trashed they become auxiliary trash receptacles.
Rubber bands. I use rubber bands for all kinds of things. To bundle the tent or tarp poles before putting them in the stuff bag. Wrapped around the tarp stakes, and around the removable headrest for the wind chair. To hold the lid on the Jet-boil and keep the stove/fuel inside the pot when jumbled and jostled in the blue barrel (the poorly secured lid is one design flaw in the JetBoil storage system)
A dozen of more rubber bands. Which, when not in use, need to go somewhere. I wrap them around my canteens to keep them handy and out of my pocket, from whence I know they will eventually fall unseen on the ground. I keep a couple of spares wrapped around the canteen as well, which also makes it easier to pick up and grasp that stainless steel cylinder with cold/gloved hands.
(CAUTION: rubber bands are not suitable for long term storage; they will degrade and stick to whatever they’re wrapped around. And brightly colored ones are easier to see on the ground when you do drop them)
Bleach. Good old laundry room bleach, to add to the dishes in the rinse bucket, especially on group trips. Powdered bleach helps with odor control on wag-bag trips and doesn’t eat some container lids the way liquid bleach does.
Pillow case. I’m a wuss, and I hate sleeping with my head on a stuff bag or unraveling tee shirt packed with spare clothing. Gimme a soft micro-fiber pillowcase. And a small micro-fiber sheet too; I can sleep under it on hot nights or lay it over a sandy/dusty tent floor. The micro-fiber stuff is lighter, more mildew resistant and dries much faster than cotton.
Kitchen scrubbie. I cut them in halves or thirds. On long trips or with real cookery they get groady and probably make a better petri dish than instrument of cleaning. I reserve one piece of clean sponge for cleaning zippers in dusty/sandy environs.
Plastic trash bags. And a couple of spare plastic trash bags. Handy for making an emergency poncho, cutting open to make an interior ground cloth for a wet tent or wrapping up a wet fly. I need to replace the mega contractor trash bag (6’ tall x 4’ wide) I carried as an emergency bivy/tent innie; it was cut open as an innie for someone’s wet tent on a spring trip. I’d rather come off a trip with one spare trash bag than one too few.
Time for a grocery store gear run. What’s in your cart?