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Household Items that Double as Backpacking Gear

Chlorox Bleach is an inexpensive way to purify backcountry water sources commonl used by long distance backpackers
Chlorox Bleach is an inexpensive way to purify backcountry water sources commonly used by long distance backpackers

If you want to save money on backpacking gear, there are a lot of everyday items lying around your house that you can use. The only limit is your imagination!

For example:

 

Trash Compactor Bags – Line the inside of your backpack with a trash compactor bag instead of using a backpack cover. These plastic bags are extremely durable and they will keep your gear DRY.

Soda Bottles – 1 liter-sized soda bottles provide an ultralight alternative to heavier Nalgene bottles. Many long-distance hikers swear by them and they’re easy to replace.

Reflectix Insulating Wrap – use this to make freezer bag and cook pot cozies.

Padded Mailing Envelopes – The kind lined with bubble wrap. These also make great freezer bag cooking cozies.

Household Bleach – makes a great water purifier for long-distance hikers. The CDC and EPA even recommend it for water purification, but stay away from the scented kind. Note: Bleach will not kill cryptosporidium. You’ll want to buy chlorine dioxide (Aquamira drops or Katadyn Micropur tablets) instead.

Plastic Shopping Bags – these make great snow anchors in winter if you need to pitch a tent on snow. They’re also ultralight. Just make sure to pack them out when you’re done using them.

Gutter Spikes as Tent Pegs – Go to the hardware store and pick up some 8″  or 10″ nails spikes to use as tent or tarp stakes. You don’t need to shell out big bucks for titanium tent stakes.

Tyvek House Wrap – Got some extra Tyvek? It makes a great ground cloth that’s lightweight and waterproof.

Safety Pins – These are a great addition to your gear repair kit. I’ve pinned a shoulder hardness back onto a backpack in the middle of nowhere so I could finish my planned trip. Locking safety pins are the best!

Oven Bags – Oven basting bags make great vapor barrier socks. Just put them over a sock liner and then cover with a second warmer sock and your feet will stay toasty warm all day. These are best used when temperatures are well below freezing. The ones sized for cooking turkeys are too big – go a size smaller.

Styrofoam Cups – Why buy a $50 Snowpeak titanium insulated mug when you can use two styrofoam cups together to keep water hot in cold weather? The styrofoam cups are also lighter weight!

Drier Lint – Makes a great fire starter, as long as it’s from cotton clothing. Lint from synthetic clothing is difficult to ignite and doesn’t burn well.

Plumbers Tape – Wrap a little plumbers tape around the threads of your water reservoir or water bottle to prevent it from leaking.

Cat Food Can, Paint Cans, Peach Cans, etc. – You can turn these cans into alcohol or wood stoves very easily with a kid’s hole punch.

Plastic Spoons – You don’t need to pay $20 for a titanium spoon. Just use a plastic spoon that you pick up at a fast-food restaurant.

Plastic Spice Bottles, Prescription Bottles, Miniature plastic liquor bottles – These are great for carrying small quantities of olive oil, DEET, liquid soap, or hand cleanser so you don’t have to carry more than you need. You can also use them to carry spices and pills.

Duct Tape – So many uses ranging from first aid and blister prevention to gear repair.

Vaseline Soaked Cotton Balls – Makes a long-lasting and inexpensive fire starter with a very long shelf life.

Plastic straws or Tic Tac boxes – good for storing spices or salt for seasoning meals.

Old synthetic dress shirt –  Makes a great hiking shirt. These are also easy to buy at thrift stores.

Pocket pencil sharpener –  Great for making tent stakes out of sticks and firer starter shavings

Aluminum pie tin – makes a great stove stand for liquid fuel stoves, especially in winter.

What household items have you adapted for backpacking?

4 comments

  1. A couple of more that have been handy….

    – Trick birthday candles….the kind that re-light themselves after you blow them out. They can be helpful fire starters when the wood is damp and weather is gusty.

    – Just a few basic paper napkins in a Ziploc sandwich bag. Used sparingly, these are light weight and ideal for clean-up after oily meals or any mess. Then we just carefully burn them.

    Scott

  2. I use the bladders from boxed wine for bulk water storage. As far as I’m concerned, wine in the box beats Jack in the Box any time!

    I don’t drink soft drinks, however, I have family members that do and I repurpose some of their empties, therefore keeping them out of the waste stream for quite a while. When they are past usefulness, I recycle them. Maybe it’s the chemicals affecting my thinking, but I don’t worry too much about them leaching out considering how little exposure I get from reused bottles compared to everything else in my life. My favorite water bottles are the Ozarka water bottles with the flip up blue cap. They come in several sizes and the flip cap is fairly secure, allows one hand use, and keeps the dirt off.

    I will also take a small plastic drink bottle and put water with a few drops of soap in it and put it with my toiletries. I can use that for clean up when I need to find that lonely tree 200′ from the trail. For that purpose, I prefer the water bottles that have the pop up lid, since they make for one hand use and I don’t drop the cap. In cold weather, I’ll add some hot water to the bottle, when making my tea or coffee and then stick the bottle in an extra pair of wool socks to try to keep the water at a tolerable temperature for a while.

    Plastic tableware that comes from fast food suppliers breaks too easily, however, I found Lexan spoons, forks, and knives at Walmart for about four dollars a set, which is considerably cheaper than titanium sporks. Since the grandkids lost their color matched titanium sporks within a week of my investing ten bucks on each one, they get to use the Lexan while grandpa uses his Ti spork, which he has kept track of.

    I always have a fresh tube of super glue in my kit and have repaired many things with it. Several tubes can be had for about two dollars at a big box retailer. I put a new tube with my gear because I don’t want leaks and also don’t want to find it dried up when I need it the most.

    I have a few bread bags for keeping feet dry. They also make excellent trash sacks. Those rubber hair bands that my wife uses and loses (I wonder where they go?) work well for keeping bread bags on the legs. I also have a few pair of nitrile gloves in a snack ziplock to help keep hands drier and warmer under my outer gloves if I’m stuck in wet weather.

    Aluminum gutter nails make great tent stakes and are available at Home Depot.

  3. For me, it’s a balancing act between using things I’ve already got around the house (sandwich bags) and buying items that I can reuse and don’t have to throw away. This article is highlighting how you can use things that you’ve already got. If you don’t have shopping bags, bleach, or soda bottles around, there’s no need to go out and buy them JUST for backpacking. The Tyvek, the catfood stove, and (maybe? I’ve not tried this one or have camped with someone who was trying it) the alternative tent stakes are solid tips, though.

  4. The large nail spikes are often in the gardening section – they are called landscape spikes and are used to connect landscape timbers. In the hardware section the might be called 60-penny nails (or larger 70d 80d).

    The lightweight option is to look in the rain-gutter section. Look for something called gutter spikes. These are made out of a tempered aluminum – very light and very rigid. And the are often prepainted in white to match the rain-gutters – this makes a good primer to give them a quick spray with some hot pink paint – makes them easier to find when you drop one in the duff.

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