The Most Important Tool for Organizing Camping Gear

Imagine...you're packing for a camping trip and you can find all of your camping gear in one place. The sleeping bags, the tent, the mess kits and everything else are all right there, together. It's easy and only takes a few minutes to load everything into the minivan.

OK, that may sound like common sense, but if your family is anything like mine, packing for a camping trip involves time consuming, frantic searching to find gear that's stored in the garage, a closet, the kids' bedrooms and a few, other surprise locations. Though we had a closet that we designated the "camping closet", it wasn't organized. Everything was dumped unceremoniously on the floor, if it made it to the closet at all.

So, what's the most important tool that will turn this closet into a neat, organized camping storage area? Shelves! I've wanted to put shelves in here for a long time, but hadn't taken the initiative until now.

We bought these shelves at Home Depot a few days ago. They were easy to assemble. My husband and oldest son completed them in about a half hour. Because our closet is narrow, we had to put the shelves in sideways. But, they still work since I can load everything from the side. I stacked all the camping gear neatly on the shelves and took all the extra stuff out of the closet. We now officially have an organized camping closet!

If you don't have a closet that can be used for camping gear, you can still set up some shelves in the garage, the basement or the attic. It doesn't matter where it goes, just that it's all stored together neatly and organized.

I'm convinced that preparing for our next camping trip will be much easier and stress-free. That'll be a nice change!