Anyone who has followed our camping journey over the last few years will have seen our love of new (and often expensive) camping gear. However, it doesn’t have to be this way! We’ve found that some of our most useful bits of kit have been everyday items that we either already had at home, or could pick up very cheaply. Following this theme, here are 6 genius camping hacks using humble VELCRO® Brand products.
Tying up guy ropes
Some tents come with ties, but if yours doesn’t you’ll know only too well the struggle of pitching a tent with tangled up guy lines. In our experience, putting up and taking down the tent, are the most stressful parts of a camping trip, so why not make it as easy as possible?
Keeping your guylines tied up makes pitching and packing away your tent a much more straightforward affair.
In fact, VELCRO® Brand One-Wrap Ties are ideal for wrapping up any loose bits on the tent, making sure that lines don’t get tangled and hopefully saving a few arguments in the process.
Keeping chargers together
With me being a blogger and Luke being a keen photographer, we take lots of devices with us when we go camping. This is all well and good, but it means that we also have to take a means to keep them all charged. This often means lots of wires. We try to keep our tent as tidy and organised as possible while away, but it can quickly turn into a mess. One hack that has helped is to use VELCRO® Brand One-Wrap Ties to keep all of our cables together. This saves me scrabbling around looking for the right charger as the battery on my phone disappears before my eyes.
This is such a simple way to keep lots of chargers together and easily organised.
Hanging lights
VELCRO® Brand One-Wrap Ties are so versatile that I have another genius camping hack that uses them. They are ideal for hanging lanterns or torches up in your tent to provide a light source. Being super strong yet thin, and easily cut to size, you can use them to hang most lights in just about any tent.
These wraps are ideal for hanging useful items in your tent so that they are close to hand. This is particularly handy at night and saves you searching in the pitch black.
Keeping the tent carpet in place
We also found a couple of brilliant uses for the VELCRO® Brand Stick On products. Firstly, I used the squares, which are already cut to size (so no faffing about with scissors) and have incredibly sticky backs, making them ideal for holding just about anything in place. We used them for keeping our tent carpet in the right place and stopping it from slipping around. It’s a pet hate of mine, when I spend ages getting our tent set up nicely, and then the carpet ends up moving and things get lost underneath it.
I hate it when the tent carpet moves, so was very excited to have found a way to keep it still.
Hanging mirrors
I also used the VELCRO® Brand Stick On For Fabrics to attach a mirror to the inside of our tent. We all generally turn pretty feral when camping, but a few homely touches certainly help the tent feel more comfortable and make life a little easier.
Here I used a couple of squares to secure a compact mirror to our tent
This product came in the form of a tape, but it was super simple to cut to size and position as required. It reaches its full adhesive strength after 24 hours, but I found that it was quite secure straight away.
Rolling up sleeping bags and mats
I was really impressed with the VELCRO® Brand Stretch Straps and can see that they would have many uses for outdoor lovers. I used them to wrap up and secure a roll mat and also an old sleeping bag that no longer has its own storage sac.
Every camper has a random selection of old sleeping bags that need tidying (right?!)
It was much easier being able to wrap our gear up and keep it organised. It also means that it takes up less room in the car and is easier to transport.
What do you think of my genius camping hacks? Have you got anymore to share?
This is a collaborative post with VELCRO Companies.
