Camping Boxes

Camping boxes come in all shapes and configurations. It's no big deal though. You just need enough camping boxes to keep your equipment stored away safely until it's that time of year again, when you hit the trail or campground.

When I was a kid, camping boxes were made out of wood. In fact that's what we used in Scouts when I was a kid, and decades later as a Leader. You had camping boxes for your camp kitchen, others for ropes and tools and things, and enough shelving at the back of the building to keep all the gear stored away until it was needed again.

Just make sure there is nothing perishable packed away in those boxes. You don't want food in there to go moldy, or to attract rats and mice. they can gnaw their way inside if they smell food. They also like to make their nests in things like blankets and mattresses. I know because it has happened to me. And while I used to keep white mice when I was a kid, I have learned to hate these rodents with a vengeance, after I had a Toyota camper-van trashed once by mice. Now I understand why the Aussies refer to something disgusting as being "rat shit".

Nowadays, you can go into your local K-mart or Walmart store and choose from a host of tough plastic storage boxes and bins that are airtight as well. This keeps out dust and small pests and keeps everything in pretty good shape. The days of making your own camping boxes out of wood in the home workshop are pretty much over unless you already have the tools and you love carpentry.

There's a category of camping boxes I haven't touched on yet because it's specialist stuff. If you've got delicate electronics equipment that's expensive to replace, the toughest, safest storage cases I know of are made by a company called Pelican. They make armored plastic cases that are filled with foam to prevent the contents from being shocked if the case gets dropped. And the edges have rubber seals making the cases quite waterproof. Throw one into a pond and it will happily float, keeping your GPS, sat phone, video camera, two-way radio or whatever completely protected.

Not ordinary camping boxes, for sure. But something you ought to bear in mind in care you have a need for one. They come in all different colors and sizes. The military and essential services use them all the time, but then they have government dollars to buy them with.