All camping gear is not created equally, and some of it is just so darn expensive. Ever taken a trip outdoors in your tent and realized you spent way more money than you would have on a hotel for a few nights? We have… and then we went looking for some budget solutions to some of the things we had been buying. After coming across some of the coolest camping hacks I have ever seen, I decided to put a list together and share them with you. From emergency survival kits to convenient way to prepare food and carry your camping essentials more easily, these hacks offer some awesome tips and tricks you will want to take on your next camping trip. Keep the bugs away, make breakfast in minutes, entertain your friends and kids, plus create some awesome meals for the campfire. Check out these step by step tutorials and learn how…
DIY Camping Hacks
1. Camping Survival Kit
This camping survival kit is something you should always take with you when you are spending time outdoors without some comforts of home. Repair, patch, clean and improvise with these essential items that come in handy on any camping trip.
2. Homemade Fire Starters
DIY fire starters are so easy to make, I am not sure why anyone would ever buy them. These light better than store-bought ones, too. Make several batches to take on your next camping trip and start fires with ease.
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3. Easy Camping Activity Bags
Need some fun activities for your kids on your next camping trip? Make these anti-boredom bags and give them something cool to do. Let them help you make them. too!
4. DIY Marshmallow Roasting Sticks
Everyone loves S’mores, right? What better item to take on your next camping trip than marshmallow roasting sticks? We love keeping these in the garage for outdoor parties, too. Kids and adults alike are sure love them! For a cool DIY camping hack or outdoor idea to make to use in the backyard, these DIY marshmallow roasters can serve lots of purposes around the fire.
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5. Rolled Camp Kitchen
Made of outdoor canvas and vinyl, this portable Rolled Camp Kitchen is sturdy and easy to clean. There are pockets and straps for holding everything from salt and pepper to dish soap and paper towels in place for the long haul. And the whole thing rolls up with all of its contents secure inside for storage and transport. How cool is that? I am not a big camper but this will be a great idea to consider in the future. For a DIY idea for a camping trip, this convenient portable carry along kitchen is perfect for those who love to cook but also enjoy campgrounds, cabins and tents.
6. Homemade Mosquito Repellent
Keeping bugs away with a good mosquito repellent is a top priority, especially with small children who are prone to scratching mosquito bites. If you have the ingredients to make it, this is the best bug spray recipe I’ve found. This recipe uses essential oils, which are highly effective for natural bug protection. Snag the full recipe from Surviving The Stores. Enjoy the backyard, outdoors and your next camping trip with this homemade DIY mosquito repellant.
7. Match Holder With Sandpaper
I saw an awesome idea for storing matches in a mason jar – using sandpaper as the lid so you can light the matches. Keep your matches dry by crafting your own Mason jar matchbox. And the mason jar is perfect for taking camping or for just looking pretty.
8. S’mores In A Bag Campfire Treat
Oh wow, this is such an awesome idea! S’mores are a camping favorite that are fun to make and even more fun to eat. This camping hack is great since we can do S’mores without the mess. S’mores in a bag needs to become a thing in everyone’s house!
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9. Wrap Duct Tape Around Your Flashlight
Wrap duct tape around your water bottle or a flashlight to save space and also have quick and easy access to it. Duct tape is great for blisters and also can be used to remove ticks. Read on the full post from Happy Money Saver to learn more.
10. Dollar Store Camping Hacks
Is your family in desperate need of a vacation? Everyone has been working hard for the last 365 days and now it’s time to relax! It’s time to go camping. If you have budget constraints, you better check out these dollar store camping hacks from Pennies Into Pearls.
11. Camping Tips
We keep our own running collection of camping tips right here on DIY Joy, and it earns its slot in this list as the companion piece to everything else on it. Where the hacks below each solve one specific problem, the tips collection covers the connective tissue – packing order, campsite setup rhythm, the checklist habits that mean never arriving without the can opener. It grew out of our own trips and reader letters, and it keeps growing. Skim it before the season’s first trip and the whole weekend runs smoother. Consider it the index to your camp brain.
12. Make Your Own Emergency Toilet
Nobody wants to need an emergency toilet, and everybody who has needed one wishes they had built it beforehand. A five gallon bucket, a pool noodle rim, and heavy duty liner bags assemble into a genuinely serviceable backup facility for campsites, road emergencies, and power outages alike. Mom With a Prep walks through the build with the practical calm of someone who plans ahead professionally. Kitty litter or sawdust in the liner handles odor science. It costs almost nothing, stores inside itself, and converts <a href=”https://diyjoy.com/diy-projects/outdoor-ideas/”>camping</a>-with-kids from gamble to managed situation.
13. Camping Hand Washing Station
A laundry detergent dispenser with a push spigot becomes a campsite hand washing station, and suddenly the sandwich-making hygiene situation improves dramatically. The jug perches on the table edge, a paper towel roll threads onto a bungee beside it, and a mesh bag of soap hangs from the spigot – a full sink experience from recycling and dollar store parts. Kids actually use it, which is the entire measure of camp hygiene equipment. Refill from any water source and the station runs all weekend. Making Memories With Your Kids assembled the design, and every group campsite deserves one.
14. Keep Valuables In A Ziploc Bag
Happy Money Saver states the humble truth every soggy wallet learns eventually: a ziploc bag is the cheapest waterproofing technology ever invented, and phones, matches, licenses, and car fobs all deserve one at the campsite. Double-bagging with the openings reversed approaches dry-bag performance at a two-cent price point. The see-through factor means no rummaging with wet hands. Keep a stash of spare bags in the gear bin, because they also swallow leftover snacks, wet swimsuits, and collected treasures on the return trip. Boring advice, bulletproof results – the veteran camper’s signature move.
15. Brilliant Camp Kitchen Organizer
The hanging shoe organizer’s finest hour arrives at the campsite: strapped to a tree or the canopy pole, its clear pockets file the entire camp kitchen – utensils, spices, foil, matches, the elusive can opener – at eye level and off the table. Starling Travel demonstrates the setup, and the genius is retrieval speed: dinner assembly stops being an excavation. The organizer rolls up packed with everything in place, so next trip’s kitchen unpacks in one motion. Rain runs right off the plastic pockets. Camp cooking with actual mise en place: civilization achieved.
16. DIY Single Use Antibiotic Packs
Ultralight backpackers solved the first aid bulk problem with drinking straws: short sections sealed at both ends with pliers and a lighter, each holding a single dose of antibiotic ointment squeezed from the family-size tube. The packs weigh nothing, survive crushing, and open with a snip when a scraped knee reports in. The same trick portions sunscreen, toothpaste, and lotion for day hikes. It is repackaging, not chemistry – the ointment is the same tube you already own. Brian Green, a longtime voice in lightweight backpacking, documents the sealing technique, and first aid kits everywhere shrink accordingly.
17. Store Pre-Scrambled Eggs in a Bottle for No-Mess Camping Food
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18. Camping Shower Lanyard
Team Engelbrecht threads soap, shampoo, and a scrubber onto a lanyard, and the campground shower stops being a juggling act performed on a wet ledge. Everything hangs from the neck or the shower hook, nothing touches the questionable floor, and nothing gets left behind in the rush. Travel-size bottles with carabiner caps clip on and off for refills. It is the kind of two-dollar preparation that feels disproportionately luxurious at a state park shower house at 7am. Assemble one per family member and hygiene logistics disappear.
19. Homemade Calamine Lotion
Mosquito season meets its match in this homemade calamine-style lotion, mixed from simple pantry and pharmacy staples into a soothing pink standby for minor itches and irritations. Everyday Roots walks through the short ingredient list and the mixing, which takes minutes and stores neatly in the first aid bin. It shines for the ordinary bug bite and sun-warmed skin situations of camp life – anything serious or spreading still deserves a real medical opinion, as with any home remedy. A patch test on new skin is always sensible. Small jar, long weekend, fewer midnight scratching sessions.
20. Keep Your Toilet Paper Dry While Camping with a Coffee Container
Wet toilet paper is a camp morale event, and the plastic coffee container ends the risk permanently: the roll slides inside, a slit cut in the side feeds the sheets through, and the snap lid seals out rain, dew, and cooler spills. The container hangs from a cord through two punched holes, putting dispensing at a civilized height. It is the exact kind of elegant repurposing that made Lifehacker a household name, and the empty container was headed for recycling anyway. One per campsite bathroom kit, forever. Dry paper is a small dignity worth engineering.
21. Re-use Your Empty Prescription Pill Bottles
Chasing Green catalogs the second lives of the prescription bottle, and the campsite claims most of them: waterproof match safes, mini first aid kits, spice shakers, fishing kits with hooks and line, and emergency cash stashes all fit the amber cylinder perfectly. The bottles are engineered to protect their contents from moisture and crushing, which is exactly the camping spec sheet. Peel the labels or run them through the dishwasher first. A winter of refills stocks a whole summer of kits. Free waterproof containers were hiding in the medicine cabinet all along.
22. Turn A Headlamp Into A Lantern
23. Cotton Ball Fire Starters
Cotton balls worked through with petroleum jelly are the fire starter that professionals quietly rely on: each one lights from a single spark and burns steadily for several minutes, long enough to coax damp kindling into cooperation. A film canister or pill bottle holds a dozen, and the batch costs under a dollar. Pinching Your Pennies shows the simple massage-and-store prep. They work when lighter fluid is forgotten and matches are down to three. Make them at home on a rainy day and fire trouble leaves the camping vocabulary.
24. Camping Bedding Storage
The bedding hack solves two problems with one bag: each camper’s sleeping bag, pillow, and blanket stuff into a single zippered comforter bag or duffel, which then rides as that camper’s seat cushion around the fire. Blue Eyed Blessings organizes the whole family this way, one bag per person, loaded and unloaded in single trips. Nothing sleeps-related gets forgotten because the bag is either full or it is not – a packing checklist made physical. The clear comforter bags that blankets are sold in work perfectly and cost nothing. Softer camp chairs, faster teardown, zero forgotten pillows.
25. Pop Up Trash Can
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26. DIY Soap Pouch
Whimsy Love sews a small mesh or washcloth pouch that holds a bar of soap and becomes its own washcloth, lathering right through the fabric. The bar stays grippable, drains dry hanging from its drawstring, and never performs the slick escape maneuver soap attempts on every camp shower floor. Soap slivers too small to hold get a dignified retirement inside the pouch, used to the last bubble. It sews from one washcloth in fifteen minutes, making it a great first project with camp payoff. Small, thrifty, and the shower house’s best accessory.
27. Mesh Hanging Organizer
28. Yoga Mat Makes A Great Cushion
The retired yoga mat has a glorious camping afterlife: cut to size, it becomes a sleeping pad supplement, a kneeling cushion for tent stakes and fire tending, a bench softener for bleachers and picnic tables, and a standing mat for the camp kitchen. Closed-cell foam insulates against cold ground better than most furniture cushions, which is why backpackers have carried foam for decades. The 3 Day blog’s walkers popularized the cut-to-fit approach. One old mat yields several task-specific pads that stack flat in the gear bin. Namaste, and pass the marshmallows.
29. Cork on Your Keys
The lake claims a tribute of car keys every summer, and a wine cork ends the tax: screwed or corded to the keyring, it floats the whole set if a canoe tips or a pocket betrays you at the dock. Corks float shockingly well – one supports most keyrings, two handle the fob-heavy modern set. Test the float in a sink before trusting the lake, a thirty second verification with high stakes. Green Moxie gets credit for this one, and the cork costs exactly one bottle of celebratory campsite wine. Insurance has never been this cheap or this festive.
30. Easy Pancakes While Camping
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31. Toilet Roll Dispenser
