Organizing camping food

The internet is full of menu ideas for backcountry camping adventures so I’m not going to cover that today. Besides, my previous post was about food ideas - specifically accommodating gluten free diets. What I am going to talk about is how to organize all that food so you can enjoy your trip.

Moms this one is written with you in mind. Anyone notice how kids (and sometimes husbands) bring their endless questions with them on a camping trip? In their defense if mom packed everything then it stands to reason that mom would know where to find it in the packs. Let me tell you a little secret about how to curb the constant questions. I am happy to help anyone find what they need the first day of our trip only. I do know where everything is because I made a point to group like items together so bags don’t have to be dumped in search of something that isn’t visible from the top of the pack. After the first day all the questions start to make the trip feel less and less like a vacation.

Full disclosure: This is written from the perspective of a canoe camping trip, not a car camping trip but the same principles apply whether you are putting your gear in waterproof bags or Rubbermaid totes. These two brands of bags above have been phenomenal for us over the years. The yellow brand has been across the country and back a couple times and the Sea Line Brand predates our children and most impressive of all can hang from a tree (necessary in bear country) with 45 pounds of food/kitchen smelling gear in it year after year.

So how do you get your family to take care of themselves so you can feel like you truly are on vacation? As I said, I’m happy to answer any questions the first day. They know that they better pay attention to the answer and LEARN vs. asking the same question over and over again all week long.

The key is to set them up for success. I group like items together in uniquely colored drawstring bags or in the case of the yellow bag above - a waterproof bag.

The yellow bag holds things we take on day trips so first aid kit, sun hats, duct tape, toilet paper….

The blue bag is ‘the food bag’ and holds multiple cloth bags inside so we only have to hang ONE bag at night to deter bears.

Need some bug spray? Look for the maroon bag. It has all the bug nets and all the bottles of bug spray.

Want to turn the off-tasting filtered lake water into iced tea? Look for the fishy bag. It’s full of drink mixes, creamer, instant coffee, tea and hot Chocolate packets. Bonus of using cloth bags is the bags of powder are protected from punctures.

I’m hungry - what can I have for a snack? Look in the blue bag.

Note: Before each trip we make sure to have a written menu and a breakdown of how many snacks we can each eat. You know how it is - you get a week’s worth of snacks at the grocery store that only last a day? Well turn that into a learning opportunity for your kids. You get five granola bars for the trip. When they are gone they’re gone. It’s amazing how well kids will ration food if they don’t have to worry if their siblings will eat their portion. You can read more about the food experiment that yielded those results constantly if you don’t believe me.

The biggest upgrade we made for our June 2020 trip into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area was to get these little bags off of Amazon that open up to hold a lot of stuff.

We color coded meals in rainbow order for simplicity’s sake. All breakfasts were group together. Same for all lunches and all dinners.

Red for breakfasts.

Green for lunches. Blue for snacks. Purple for dinners. Instead of dumping all those granola bars out every time we wanted to get something from the bottom of the bag we could instead grab a whole bag and find what we were looking for much faster and with less damage to the food. It also helped the kids be more self sufficient. THAT alone was worth the cost of the Chico bags. Why Chico? I have had one Chico reusable bag like these for 15 years and it is a workhorse! I paid $24 new ones and they held up beautifully on our trip.

One change we will make for 2021 is to keep an extra ziplock bag in the lunch bag for those sticky peanut butter and jelly wrappers and pretty much any wrapper garbage for that matter.

My other organization workhorse has been this Plano brand spool holder. It is designed to hold 6 spools of fishing line, but we use it to hold anything and everything that will fit in it.

silverwear, saw, hot pad, sunscreen, bag of toothbrushes/toothpaste, nail clippers, firestarter, chapstick, wet wipes, flashlight,deodorant, dish soap, dish scrubby, matches, lighter, bar of soap, windbreak for the campstove, salt/pepper, glasses cleaner/cloth - basically all the little things that can’t go in a tent because of their scent goes in this container. It helps keep these items from getting lost and broken too.

So that’s how our family of five keeps things simple, organized, and self sufficient for our BWCA trips so we can ALL enjoy a relaxing trip. We used the same packing principle in Alaska, Yellowstone, and on the Pacific Coast too. Everything has a place and everyone can learn where that is by grouping like items together in color specific bags. I mean look at those smiles! We have the best time on our yearly adventures! You can read more about them on Instagram via the hashtag #bearfamilyinthebwca