Camping Archives | Page 4 of 4

Shelving

Posted on March 7, 2013 by trevor

Not only do buckets belong on every shelf in your house, they are perfectly capable of being the shelves themselves!

The most well-know bucket shelving was at the Occupy Wall Street “people’s library.” The entire library was designed to be packed up at a moment’s notice if the police cracked down on protesters.

The biggest reason to use buckets for shelving are their portability.

I remember spending hours with a sledge hammer when we broke down our shelves in Denver. Those shelves were lovingly custom crafted out of heavy oak water bed boards. I think they ended up as firewood. If they had been made of something repurposable like a 5 gallon bucket, I guarantee their component parts would still be with us today.

Continue reading →

Wine Rack

Posted on November 8, 2012 by trevor

Category: 5 Gallon Bucket Uses

Here’s a portable wine rack I put together for a camping trip.

The cardboard frame is from an actual wine box, with three of the slots cut off to fit snugly in the bucket. Buckets are superior to boxes for camping trips because they are waterproof and come with a built-in handle! You could even float one behind you on a river journey like we did in the portable cooler article. Continue reading →

Cutting Board

Posted on May 22, 2012 by trevor

Category: 5 Gallon Bucket Uses

Here’s a neat add-on to a kitchen bucket – the bucket board! You can cut vegetables right on the board and conveniently scoop the bits you don’t eat into the bucket. This would work well with a five gallon compost caddy, or even directly into a five gallon worm farm.

The biggest users of this unit are fishermen, who use the bucket board to clean fish while on the job. It would also work camping (you do bring five gallon buckets camping with you right?)

See more details on the five gallon bucket board.

Washing Machine

Posted on April 24, 2012 by trevor

Category: 5 Gallon Bucket Uses

It’s very easy to make a five gallon washing machine, you just need the following ingredients:

Drill
Plunger
Five Gallon Bucket
Tight fitting lid

Make sure you use a brand-new, clean plunger for this project. Here’s a link to a cheap one on Amazon.

Building this unit is very simple, just take note of these 2 special design features that will make your washer work more effectively.

Tight entry hole Cut the hole in the bucket lid to fit the plunger handle snugly, to ensure water doesn’t find its way up and into your face.

Plunger holes Drill about a dozen 1/4″ on the sides and top of the plunger to allow the water a place to flow through.

If you skip this step, your plunger will buckle and won’t pump up and down smoothly.

An even simpler design

You can simplify this design drastically, just fill one or two buckets with soapy water and your laundry, and agitate your clothes thoroughly. See our article on hand washing in a 5 gallon bucket.