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
It won’t pass coast guard standards, but a sealed up five gallon bucket makes a passable flotation device in a pinch.
Here’s a kid learning to swim using a personal flotation bucket.
You could expand this idea to make a buoy or a raft. One man took this idea to the extreme by building his own private island held afloat by plastic containers.
The pacific northwest monsoon season is arriving in my neighborhood. I use the term “neighborhood” loosely, as I’m spending a few weeks living on a sailboat.
Life on the water finds even more uses for buckets than life on shore. On rainy days, just a few catch enough water to meet all my drinking and cooking needs. The water is delicious and clear, unlike our municipal source which has a faint yellow sediment tint this time of year.
The only filter I need is an old t-shirt tied over-top one of the buckets. Its main function is to filter out sand, which is ubiquitous on the boat. In my system, the two open buckets are poured manually into the filter bucket when I need water.
The rains here are aggressive enough that I don’t need a panel to collect enough water, but if I used a clean tarp to increase my collection surface I would have enough water to start a water bottling company! What would you pay for a bottle of fresh, pure, five gallon bucket water?
Fishermen or hunters will keep strategically hidden supply caches so they don’t have to carry as much on their way in. A military might use larger supply caches for similar reasons. A new group of people called “preppers” may use a supply cache in conjunction with a “bug out location” to allow them an option to wait out an economic or natural disaster.
I have a supply cache for gardening tools in my square foot garden, which is in a back yard a few miles from where I live. I would never remember to bring everything I need with me every time, so I keep some twine, a knife, a spade and a clippers on site, hidden away in one of the garden pixels.
As you can see, it’s impossible to tell I have hidden something underneath my mulch layer. The tools and supplies stay dry since my supply bucket has a tight-fitting lid and an impermeable plastic surface. It takes about five seconds to get at my tools, much quicker than walking across the yard and unlocking a tool shed!
I think this technique would be useful to allotment gardeners, or even guerrilla gardeners using forgotten spaces and boulevards.
In a few days I’m moving from my current apartment into a much smaller space. I’m adopting the minimalist strategy of only owning a couple of suitcases of stuff, which I think will give me an even greater degree of freedom and mobility.
It shouldn’t surprise you that I’m using buckets as a major part of my moving strategy. I’ve got a bucket for pants, a bucket for shirts, and some smaller buckets for socks, underwear and toiletries. Office supplies have their own bucket, as well as electronics and cords. Each food item I’m taking with me gets a bucket appropriately sized to the quantity I usually buy – the largest bucket is for coarse wheat flour which I use to make bread almost every day.
I’ve so far pared all my possessions down to 2 large suitcases and 1 small one, not counting food which I’m not putting a hard limit on. I should be able to move everything I own in one trip with my bicycle trailer (pictured on the About the Author page.)