Book Excerpt: Chapter 29. Store Camping Gear in Your Trunk

This post is an excerpt from my book Safest Family on the Block, coming out from YMAA Publishing on Tuesday, May 6th, 2025. If it’s before that date, you can preorder it here. If it’s after that, you can buy it at the same link. What follows is one of 101 tips, tricks, hacks, and habits to help protect your family better. I spent five years working on it, and I’m proud of how it turned out.

 

Lots of families go camping once a year or so. Most should. Camping gives families quality time together and helps us all appreciate little conveniences like running water and clean clothes. There’s also a raft of evidence suggesting time outdoors is good for our mental and physical health.

But that’s not why I’m bringing camping up here.

One drawback of camping is all the gear. You need a tent, sleeping bags and pads for each family member, a camp stove, some water storage, a first aid kit, and odds and ends like camping cookware, rope, basic tools, and firestarting equipment.

That takes up room in the house. Maybe a corner of the closet. Maybe a few tubs in the garage. Maybe some space in the shed. It’s not much room, but it is room you could be using for other things.

Which is the second most important reason to keep it in your car. So what’s the first reason?

What is Camping Gear?

Let’s look at that list again: tent, sleeping bags and pads, camp stove, water storage, medical supplies, cookware, rope, tools, and firestarting equipment.

In other words: shelter, warmth, food, water, fire, and basic tools. The things you need on hand in an emergency. If you keep them in your backpack, they’re even in an easily portable container.

Kept in the car, stored camping gear becomes an ideal bug-out bag ready and waiting for any emergency. It also contains most of what you’ll need if your car breaks down and you can’t summon help right away.

It Gets Even Better

The camping gear isn’t just emergency equipment. It’s emergency equipment you’re already familiar with. You’ll never be struggling with the instruction manual as the stuff hits the fan.

It’s already in the car. If an emergency calls for you to hit the road, you just get in and go. If you’re sheltering in place, you know where the gear is. Since you drive your car to most places you go, the gear is on hand if an emergency strikes when you’re not at home.

This plan also costs less. You don’t have to buy camping gear and a bug-out kit. They multitask.

 

 

One Last Little Thing

Put some maps in there. They aren’t necessary when you go car camping or hiking with the family, but if things get really sketchy you can’t rely on GPS.

I recommend putting in a map of your city, a map of your county, and one of your state. When you travel, pick up a map of that area, too. Use it to teach your kids how to read and work with maps on paper, then store the ones you think might be relevant later on.