Tag Archives: tips

We at Outersports have scoured through the internet and tried several ideas to find which awesome camping hacks work the best. We've gathered together 8 awesome camping hacks into one place for you to try out.

Burning dry bundles of sage in your campfire, or even spreading some smoke around your tent, will keep mosquito swarms away. Apparently it is one smell that reminds them of a desert fire and they will flee for their lives. This is one of those times you will be happy to let the campfire smoke drift over you to keep yourself from being eaten alive by bugs. Besides, the smell of burning sage is very pleasant. Native American tribes often used soft sage bundles for toilet paper. Our staff have tried both and can vouch for the benefits of sage as a camping hack. Once you have a nearly mosquito free campsite you'll always keep a bundle of sage in your gear.

Scrambled eggs with cheese and bacon is one of the best tasting breakfast meals when you are in the outdoors. Keeping your eggs from cracking inside your cooler can be problematic. Some companies offer fancy plastic carrying cases for eggs to keep them safe, but we've found that simply cracking them down a funnel into an empty plastic water bottle before you leave home is the best option. If you are careful you can still have sunny side up too. The mouth of the bottle works well with the texture of raw eggs, allowing you to squeeze out one egg at a time if you take your time to do it right. Simply crack your eggs into the bottle before you leave home and set the bottle in your cooler for worry free egg transportation.

Anybody who has gone camping for the weekend eventually faces the inevitable squat in the woods. Having toilet paper is great, but it always gets smashed or falls in the dirt and twigs. If that happens at an inconvenient time then it can make a situation more awkward than it has to be. Simply use an empty plastic coffee container for a portable toilet paper carrier. Use your knife and cut a small vertical slit in the side of the tub and it becomes a handy toilet paper dispenser. You can even get fancy with paracord rope to allow you to hang it from limbs if you'd like.

Learning how to roll your clothing into an easily accessible skivvy roll will change the way you pack your clothes forever. You can fit an entire change of clothing into one neatly tucked roll for easy storage and packing if you follow these simple steps. First, place your shirt flat on the floor. Second, place your underwear in the center of the shirt where the neck is. Third, fold the arms of the shirt over the underwear. Fourth, lay your merino wool socks in an overlapping manner so the opening of the socks extends out where the sleeves of the shirt used to be. Fifth, roll the shirt down over the socks from top to bottom into a tight skivvy roll. Now you take one sock at a time and fold it back over the shirt. There you have it! You now have a perfectly rolled change of clothes that will fit in your backpack for quick access.

This awesome camping hack is one that has been used by survivalists and hikers for decades. Even if you have a watch on it can be difficult to guess how much daylight you have before you are left in the dark. Standing and looking at the sun to see how fast it might be moving is a horrible idea. What you should do is simply hold out your hand, palm facing toward you, at arms length. Keep your fingers together and horizontal to the horizon. The width of each finger is roughly 15 minutes. Place your hand so the sun is just above your index finger and count how many finger widths are left before the horizon. If the sun is three fingers above the horizon then you have 45 minutes of daylight left. It's really that simple and it works.

Rather than throw away your empty toilet paper and paper towel rolls you can use them as a fire starting log. When you clean out your dryer lint after doing a load of laundry just stuff the lint into the cardboard tube and keep them for your next camping trip. Set it in the bottom of your kindling and light the lint with a spark or lighter and watch it easily catch fire. It is a great way to reuse something you normally send to the landfill and it works perfectly. Keeping the tubes in a plastic bag will keep the lint off the other items in your pack.

In the snow or raining weather it can be difficult to find dry kindling or grass to start a campfire. Find some dead twigs and small branches and use a simple pencil sharpener to create the perfect fire starting shavings. You might think you can do this with your pocket knife, but it will take you a lot longer than you think to create the perfectly dry shaving that a pencil sharpener can. Simply trim off the tiny limbs and keep them for larger kindling, then shave the twig with the pencil sharpener for perfectly dry and paper thin fire starter shavings. Try it once next time you're camping in the snow and you'll keep one handy from them on.

Save empty prescription bottles, and peel off the label, to reuse them for camping storage containers. Depending on the size of the bottle you can place a variety of helpful items inside to keep them safe and dry in the outdoors. They make great portable first aid kits, fire starting kits, or even spice containers for cooking. The child safety locking lid can come in handy if you have children you want to keep out of the items inside as well.

In the heat of the summer it can be difficult to find ways to cool down without spending money on expensive air conditioning units. We've put together a short list of ideas to help you cool down and beat the summer heat.

Rule number 1 is to always stay hydrated. If you go all day drinking soda, or rely on getting your fluids from the food you eat, then you can seriously dehydrate yourself. If you get too dehydrated then your body will lose its ability to sweat. Without being able to sweat you will lose the ability to regulate body temperature and there can be serious consequences to your health. Stay hydrated with cold clean water. Adults should try to drink around 3 liters of water per day to stay healthy.

Build your own air conditioning system for cheap! The internet is full of designs and ideas to fit your budget when it comes to making a homemade cooling system. Some use liquid cooled copper tubing, other use old coolers and fans, and some just use frozen water bottles and and buckets. Do some searching online for creative ideas to keep cool without breaking the bank this summer. You might be surprised to find you have some of these items already sitting around your house. Here is an instructional video on how to create a bucket air conditioner system:

Pick your fabrics. If you are working in the yard with a wool shirt and cotton jeans on then you are bound to get hot and tired much faster than if you dress for the job. There are plenty of nice looking golf shirts that are designed for walking in the hot sun all day. Ogio, Nike, and many other brands of golf shirts can keep you cool, wick moisture to keep you dry, and keep you looking good no matter how hot it is outside.

To cool down your body temperature more quickly you should know where to place an ice pack. There are specific locations on your body where your arteries are closest to the surface of the skin and will help cool your internal temperature the fastest. Place the ice pack on your forehead, neck, inside of your elbow, wrist, groin, behind your knee, or on your ankles to cool of quickly.

toilet paper seedlings

As the old saying goes "Use it up. Wear it out. Make it due or due without." Another well known saying is "Waste not want not." Well, we have put together a list of 6 items to reuse at home or in the garden. Rather than toss them in the garbage we can get creative and reuse these every day objects for something new and useful.

Toilet paper rolls can simply be cut and crimped to be reused as seedling starters. Simply fill them with your favorite potting soil, plant the seeds, and water them in your starting tray. Once the seedling is sprouted you can plant the entire toilet paper roll and all into your garden bed where it will decompose into mulch.

Egg Shell Seedlings

Similar to the toilet paper roll seedlings, half of a used egg shell also works great. Next time you crack an egg put half the shell back into a paper egg carton. Fill the egg shell with potting soil and plant your seeds inside. Use the old egg carton like you would a regular seed tray. Once the seedling has grown enough you can take the egg shell seedling out to your garden and bury it in the soil. Remember to crack up the shell as you place it in the ground so the roots can find their way out. The shell will biodegrade without any problems.

Wine Crate Garden

Old wooden wine crates or milk crates can be used as portable garden boxes. They are not only functional, they also add a level of character and flexibility to your flower beds for that unique look and feel you might be going for. Shuffling and stacking old wooden crates instead of planting pots allows you to get creative with a wood burner, screw them into fence posts, or attach them to the side of your deck.

Pallet Garden Idea

Old pallets can be re purposed to perfectly divide rows, keep down weeds, and give you a dry surface to walk across in the garden. The creativity and flexibility that pallet gardens can offer are almost endless when you begin to research ideas. They can even be stood on their side to create a vertical garden for strawberries, radishes, or other small plants and herbs if you want to save ground space.

Plastic Bottle Sprinkler

Empty plastic bottles can be reused as sprinklers for your yard or even just for your kids to run through on a hot day. You can poke holes in the plastic with a needle or thumb tack and then simply put it on the end of your hose and turn it on. Next time your sprinkler breaks you won't have to rush out to buy a new one, get creative and try an old plastic bottle instead.

Coffee Can Herb Garden

Old coffee cans can be reused for many different things. Nail them to fence posts around your garden to keep your favorite herbs or flowers separate and free of weeds. They can be pained to look however you want and are conveniently portable if you need to move them somewhere new. The idea is to get creative and stop wasting thing by throwing them into a landfill. You might surprise yourself with what is possible.

At Outersports.com we have an extensive lineup of summer clothing and workwear to keep you comfortable at home or in the garden.

Mother Nature can be brutal, but somehow throughout thousands of years we homo-sapiens have endured. Through the process of natural selection the strongest have survived while the weakest perish under the burden of their own flaws. Survival of the fittest!

Charles Darwin typically gets credited with that phrase, "Survival of the Fittest", but it was actually Herbert Spencer who coined it in 1864. What might be more surprising is that our modern concept of the "fittest" is far from it's original meaning. Darwin and Spencer both used the term to indicate a species ability to reproduce effectively and it had very little to do with a species being bigger, faster, or stronger than another. So, now you know why the human population continues to grow and spread in spite of many of us not necessarily being bigger, faster, or stronger than the last generation. Any species that is efficient at reproduction in its adapted environment is thereby "Fit" enough to survive. What does this mean? It means you and I are not necessarily physically superior to anything else on the planet and therefore have no special get out of danger free card.

Every year and every season thousands of people wander into the wilderness under the delusion that they are bigger, faster, smarter and stronger than all other species around them. They try to pet the buffalo, ride the bear, eat the red berries, and drink from the "fresh" spring creek. They serve as shining examples to the rest of us as they fly, crawl, drift and drag through mother nature.

For those brave individuals I present Darwin's Rules for the Outdoors:

Safety Tip #1 - Never Pick Up Hitch Hiking Bears. In other words don't take animals home with you. Transporting wild animals is not only illegal it's highly dangerous. As much as you love that little baby fox that looks helpless on the side of the road you should never try to pick it up and take it home.

Safety Tip #2 - Warnings Aren't Optional. Take for example this pleasant looking quarry lake near Harpur Hill in Buxton. Despite the highly visible warning signs posted everywhere swimmers, including children, were continually swimming in the lake. The toxic acid levels in the water were so dangerous that it was literally safer to swim in a lake of pure liquid bleach than what they were dunking into. The poisonous waters were a deadly combination of chemicals and rubbish that deceived many swimmers because of the beautiful aqua blue color of the water. Local authorities have since dyed the water black to discourage swimming. The moral of the story is that just because it looks safe you should ALWAYS obey the warning signs.

Safety Tip #3 - Veggies Aren't Always Good For You. Every year hikers and campers put themselves in danger by touching, eating, climbing, and interacting with vegetation they aren't familiar with. Take the time to study the local plant life before making a salad or using it to clean up after a bathroom break. Most of what you have in your cupboards has been highly adapted for human consumption. Nature isn't that convenient. If you aren't trained in the vegetation and its uses then it's probably best to leave it alone.

Safety Tip #4 - Don't Pet Cute and Fuzzies. When people go into the outdoors they often think that wild animals are harmless so long as they aren't carnivores. They see the furry buffalo and think it's docile like a cow. Well, just talk to a local cattle rancher and they'll tell you how safe even a domesticated cow can be. Aside from the cute and fuzzy animals you may encounter there are the small and nasty variety that should be considered. Mosquitoes alone are responsible for almost 3 million deaths in the world every year. In the United States over 50 people per year die from bee and wasp stings. At least 31 people per year, on average, are killed by their household dog! So, be smart and don't pet the wild ones!

Safety Tip #5 - Mushrooms Aren't Safe. Especially Flaming Gasoline Mushrooms. Thanks to Smokey the Bear, most people are aware of the dangers of forest fires. What goes more unnoticed are the countless amount of preventable injuries and deaths that occur when people don't respect small fires. Tossing foreign objects into campfires is a recipe for disaster. You may not be the type to toss a jug of gasoline into the flames, but a mere unopened can of soup can become a flaming grenade of red hot shrapnel waiting to explode. Don't play with fire, but also don't underestimate it.

Safety Tip #6 - You Aren't a Ninja. Falling deaths and injuries are one of the most common accidents in the outdoors. A simple hop from on boulder to another can lead to a serious mechanical injury. Spraining a toe from a seemingly easy jump across a creek could leave you stranded overnight without proper gear. Be honest with yourself and know your physical limitations. Take a moment to find a safe way across or down.