Individual milk and condiments

[Frith2013]

Does anyone know where you can buy individual milk cartons, tiny jars of jam/Nutella and those little paper tubes of coffee/hot chocolate? Also perhaps a few of tomato sauce, vinegar etc.

My oldest is going travelling for a few months and I'm trying to get some useful things together but have to think about weight and no fridge!

I've looked on line but it's all for catering and in batches of 50. I suppose I could use the remaining 40 jams up but I wouldn't want the UHT milks!

Why are you so rude OP

People have given good advice to you, no need for rude replies.

It may well say that all sorts of things go in a fridge once opened but guess what, they dont always need to and they wont make you ill. Mayo for example is highly processed if you get the bog standard stuff with so much fat in it, its not going to go off in a cupboard for a few weeks. Same with the other things you mentioned

I suppose you're one of these that keeps butter in the fridge too

I'll be honest OP you sound incredibly rude. Posters have tried to be helpful ( and are correct that ketchup does not need to go in the fridge..)

You do realise that how ever many sachets of everything you buy will still weigh approximately the same as a small jar/bag of each individual item if it's the same quantities?! So although your saying he legally can't add anymore weight, he will still technically be adding weight with the sachets?!

Everything that doesn't need to stay in the fridge when opened (for you) id get a small jar/bag of and everything by else sachets. If he has milk and sugar with coffee, you can buy a box of sachets already mixed up from most supermarkets

Nothing bad will happen to you if you eat unrefrigerated ketchup ffs 🤦‍♀️

Think of all the millions of restaurants that have bottles of ketchup, mayo, brown sauce, BBQ sauce and vinegar sat out on the tables all day long!

Honestly, ketchup and jam do not need to go in the fridge afer opening, a cupboard is fine.
Where would he be disposing of all the packaging that comes with all these tiny packs?

If he can't add any weight to the van how is he supposed to go shopping? Anything he buys will add weight surely?

Tbf I think other posters started it first with the whole "surely he knows how to do this himself" comments. She's just doing something nice, she didn't need a load of bitchy comments!

This entire thread is madness.

If he’s travelling in a van, surely he has to either charge it or fill the tank somewhere? He’s not going to be off-roading in a jungle with no access to ketchup, refrigerated or otherwise.

FWIW, we refrigerate mayonnaise, not ketchup, and we have to refrigerate jam because I can’t stop DD licking the knife and sticking it back in the jar and getting crumbs in, etc. That’s what makes it go off and need the fridge, not its inherent jamness. We keep the jam she dislikes (mine, homemade) in the cupboard. That’s why people have jam spoons.

Have you got him jam spoons, OP, or will he go over the legal weight limit? How has the miniature condiment issue never come up on #vanlife?

Powdered milk is nicer than UHT; just mix with a little water, before adding to tea or coffee.

My dad bought mini jams from
Amazon - he has a whole tray full! Otherwise catering or office supplies?

Putting the fridge reason to one side (on on the 'no fridge' side of that debate), surely he'd prefer the lower packaging impact of 1 pack rather than x plastic sachets. 1 bottle can be recycled, but sachets are straight to landfill and the ever-increasing plastic mountain?

I’m still trying to get this straight - has he been on a weighbridge with the van and now can’t add any more weight (so you’re planning on just adding an indiscernible amount of weight with coffee, ketchup etc?). Or he will need to pay according to his weight so you want to minimise it? (But surely even a bare van is two tonnes at least, so what difference does ~c 5 kg in coffee, uht milk etc matter?) And where the chuff is he going that he can’t either buy these things or do an online order or have you/one of the shops above post things to him (while having ready access to fuel stations)?

We don’t even know if he wants this stuff at all! Poor man has a van full of sports equipment, he’s all weighed and organised and ready for his travels, and Mum upends a catering pack of vinegar sachets on his snowboard 😭

I think if his van is so timeline to the max weight allowed for some reason that he can’t fit several days supply of basic food, then he’s gone wrong somewhere.
Food, water and essentials should be the first things he makes weight allowance for.

10kg of food should make no difference at all. Otherwise he will be weighing every passenger and making sure he doesn’t gain a few kg travelling.

all those individual wrappers will take extra water to rinse each time to recycle also.

The op asked a question. Why have loads of replies been simply snidely opinions?

We tend to buy them from amazon, we used to use sachetsandmore but they were always sold out of most things.

However if his van is at capacity he won’t be able to add any food shopping, sachets etc have mass, so if he is at capacity to take them he will need to ditch elsewhere.

We have a self build camper, when I did it I made sure even with it fully loaded we weren’t at capacity, not only so we didn’t have to worry about fitting things in, but also from a fuel consumption angle.

Pretty sure I've seen these in b&m / home bargains

I've never kept ketchup in the fridge, or brown sauce. Are you supposed to?

If he's going away for months why not just buy the 50 pack? He's going to want more than 10 UHT milk packets (I'm thinking of the tiny single serve ones). If he's not going to use more than 10 in a few months then it's probably not worth taking any!

If he's going abroad, I'd be wary of taking anonymous white powder with me!

Agree with the others. Given he is in a van, it will be much cheaper and more environmentally friendly (and not particularly bulky or heavy) to just buy normal smallish jars/bottles of jam/ketchup/coffee. I can see some small uht milks might be handy.

This. While I don't know the ins and outs of weight limits for vans, it seems odd to be worrying about small variations in weight limits for consumables like this.

What happens if he carries a passenger? Most people weigh more than a decent pile of groceries.

On the matter of food, I'd get a plug in coolbox as it's not part of the permanent fittings, so this wouldn't count towards the weight of the van?

Then you can use normal supplies instead of more expensive, environmentally damaging and hard to source sachets. Plus be able to carry milk and other fresh food.

@ChubbyBubbles thank you for adding the link , that's the one I meant .