Advice for camping newbie please!

[Tomatefarcie]

We went camping for the first time last week...

and loved it!

There was plenty of room in the tent (Vango Tigris 800) for Dp, myself and our 3 DDs, but there was stuff everywhere. Not just clothes and items of every day use, but also the tent bag, pump, you know, all sorts!

So would it be a good idea to get a small tent to store these things out of the way? Or would it be yet another item to pack with us? (our truck was full up!). I was looking at the small pop up tents from Decathlon, what do you experienced campers think?

(and yes, I need to majorly downsize for our next trip, but did use most of the things we took with us).

I put things like tent bag, pump etc anything I dont need in the tent or till the end of camping in the boot. THis time I used those large reusable shopping bags from supermarkets to put each persons clothes in as we were really short of space and it worked really well. I took a pop up laundry bag for laundry. Used those reusable bags for other things too ie toys and books in one, food in another etc.

Last time I went I had invested in camp beds - lots of the stuff just slotted underneath the beds - twas great.

If you have a few pop up shelving systems (ie camp stove thingy's) those are great for buts and pieces :)

I also use those bags for a towel bag and a coat bag and a shoe bag and keep all of these in the car boot too.

We put all the tent bags and stuff we don't need in the roof box, I have plastic boxes now for transporting our stuff and storing it in the tent, its much less messy. I also take 2 Ikea bags 1 for shoes and the other for the beach stuff [if we are at the coast] it just helps to keep stuff together. Also we each have our own clothes bag, I do have to help my youngest keep hers sorted but for the rest of us it works well.

You see, we cant put anything in the boot, as errr..we don't have one. We went with Dp's pick up truck (Warrior type of thing), so have nowhere to put stuff once unloaded.

I like the idea of big plastic boxes though!

I bought some cheap and cheerful pop up laundry baskets from Primark. They fold down to nothing, and everyone has their own coloured one. All the clothes go in there, and get decanted into a big reuseable Tesco bag when they are too dirty to wear any more.

Toys go in another collapsable box, and food goes into a rigid plastic box to protect it from insects etc.

When pitching, I put all the different bags for sleeping bags/beds/etc into the tent bag so I can find them all easily when we are packing up, then shove the tent bag back in the car.

I can't bear mess in the tent!