How the frig do you get it all in the car?

[redderthanred]

Just realised i dont have the best car for camping - ive a clio! ridiclous.
We are camping for 3 nights. one adult. one child. one giant dog.
Anyone got any top tips for cramming stuff in?

Roof box??!

Failing that, vacuum bags for things like sleeping bags. I usually end up cramming things on the front seat and in the passenger footwell. Plastic boxes for all the kitchen stuff. Take minimal clothes and shoes, mini sizes of toiletries, buy food when you get there. I have a Skoda estate and still manage to pretty much fill it up even without DH coming with us but I am not a very minimalist camper I'm afraid. I am one of the fairy light brigade.

cant afford to buy one :(
Sleeping bags are in those compression sacs and are small. Ive done the plastic boxes for kitcheny things and those are the things i think im going to have trouble fitting in. can i stack two on the front passenger seat do you think? or is that really unsafe?

I think two plastic boxes filled with kitchen implements on the front seat of the car might be a bit precarious.

Horrendous though it might sound you might have to spread your kitchen stuff round the car sticking pans, plates, fishslices etc etc into gaps in the rest of your packing. The plastic boxes, although useful and neat, do take up a lot of space. Then if you want something to store it all in neatly when you arrive, you could bring a folding plastic box which would travel flat maybe? If you are worried about loose sharp knives, Lakeland do one with a plastic cover for the blade. They are very sharp and we use them for everything on camp.

yeah - thats what i thought. ill get it in without the boxes - it will be a squash,, but it will go.

maybe ill just take a one ina box and then a bag for life to put the other stuff in once ive unpacked it from around the car! lol

GOod luck!

I would stick the boxes on the front seat, as long as you can wedge stuff round them so they can't fall over/off.

Our car (estate) just gets crammed and we have a roofbox , we usually end up filling even the passenger footwell and I sit crosslegged on the seat.

We're taking two cars . In my defence we have two tiny 3 door cars (Fiesta and Corsa, but old ones!), two adults, a 3yo and an 8mo, and we are only going an hour away.

We gave up on plastic boxes because they take so much room.

Sleeping bags under everything else works for us. The tent and all the other gubbins gets shoved on top and they get squished to nothing.

Good luck op

We have a ford galaxy and still manage to pretty much fill it we do have a big tent though and we don't camp light!!

put dog in the foot well of the front passenger seat.
fill back seat foot wells with sleeping bags , pillows anything squishy, wrap kids in blankets and coats. fill gap between kids with back packs or suitcase.
tent in boot with camping table and chairs.
and top the lot off with kids bikes onto of tent etc in boot.

it took a while but it did fit.

Put the boxes on the front seat with the seatbelt round them?

Or put kid in the front and stuff and dog in the back with the back seat folded down?