Car camping kitchen organizing ideas, Roofbag for extra space, Ryobi + Goal Zero Yeti upgrades

hey everyone coming to you from beautiful acadia national park in maine and i figured now would be a good time to do an update on my car camping setup and show you some things that worked and some things that didn't [Music] [Music] all right so let's jump right in so you know whenever you do a design there's the theory and then there's the practice so this is really what the car looks like on a trip and these green bags i thought were kind of interesting these are actually ryubi tool bags i picked up four of these because i got a bunch of ruby batteries and normally i would pack in a bag like this osprey but i found that these small tool bags are actually perfect they're smaller than luggage there's very little overhead in them and you can fit perfectly in here a medium packing cube a small packing cube and then maybe a down jacket and some other loose items your toiletry kit things like that so we found these things work great they have one big zipper on them and each of my four family members would use these in the car as our luggage so i thought that was kind of nice maybe you could pick up some extra large packing cubes and do the same and another difference you probably see here is this dometic refrigerator so in my first video i had an alpa cool dual zone freezer fridge and that thing just died out of the blue totally random uh i took it apart nothing obvious was wrong with it they were nice enough to take it back and give me credit so otherwise i would have been out 400. i ended up getting this dometic cf x 75 dz which is a dual zone freezer fridge i'm going to do a separate video on this thing but it is amazing the build quality is really really good um really nice controls and the quality of construction is amazing uh it's also a beast it takes up a lot of space in the car and i don't yet have a slide for it so i just have furniture slides at the bottom and use that to pull it in and out but this thing is fantastic i also thought i'd show you around the organization here now that it's actually filled out i think in my first video i just had a handful of things in here so this is my utensil drawer you can see i've got all my knives and can openers and measuring spoons and all that good stuff the top drawer i'm using for things like tin foil and my dish towels and the bottom is pretty much like the first video you can see it's got my capped kitchen stove pots pans all that kind of good stuff this is a view of the food so we're going to pull this out these bins worked out great we can fit a tremendous amount of dry goods under here they can stay organized so i really really like these under cabinets and on the other side i basically am using this like my trunk and for storage stuff so the way back are things like my first aid kit i have these bins in the middle and then the front are the quick grab items that i might need things like binoculars and a speaker and things like that and one tip is if you use these plastic drawers things will slide around like crazy in them so i'd recommend getting a shelf liner that's what this black layer is here and then underneath that i actually even put a carpet pad so between the two of those things nothing slides around and that makes a really big difference and then i also use small bins so this can be good for organizing smaller items you can see i've got a couple different bins here one with my paracord and towels and things like that this has flashlights and lanterns and all kinds of electronics and then my last bin has things for the water purification and extra parts and things like that so i just think that using bins like this can be really helpful just to keep things super organized when you come in here you just want to be able to grab and go and not dig around so that's some real world organization tips for your camping and the big question that people ask me regarding storage is how the heck are you going to fit all this gear in your car and as i started using it well the answer is i couldn't so i ended up getting a roof bag and my situation is interesting because i have no roof rack at all and i am going to be selling this car in the fall so i didn't want to invest in a roof rack and a big roof box so these roof bags and there's a bunch of different brands out there they're really nice because they are relatively inexpensive this was about a hundred dollars and you can see how much it fits i can fit all of my sleeping bags my sleeping pads my tent pillows you name it this thing fits 15 cubic feet and everything that i needed would fit in there and this particular model is made by a roof bag they're made in the us they had really good reviews on amazon and so i thought i'd give it a try the material is this really heavy duty waterproof material the zipper is also waterproof and it's fastened to the car with these buckles and they attach through loops in the bag and you can see an example of how this looks when it's actually on the car and one thing that i found is that you really did need to pack this carefully with more height in the back and a little bit less in the front so it's a bit aerodynamic and you really need to torque these things down so it's tight and so once you get that dialed in it really does work quite well if it's too loose the wind can get underneath it and cause some issues so you definitely want to set this up right in this particular case i ended up with a crisscross pattern there's in the instructions a lot of really good detailed information about how to set it up in each car but i found this worked fairly well and i felt pretty secure about it so attaching to the car is a really quick operation and i really never run into any troubles at all using this i did purchase these extra accessories which were hooks i thought these would be better so i wouldn't have the connectors inside the car but on my mazda the hooks couldn't handle the thickness around the windows so these don't work out lastly to protect your roof they sell these basically black carpet pads that you can put down between your roof and the bag so you keep any scuffing from happening so yeah overall you can see a different configuration of how i packed it on a different trip and yeah this thing works great i was able to free up a lot of space in the car and put all the bulky items like chairs and tents up on the roof where they're out of sight and out of mind and one thing i found really useful with the roof bag is once i got to a campsite and i unloaded all my gear from it i could roll it up throw it in the car and then use the roof for my solar panels so that worked out really well one downside though is being in a woodsy campsite the solar panels really hardly worked at all because of all the shade and honestly i ended up using my alternator and the car charger for the yeti to juice it up and speaking of power i actually ended up bringing a pair of these ryobi fans with me as i was camping which i know sounds kind of silly but these work great when you're in a hot tent or a hot car we also use them when we're just sitting around the table at night and we could use them on low next to the fire pit to stoke the fire which was pretty cool i also got a bunch of these 4 amp hour batteries during ryobi days so i would have a bunch of spares in the car and i can plug these directly into the fans and run them off of that but they also are hybrid so if i was in a place with power i could just use an extension cord and plug the fans in directly i also picked up one of these inverters now these batteries don't hold a ton of power but in a pinch they work really well in the tent to charge our devices like our phones and our watches and ipads and i also picked up a ryobi car charger so when we're driving down the road we can be charging up a battery as well as running the fridge and recharging the yeti all together it's a pretty small load on the alternator so i feel comfortable running all three of those at the same time and one other thing to mention if you are using the previous version of the yeti lithium not the x that the 12 volt port is unregulated and so what that means is that as the battery approaches about 60 percent the voltage will drop low enough that even if your fridge is at the lowest battery protection level it will shut off so you actually have to buy this cable from goal zero to regulate the output and basically it just plugs in through an anderson connector and on the other side is an anderson and a female 12 volt port that i just used to plug into the cable for the fridge and this actually worked like a charm so one final thing on this particular trip since my faucet was broken i decided just to use the spigot that you can buy for the water bricks and it turned out these things are kind of disasters first of all they won't empty if they're less than half full so the last half you have to pick it up and more importantly these things would leak quite a bit and i kept tightening the nut that would hold this thing on and i kept finding it just popped off in the water brick so somehow it was just letting itself go so the usb faucet you can see the video i did on that is definitely a much better way to go on this thing so that's it you can see this is an ever-evolving system so look for even larger changes as i transition over to my pacifica minivan this winter so hopefully this was helpful thanks for watching and please subscribe for updates thanks you

Channel: Todd Parker

Views: 22,541

Rating: 4.9514418 out of 5

Keywords: car kitchen storage ideas, roofbag, goal zero regulated 12v cable, camping storage, car camping, ryobi fans, roof bag, car camping kitchen, goal zero yeti 1000, Alipcool refrigerator, Dometic CFX3 75DZ, car camp kitchen, car camping organization, car camping ideas, roof bag review, car roof storage no rack, ryobi inverter, goal zero yeti, camp kitchen, camping kitchen, dometic fridge, van life, camping gear essentials, camping gear 2020, camp kitchen diy, Camping gear

Id: lOY4my0NjXo

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2020