DIY Car camping kitchen box for SUV or Minivan - easy setup, organization ideas and hacks

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hey everyone it's summertime and it got me thinking about road trips again and i wanted to see if i could take my suv and all the camping gear that we have and create a little camp kitchen and organizer in the back so this is what i cooked up [Music] so i've been researching camp kitchen boxes and little camper van things for years now and i had a whole scrapbook of things that i thought were pretty nice uh the nomadic is a new one it's on kickstarter i believe that one starts at a thousand but some of these nicer ones like the flip camping box and the ego nest run around three thousand dollars for the cabinetry alone and then you still have to buy the refrigerator so that just seemed kind of crazy but i did think there were some really creative ideas here that i wanted to borrow for my setup and the criteria that i followed for this was there was no need to sleep in the car but i did want to have a really nice kitchen with good storage a sink a refrigerator freezer lots of prep space uh a sink you name it everything you would really need in a really well organized well thought out system and i didn't want to spend a lot of money or a lot of time and so the design that i settled on after a lot of sketching and prototyping is actually super simple all it needs is a 4x8 sheet of baltic birch i got the 12 mil size which is three quarters of an inch uh a single eight foot uh two by four for the legs and a two by three for the stringers and then this perforated rail that we can use for our pull out drawer and for organization i went with a pre-made file cabinet that's right i didn't want to build anything so everything here is kind of semi-homemade and i did want good refrigeration so this refrigerator freezer is really cool so this is a plug-in super efficient compressor fridge freezer and so once i got those two things i started doing a bunch of prototyping in the car propping things up on blocks trying to get a sense of what would work incidentally basketballs are the perfect height for what i was going for and so this is the final result so we have these pull out bins at the bottom there's two of them and they are four feet long and 20 inches wide and these are our big sleeping pads so i'm going to pull those out and the cool thing here is everything is packed but everything is still accessible so we can get into the three drawers and still have our tent on the right hand side in two additional sleeping pads so if we pull over and want to have a quick lunch the fridge is on a nice slider you just pull it out you can grab some cold ice maybe a popsicle grab your sandwich stuff and have a prep surface right there on top so just really nice and accessible super easy very low tech and the slider definitely makes it really easy to get every last inch of usable space the back of the car is kind of a strange shape so having a slider lets you take full advantage of everything and that just straps down uh to this top board here and directly next to it is where i chose to install the file cabinet which is going to be used to organize all of my camp gear so cooking utensils um olive oil spices pots and pans plates all that good stuff and i chose the file cabinet because it gives me full extension drawers uh it was only a hundred dollars and it's just kind of perfect if i had to build all this out of wood it would have taken me forever and you can see i can pull out my camp stove my pots and pans still access the sink so even in a really compact space i still have a very functional setup here alright so let's pull out the other sleeping pads and the tent so we can show you around at some of the other features here so this is what it looks like from the side and you'll notice here it's set back and the reason why is the back of the car is angled quite a bit and again we always have these bins underneath i'm gonna have one bin that has all of my camping stuff in it fire starters you know random stuff like that and the left hand bin i'm going to use for all of my dry goods so i'll have pasta in there and all that good stuff and i think we'll even have plenty of space for some packing cubes all right so this is when things get a little more interesting so what i did is i created a second shelf directly underneath and so if i slide that out i have a massive amount of counter space and it's also really really stable because it's trapped on that metal rail you saw earlier and so it's really strong and what i did is i cut out a piece of wood here for my sink and so this is one continuous cut i did on a jigsaw and so that allows it to sit really nice and flush and so i can use it as a work surface if i want or i can pull it out and i can drop my sink in and so the way this is held in is there are four pieces of metal on the corners and that little kickstand and so that makes it really really stable there's no way it's going to wobble out and when you pull it out what i have is this collapsible silicon sink and the funny thing is i really think this is the same sink that's used in the ego nest which is three thousand dollars and it's super simple it was like 20 bucks on amazon and so you can choose how deep you want it to be it has a drain at the bottom and so all i have to do is move that little kickstand out of the way and then i can just drop this right in and so it's a nice tight fit and so to go with my sink i obviously need a faucet and so rather than doing a really complicated uh 12-volt system or a foot pump or something uh i found this thing on amazon which is kind of interesting this is a rechargeable faucet and so this is designed to go on like a five gallon pole and spring bottle and so what i did is i slightly modified it uh with a roll of tape and some magnets and i got a nice sheath for the tubing so it's a little bit more rugged but it's super simple so this thing is rechargeable you just plug it in it has battery inside and now it's magnetic so i can clunk it right wherever i want and it's not going to go anywhere and so what i did is i put a little disc on the countertop and that disc is the same that you would use in your cell phone for a magnetic mount and i chose that because hey it's the thinnest and cheapest and quickest way to get something magnetic for this thing to attach to and it's really great having running water like this so i can use this sink for washing dishes or washing vegetables and fruit and at the bottom of the sink there is a drain this drain is not hooked up to any sort of piping so the idea would be you could dump this directly if where you were standing happen to be an okay place for it or you could just take the whole bin pick it up and dump it somewhere where it's allowed uh but you know the drain is good doesn't seem to leak at all and this shows you what the sink looks like as you collapse it you just basically push one side and then the next shake it out maybe wash it out a bit and then i have a little cubby in my car where i can just slide this for safe keeping and the third and final part of my water system is the freshwater storage and so for this i chose to use water bricks so i already had an eight pack of these things and if you're not familiar they're a bit like legos they're designed to nest together and each one holds three and a half gallons so with two i have a total of seven gallons of fresh water on board but i can always add as many as i want as long as i have the space in my car and the water bricks are connected to the faucet with food grade silicon tubing and the silicon tubing i noticed was kind of sticky and would collect dirt so i ended up using this woven fiber plastic on the outside which makes it feel a lot stronger so i won't puncture it and at the end to keep it clean i used a little bit of heat shrink and that connects to a brass l that goes through the cap and inside you can see what the tube looks like alone and there's a small run of tube that just goes all the way to the bottom of the water brick and the cool thing about water bricks if you're not familiar is they are like legos so there's like a male and female part and they nest together so you can stack them uh you can put them side by side they're really flexible and so that's all i'm doing here i'm just going to be putting them in the car in the most efficient way and strapping them together i did put little fuzzy feet there's lots of fuzzy feet in this project to make sure that i don't scratch the top so i think this whole system is super simple works really great there is one downside with this particular faucet and the faucet is designed to pull upwards and it doesn't do well if it's below the water brick so that's one thing i have to be really careful of is just making sure it's always above the water line so that it doesn't drip like this all right so let's take a look at the work surface and so i can completely access all three of these drawers as well as the refrigerator and the freezer so if i'm prepping a meal i can have things being washed in the sink i can have my cutting boards i can have my ingredients out on this counter and still have a lot of work surface and i think that's really the main thing i wanted to do here is have everything be organized and so even though it's packed you can quickly get to things and i wanted to avoid that huge bin of random kitchen gear it's so hard to find what you need when you're camping and so in this case everything can be really really clearly organized so looking at the first drawer in this cabinet this is the big one and so in here i can fit my entire set of camp pots and pans and what i did is i got these little magnetic spice racks so these things are great and because this file cabinet's made out of metal i can just stick it on the back now you'll notice there is a small magnet inside and i did that to supercharge these and give them a little bit extra strength and you know we can do things like have large bottles uh this case i might be using this for soap and so what i do is have some magnets in the bottom of this as well so i can stick it down to the bottom but this is a great cabinet for anything tall so i can have my olive oil in here i can have my sprays in here and the cool thing now with this if i put magnets on it it's gonna stay when i put it down and so that's the general idea with this bottom drawer i can put lots of really functional bulky things in it uh the middle drawer has a silver organizer in it so in this case i only have sporks but i'm going to have real silverware in here my knives my measuring cups and spoons which are actually even important when you're doing instant meals you know anything that i might need tongs and then the top drawer can be used for you know i can fit plates in here bowls i can have my lighters uh ziploc bags what have you so you know pretty much anything that i'll need to cook can be really nicely organized in these three drawers and best of all there's a lock so when i'm driving down the road i can lock all three drawers and know they're not going to go anywhere i did notice that when i was parked on slightly uneven terrain the drawers were opening by themselves so i added some magnets inside the drawers and that keeps them secure in times when i don't want them to be locked so the way this is attached to the base is kind of interesting there was four threaded inserts that were designed to accept the casters and so after well three or four trips to the hardware store i figured out the exact metric bolt that i needed and so what i do is thread through those threaded inserts into t-nuts underneath the plywood so that's how i can keep this thing very secure when i'm on the road there doesn't move at all so that's an example of what that full setup looks like all right so we can slide this back in and you can see how that works and at all times i still have access to these drawers so let's pull out the stove and take a look at how that works so we do have a dual coleman propane stove but i decided for this build that i really didn't want to deal with that because honestly most of the time i'm only using one burner and these butane stoves are nice because i think they're a little bit cleaner burning but more importantly they're a lot more user friendly you don't have to go and connect and disconnect one of those one pound propane tanks instead there is a butane tank integrated inside the unit and so to start it up it's much more like using your stove at home you just push down a lever to engage the tank turn the knob and it will start and i think that these are really clean burning compared to my coleman stove this one is 12 000 btu and i believe my coleman stove is 10 000 per burner so this one actually puts out a little more heat you probably see these at omelette stations at hotels and things like that because they are really nice and easy to control accurately and what i have is a gsi bugaboo camper set uh so this has a two and a three liter pot a frying pan and four plates and four cups and all this other good stuff in a really small form factor so this is really great for car family style camping definitely not a back country camp set but i think this really has served us well over the years and uh definitely highly recommended and i'm really looking forward to doing some cooking in this new kitchen so now that we've given a look at that let's take a look inside the car and see how much space is left over for other things so you can see i have one of these rei siesta camping bags here so i think i can fit two sleeping bags there and if we put the seat down you can see the water bricks and underneath the sleeping bag is the electrical system so in this case i'm using my trusty goal zero yeti 1000 as the power plant and that unit is great it it's gonna do a perfect job for powering this fridge in my early tests it can easily power the fridge for about a day and a half with one side as a freezer and one side as a fridge and there's lots of little nooks and crannies you can see i can squeeze the stove here next to the water bricks and on the other side i can squeeze in some sleeping bags so that's basically how much space i have in here there is not a ton and there's three different things connected to the yeti so the first is this input that's coming from the 12 volt charger for the car and then the output from the dc goes to the fridge and then this last thing into the mppt is where i'm going to connect my solar panels and the solar panels are up here at the very very top and so these are the tp solar folding panels that i reviewed earlier and the amazing thing is right now i'm holding 180 watts of solar it's crazy crazy thin and really great and flexible so these i can wedge in right at the ceiling to take advantage of that last inch and you can see how thin these things are i mean they're basically not there and so if i had to have a typical glass panel there's no way i'd be able to fit this so if you unfold one of these you can see what they look like and so my plan with these is just to connect them and maybe leave them even on the top of the roof or angled on the ground and so if we take the sink out we can see where the goal zero charger plugs in so we have a 12 volt port here and to that i'm connecting this 12 volt charger for the yeti lithium so you need this special cable here because the lithium batteries will actually pull too much current from your battery and cause issues and so the rest of the cables are sitting down here in the bay and essentially what i have is this anderson two eight millimeter combiner cable and that is going to connect into the extension cord that's going to run the yeti and then the two eight millimeter cables that connect to the tp solar panels will plug into those so it's pretty simple system for the solar uh the wiring is nice and tidy and that should keep the yeti fully charged up and the best thing about these compressor fridges is they use such a tiny amount of power so when you plug this thing in at most it uses 55 watts and the compressor cycles on and off so you know this thing really sips power but one thing i learned the hard way with the yeti lithiums is the 12 volt port on the front isn't regulated so what that means is the voltage can drop really really low so even if you turn the battery protection on its lowest setting on the fridge it'll shut off around 60 percent so unfortunately you have to buy this regulated cable that uses the anderson power pole connectors kind of unfortunate i hope goal zero fixes this all right so that's the electrical system all right so if you've hung around this long maybe you're interested in how this is actually built in a little more detail so we'll cover that now so essentially this is just a 4x8 sheet of plywood cut in half and then for the legs i've just taken two by fours and cut them to length and you can see there's three two by four legs per side and in between them horizontally i've cut a piece of two by three and just bolted that l channel onto it and underneath here you can see a couple things these are the t-nuts that we use to bolt the fridge slide down and you'll notice i used a liberal amount of those little fuzzy dots and that's to keep the shelf underneath from scratching and the same connection is used right next door for the file cabinet so these are larger t-nuts and larger bolts they're metric but it's the same principle so and the reason we're using t-nuts and we're gluing them in is we want to make sure that we're really bolting these things down so they can't rip out in case of an accident and so this channel is really simple i just screwed it into the legs i added a little bit of felt tape on top so it has kind of a smooth surface for this to ride on and here's a detail that shows the pull the pull is just actually a random piece of webbing that i had and i just used a piece of metal here to bolt it down and this shows the underneath of the sink so these are the little metal pieces just random metal pieces i had lying around i bolted them in the corners and another random metal piece was used to create the little kickstand to give it extra stability these are t-nuts on the legs that are used to attach heavy duty d-rings and i'm going to use these d-rings to ratchet strap this to some connection points near the rear hatch of my mazda and the same thing is going to happen in the front uh where the back seat is so on the back seat there is a really heavy duty place where you can bolt a child safety seat so i'm just going to take a ratchet strap run it through that and connect it where needed to these u-bolts that i've attached inside the legs in the back so that's basically how this whole thing is going to be connected to the car i'm hoping this is a fairly safe thing once i get everything ratcheted down and tight and that's pretty much it so in a nutshell this thing is really really basic another cool thing is there are these little rechargeable uh led lights that are motion lights and i found that i could actually just attach these to the struts magnetically and they fit in the space so i could leave them on and attached and just open and close the doors and if it was night time they would automatically turn on so that was pretty cool very low tech very super simple very inexpensive so speaking of inexpensive how much did all this cost well i think the wood and screws and things were less than a hundred dollars the file cabinet i think was 129. um the most expensive thing is the refrigerator which was 375 dollars the slide i believe was 175 and you know all the miscellaneous things that i need to get like the drawer organizers but i would say all in uh this thing probably only cost seven to eight hundred dollars which is pretty darn cheap in terms of level of effort i put this thing together in two to three days just at night after work and so it's pretty easy and the tools i had at hand were just a small circular saw a jigsaw and a cordless drill so um you know this is the kind of thing that anyone could pretty much tackle and so yeah i mean i don't know if any of these ideas will be useful to you but i thought i'd share what i figured out and what seemed to work for me so thanks for watching i really appreciate it and happy camping thanks all [Music] you

Channel: Todd Parker

Views: 1,103,828

Rating: 4.9165001 out of 5

Keywords: minivan camper, camp kitchen, kitchen box, minivan camp kitchen, diy camp kitchen, goal zero yeti 1000, camp kitchen box, overlanding kitchen, camp sink, kitchen box for camping, camping kitchen, car camping kitchen, camping kitchen ideas, camping pull out kitchen, best camp kitchen setup, suv camping, diy camp diy camp kitchen, car camping suv, car camping kitchen setup, camp kitchen setup, camping kitchen organization ideas, camping kitchen hacks

Id: -lnrjXyIWL8

Length: 24min 48sec (1488 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 06 2020