Camping Gear You Do Not Need, and What to Buy Instead

The test

This is not an argument for buying nothing. It is an argument for putting the same money into the categories where it changes the night — the sleep system, mostly — which is the case made in is expensive camping gear worth it.

The single-purpose kitchen gadgets

The pattern is worth naming: kitchen gadgets are bought at the moment of enthusiasm and used at the moment of exhaustion, and the second moment always wins. A cookset with a strainer lid such as the GSI Bugaboo Camper at 3 lb 10.1 oz for four replaces several of them by itself.

Furniture that is not a chair or a table

A camp chair per person and one table is the whole furniture requirement for most campsites. The additions that get bought and then left at home: folding side tables, footstools, hanging organisers, and shoe racks.

The exception is a dedicated cook station, which genuinely earns its place because it gives the stove a stable surface at a sensible height. A camp kitchen station is doing a job that a picnic table does badly, and the safety argument is in carbon monoxide and stove safety when camping.

Gear bought for the trip you are not taking

This is the expensive category. A stiff mountaineering boot for three-mile trails. A 3,000 watt-hour power station for a weekend of charging phones. A four-season tent for summer camping. A 65 L pack for day walks.

Each is a good product being asked to do the wrong job, and each is heavier, more expensive and less comfortable at that job than the correct product. Buy for the camping you actually do this year, and upgrade when the trips change — the sizing arithmetic that prevents the power station version is in power banks vs power stations, and the footwear version in hiking boots vs trail shoes.

Duplicates of things you already own

• Camp cutlery, plates and mugs, when the kitchen cupboard is full of them. Bring a set from home in a bag; nothing about camping requires special crockery.
• Towels. A microfibre towel is genuinely better for packing, and an old bath towel works for a car camping weekend.
• Clothing. Most of a camping wardrobe already exists in your drawers. The exceptions are the base layer and the shell — per how to layer for camping — and the socks, which are the cheapest genuine upgrade there is.
• A camping pillow, for car camping. The pillow off your bed works and is better. This changes the moment you are carrying it.

Things bought to solve a problem that has a free fix

A tent fan, when opening both doors and every vent creates a cross-flow that does more. A thicker sleeping bag, when the problem is the pad underneath. A brighter lantern, when the issue is where the light is placed rather than how much of it there is. A bigger tent, when the issue is that gear is stored inside rather than in the vestibule.

Every one of those has a free answer that works better, and the pattern is worth internalising: diagnose the cause before buying the fix. The most expensive version of this mistake is buying a warmer sleeping bag to solve a cold pad — see why you get cold in a sleeping bag.

What to buy instead

With the money not spent on the list above: a better sleeping pad, because R-value is a measured number that directly determines whether you are warm. Good socks, which prevent more misery per dollar than anything else in camping. A second cooler. A headlamp each. And a thick self-inflating pad if you car camp, because 3.9 in of loft is what makes a side sleeper comfortable.

Then stop. A complete car camping kit is about twenty-five objects, and the difference between an enjoyable trip and a miserable one is almost never one of the other fifty. The sequencing is in start here, and the secondhand route through the expensive half is in how to buy used camping gear.