Having just recently used this on a car camping trip, I’m now pretty confident in thinking you need to have a few of these with you, and these are not luxury items but a necessity.

With an RV, you might have hookups for water at your site, but with non-RV car camping, you’ll need water for everything, be it basic hygiene, doing dishes, or whatever. These buckets may be small, but the large opening and long strap allow for both dish washing straight from the bucket and shoulder carrying if lugging two buckets at a time. With a few of these you can have a wash, rinse and second rinse when doing dishes. Or have some water available for a variety of other needs.

So, while it’s usefulness for a backpacking trip is highly questionable, on a car camping trip, don’t leave home without it.

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As a clutz with bad experiences with storage, I have a fundamental dislike of textile materials used in gear.

But sometimes, the ability to fold things up and make them compact weigh in favor of the item.

This bucket is one such device.

When car camping, if running water isn’t readily available, using buckets to bring larger volumes of water to where you need it is a real advantage. Whether for hygiene, for use in cooking water, to put out fires, or to wash dishes or clothes, a bucket can be really useful. But who wants to lug around a large plastic bucket or two for car camping?

I don’t expect this unit to last very long. I’m sure the weight of the water will cause tears or leaks in the seams, and the material is a plastic vinyl that I think is similar to rubber in that it likely contains oil. This would mean that over the long term or with fairly big changes in temperature, it will likely crack and lose it’s water retention abilities.

But you know, for the low price and real convenience, I wouldn’t mind buying one or two of these every year or two.

And who knows, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this will last more than two seasons. Time will tell, and if it does, I’ll try and report back here.