The next time you head out camping, road tripping, or picnicking, don’t waste your money on overpriced ice packs for that cooler. Here’s how to make D.I.Y. ice packs out of reusable containers!
We stumbled into this travel hack out of necessity, while prepping for a day trip to Sequoia National Forest. Seldom-camping-city-slickers that we are, we didn’t even have a proper cooler, let alone enough ice packs to keep its contents cold! Hard pressed to find them at any stores – on the eve of our road trip, which was also the week before fourth of July – we had to get creative.
Stephen had an idea. Gelato freaks that we are we’d been re-purposing Talenti containers and using them for our overnight oats for years. They’re made of a sturdy plastic and have a screw on cap, and a quick test proved them to be water tight!
We filled several of the containers halfway (to allow for expansion) with drinkable water, popped ‘em in the freezer overnight, and BOOM! They worked like a charm, keeping everything in the cooler nice and cool and provided us with some ice cold water to drink on our way home. In fact, the ones we didn’t drink were still partially frozen at the end of our 14 hour day!
You can riff on this idea to suit your own needs, too – mix it up and use a variety of different types and sizes of containers however you like! Just make sure they’re water tight and sturdy enough to withstand freezing, and you’ve got your own D.I.Y. ice packs!
And if you’d like to see how we put ours to use, check out these links:
