How to Make Ice Last Longer in a Cooler

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An ice chest is an important camping essential. But when you’re camping, the last thing you want to be doing is making an ice run every day. It’s important that your food stays cold, but there are things you can do to avoid extra ice runs, and many won’t cost you a penny. These simple tips on how to make ice last longer in a cooler will help you to spend less time and money on ice during your camping trips.

How to Make Ice Last Longer in a Cooler: Invest in a Good Ice Chest

If you feel like you’re going through ice too quickly, it might be due to the quality of your ice chest. Investing in a roto-molded ice chest is one of my biggest camping gear recommendations that can save you time and money later. These ice chests are known for their excellent ice retention. YETI coolers and RTIC coolers have really made a name for themselves in the ice chest industry, however there are many brands to choose from that are designed with similar technology and aren’t quite as expensive.

Freeze Your Food and Drinks

This tip on how to keep your ice last longer in a cooler is one that won’t cost you a penny–freeze all of your food.

Before we leave for a long trip, we freeze just about everything that is going to go in the cooler. Meats, waters, gatorades, and whatever else is going in the cooler can all go in the freezer before you leave, so that it stays colder longer and helps to keep the rest of the food cold. You might need to plan ahead for your first night’s dinner, but aside from that, everything else should thaw out in enough time to enjoy it.

Use Dry Ice

We always separate our large cooler into a freezer side and a fridge side. We start off with a couple pounds of dry ice in the freezer side, and this is where we store our meats. Again, you might need to plan ahead for the first night or move things to the fridge side ahead of time, but dry ice will definitely help to keep your ice chest cold.

Use Two Coolers

Because we have kids who are constantly opening the coolers looking for a drink, we have two coolers–one that is just a standard ice chest for beverages and then our RTIC that stores all of our food. The drink cooler gets opened way more than the other one, but that cuts down drastically on how often our large cooler gets opened. It’s much more important that our food stays cool vs our drinks.

How to Make the Ice Last Longer in a Cooler: Keep Your Ice Chest in the Shade

It might seem like common sense, but keeping the cooler in the shade will help keep the ice from melting quickly. We always place our cooler strategically so that it will remain in the shade for most of the day. Sometimes we’ll also place towels over the cooler to help block it from the direct sunlight.

Be Strategic With Your Loading

If you can plan your camping meals out ahead, try to out things that you won’t be needing right away near the bottom of the ice chest. Keep things that you’ll use daily (cheese, condiments, dips) near the top. This way, you can be a lot quicker when you’re grabbing items you need, rather than leaving the top open for extended periods of time while you dig around in the ice.

Once your ice chest is set, make sure you have all the other camping kitchen supplies you need for a successful camping trip.

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Interested in more? Check out:

• What To Pack on Your Camping Trip
• My Favorite Camping Desserts
• How to Have a Movie Night While Camping
• Money-saving Tips While Camping