DIY Car Camping Window Screen
If you haven’t noticed, I don’t particularly like bugs. I don’t exactly dislike them, but I’m allergic to most o fthem and so I prefer they do their own thing and leave me alone. This is particular true when we’re camping. ESPECIALLY when we’re camping out in the middle of no where, rural USA where the closest hospital is an hour or so away.
Since buying our Toyota Sienna, we’ve mostly been van camping out of that. We’ve only had it since November, so it’s been cold the majority of the time and there wasn’t really a need to have a window down. But now that’s it’s summer, that’s changed. So before heading back east to the land of humidity, I decided I should probably find a solution to this.
My solution… a DIY Car Camping Window Screen.
Materials Needed:
Screen, duck tape, some heavy duty magnets and scissors.
Instructions:
Step One: Cut a piece of screen to completely cover your window. I used the magnets to hold the screen in place while I did this. Please don’t just my scissor skills.
Making sure the screen is the right size.
Step two: Use duck tape and outline the outside of your screen. Do this on both sides, so that there isn’t any adhesive showing. This will help keep the form of the screen and in our case, make the edges blend into our mini van.
I used white duck tape to match our van. I did consider our angry birds tape but I thought that would gain unwanted attention when stealth camping.
Step three: Use the magnets to hold the screen in place. Put down the window as far as you’d like, and enjoy a bug free night with fresh air.
Final product! The windows go up and down as needed, while keeping the bugs out!
A few notes: You could put another layer of duck tape over the magnets, so that you don’t have to keep track of the magnets. This isn’t a bad idea, but then the screen would only be good for one side of the car. I like that it’s versatile right now, though I may make another one later and do that.
Make sure the top of your screen is still on the door and not on the top of the car. If you put it on the car frame and not the door frame, magnets go everywhere when you open up the door.