Trek Buckets

The first thing we did to get ready for Trek was to make our buckets. We used ours to carry everything but our sleeping equipment. They went on the handcarts each day as we trekked and carried things like bandaids, mess kits, and personal items.

I picked up some squares of thick foam from our local grocery store Smith's. The colors were kind of random, blue, yellow, pink, and white. They were about two inches thick. I noticed that they sold packs of 4 at Walmart, but they were only 1 inch think.

I cut the foam into rounds by tracing a plate the size of the inside of my bucket lid. I created the cushion by adding a half inch all the way around and cutting 2 circles out of my fabric for the top and bottom. I used a length of fabric 3 inches wide and twice the circumference to make the gathered edge of the cushion.

My son cut out smaller rounds of masonite using an electric jig saw to use as bottom boards and I added adhesive velcro to the bucket and the bottom of the masonite.

Then I hot glued the bottom of the cushion to the top of the masonite board and Voila! The nice thing about having a removable cushion is that when it rains you can flip it off and put it inside of the bucket. The cushion will compress so it doesn't take up too much space.

We ended up using our buckets for everything. Here the kids are playing a friendly game of wink!