5 Unusual Uses for Hammocks: What Else Can you Do with Hammocks?

A recent story about a motherless lamb has caught everyone’s attention. He’s quite a lazy lamb who spends most his time dozing off on a hammock. The lamb became extremely comfortable swinging on a hammock. Well hammocks are good for camping and hanging around- and much better than tent camping. What else are hammocks good for?

 

Equipment shelf

You can use the fabric for hammocks for quite a few innovative purposes. The fabric is so taught that it can be used as a shelf for holding things. Think of all the extra equipment that you use for camping and sometimes you will find that your gear is scattered throughout your garage What is the best way to keep them? Use the hammock as a gear loft or a hanging shelf and store your gear until you need to break them out again.

Food Storage

When you are camping or hiking, it always pays to be resourceful. Especially if you’ve forgotten your bear box! What you can do is just make a makeshift bag with your hammock. You just need a hardy tree branch and tie the loose ends to a long cord. But be sure to hang the bag about 20 feet off the ground. And keep the bag at least 6 feet away from the trunk to keep it away from bears or any other animals. But this is just a temporary solution, because it’s just a matter of time before animals smell your food and come wandering.

Use it as a sail

If you are skiing or kayaking, you can actually use the hammock as a makeshift sail. You just need to tie the long cords of a parachute nylon hammock (like the Serac or Eno Hammock) and let the wind do magic! The wind will fill and slowly lift the hammock making it work just like a sail. You just need to hold the lines to make them airborne. In a few minutes, your kayak will sail. It will be quite an experience!

 

Catching and storing rain water

Sounds weird? Well, it’s quite an out of the box idea. Imagine this – you are camping and the rain refuses to stop for days. Your survival instincts kick in and you start saving the freshwater from the hammock. You just have to keep the hammock up when it’s raining.

Place a fist-sized rock the lowest point hanging in the hammock. The rainwater will be stored effortlessly. When it starts to soak through the hammock, the rock will guide the water so that it drips in the lowest point of the hammock. All you need is a container to catch the dripping water and gravity will take care of the rest. Quite an interesting method to store water from nature; but it works!

 

Use it as a signal flag

Sounds like you’re going on an expedition? There are many cases where people have gotten lost while trekking through the back-country. Since hammocks usually come in bright colors they make perfect flags to catch people’s attention. You can simply stretch them out or hold them with rocks to wave and signal. The bright colored flags will be immediately spotted from the distance. It’s a great rescuing strategy, maybe it’ll save your life one day. If you find yourself in a bit of trouble you may find it quite an effective method to get spotted in the wild or in the snow!

Hammocks are not just good for camping, you can use it in countless ways. Get innovative with your hammocks. Let us know what creative uses you’ve had for your hammock in the comments below.