Upgrading your camping gear to a new portable camping fridge is one of the best things you can ever do! When you no longer have to stress about melted ice, and food that’s gone off – or worse, beer that’s gone warm! – then you can really start to relax and enjoy yourself at camp. Campers love Adventure Kings fridge freezers because they’re so reliable and so easy to use – all you need to do is set your camping fridge to the desired temperature, and make sure you’ve got enough battery power – particularly camping solar power – to keep it running, and you can then get back to the really important things – like wetting a line, going for a bushwalk or just relaxing around camp listening to the campfire crackle away!

However, as good as a 12v fridge is, there are a few little tips and tricks you should know to get the most out of your new bit of camping gear. Let’s go through three essential tips and explain their importance. They’re not difficult and they’re not complex – in fact you’ll be surprised at just how easy these are to remember. And the best part is, the result will be a portable car fridge that stays icy cold the whole time you go camping – without a bit of soggy food or a warm beer in sight!

1. IT’S EASIER TO KEEP YOUR FRIDGE BATTERY TOPPED UP, THAN TO TRY AND CHARGE UP A FLAT BATTERY

Okay, so this one is technically more about deep cycle batteries and solar panels for camping than fridges, but the point is you need to ensure your 12v fridge freezer has enough electrical power to keep running the whole time you’re at camp. The easiest way to do this is with a camping solar panel – it keeps trickle-charging your deep cycle AGM battery whenever the sun is out. But here’s the trick most people don’t realise. It’s way easier to keep your deep cycle battery topped up almost full, than it is to try and charge it up if it’s close to flat! What that means in a practical sense, is that whenever you’re at camp and the sun is shining, you should absolutely have your solar panel or solar blanket out charging your battery. That way there’ll always be plenty of power to run your 12v fridge, even if the sun dips away for a couple of hours. Think about it like this –  when you’re on a big camping trip and you’re doing hundreds of kilometres driving through the outback, it’s quicker to fill your car’s fuel tank by topping it up every couple of hundred kilometres than it is to wait until you hit the fuel light – because you can never guarantee that outback servo hasn’t run out of fuel, and then you’d be stuck! It’s all about have a bit in reserve at all times, to keep your camping fridge running beautifully cold without interruption.

2. CAMPING FRIDGES USE LESS POWER WHEN THEY’RE FULL!

This one sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s true. Any 12v car fridge will use less power if you keep the inside of it as full as possible – because once the contents inside are cold, they’re more likely to stay cold when you open the 12v fridge, as opposed to a half-empty fridge that’s full of cold air. The easy solution here? Water bottles! Make a point of keeping old two-litre milk bottles. If you’ve got spare room in your fridge, wash the milk bottles out thoroughly until there’s no trace of milk left ( don’t forget under the cap!) and fill them with fresh water. Get the bottles nice and chilled in your home fridge the night before you head away camping, and then transfer them to your portable camping fridge when you’re ready to head away. All that cold water will be happy to stay cold, and will act like a giant thermal sink within your 12v fridge, keeping the entire contents cooler and helping your camping fridge/freezer to use less power! This trick works for a camping fridge run as a freezer too -just freeze the milk containers the night before and put them in when you head away.

3. ONIONS – THE EASIEST WAY TO KEEP YOUR FRIDGE SMELLING LIKE NEW!

Spilled drinks, juices from food – anything can and will contribute to a dirty, gross camping fridge! This is doubly so if you aren’t using your camping fridge and you have it in the shed or garage in between camping trips. The easiest way to prevent your portable fridge from smelling off is to use onions – no joke! First of all use fridge cleaner and paper towel to thoroughly clean out and dry the inside of your camping fridge. Secondly, leave the 12v fridge  open in the sun for at least a day – sunlight is an excellent disinfectant and will naturally remove odours without using any chemicals or cleaners! Finally, cut a regular brown onion in half and simply place it inside your fridge, and then close the lid. Leave it for 24 hours, open the camping fridge and you’ll be blown away at how fresh smelling it all is! There’ll be the slightest onion smell of course, but once you discard of the onions in the bin and leave the 12v fridge lid open for an hour, the faint smell will dissipate and you’ll be left with a camping fridge that’s like new.

These three tricks are essential knowledge for all campers – and will substantially extend the life of your 12v camping fridge! We reckon you’ll never look back once you upgrade to a Kings camping fridge/freezer – you’ll take your camping experience to a whole new level.