Coat hangers are a prepper’s best tool – here’s how to use them

Wire coat hangers can be incredibly useful survival items in the hands of a skilled prepper. With countless potential uses, they are capable of so much more than just hanging your clothes. In a survival situation, you can scavenge and repurpose old coat hangers into DIY items to suit your needs. Make the most out of your wire coat hangers by turning them into these makeshift tools. (h/t to ThePrepperJournal.com)

Makeshift hooks and holders

Why limit yourself to using coat hangers for clothes when you can use them to make customized hooks and holders for nearly everything else? Wire coat hangers are sturdy and pliable, so you can twist them into whatever shape you want to accommodate other household items. They will remain in that shape until you adjust them further. You can easily pinch and twist the wires to create extra hoops to hold other small items, such as hats, gloves, shoes, slippers, belts, toilet paper rolls, electrical cords, and portable lights. Several coat hangers can be connected to form a makeshift rack for drying foods and herbs. You can bend hangers to create looped frames that can suspend small trash bags and containers.

Makeshift tent pegs

When you’re bugging out, you will need to keep your shelter steady. Wire coat hangers can be cut and bent to create substitute tent pegs for your tent or temporary shelter. Because the wires are thin, they can easily be driven into the ground to keep your tent in place. Wire coat hangers can be even more useful when you don’t have an actual tent. You can use them to create a makeshift tarp shelter. All you need is a tarp, some rope, and a few wire coat hangers. (Related: Survival scavenging: 10 Items you can re-purpose when SHTF.)

Makeshift cooking aids

Wire coat hangers can be bent around items to hold them together or to prop them up. You can twist them to form toast racks to hold your toast or waffles upright or bend them into grill racks that you can cook meat over. They can also be bent into racks for canning, cooling, or draining food items. If you need an emergency barbecue stick, you can straighten out a wire coat hanger to skewer pieces of meat. Since the wire is heat-resistant, you won’t have any problem suspending it over an open fire. If you don’t have any containers to cook your food in, you can use aluminum or soda cans and suspend them over a flame using bent coat hangers. You can even twist the wires around the can and improvise a small penny stove to hold the can over the fire.

Fence and cage repair

Fences are important for keeping unwanted animals or intruders from wandering into your home. If these fences have holes, then anyone or anything can easily slip in. You can repair these holes using bent wire coat hangers. Similarly, if you want to keep your pets from escaping their cages, you can use bent wire coat hangers to reinforce their enclosures. Since some plants can grow around fences, you can even use several coat hangers connected together to form a makeshift trellis that light vines can climb.

When you repurpose old items into makeshift survival gear, there’s no telling what you will come up with. Your only real limits are your skill and creativity.

Sources include:

ThePrepperJournal.com

SurvivalLife.com