What do you do with your gear at night?

I just got back from a 17 day January trip in the mountains of Tennessee and had the good fortune of having a midnight visitor into my tent vestibule. I went 17 days and didn't see a single fellow backpacker and so her visit was welcomed as I was happy for the company---(and the neat thing is, I was camped right next to her home in a hollow log and she came over not to eat my food but solely to check me out and say hello and then returned to her home).






This is my scenario but then my tent has almost 37 sq ft of interior space.



The garbage bag idea was my usual practice when I had smaller tents.

Pretty much this. I usually use a one man tent with very little extra room for storage in it. I can fit my hiking clothes, essentials such as light, hat, gloves, camera, book, etc. in the tent. I use a rain cover over my pack outside the tent at night just in case. I always hang my food since I'm usually in bear country. My shoes and few other items are stored in the small vestibules on either side of the tent.

You know, I never got used to clipping my pack to the suspension, like some of my friends do. I tend to use a toggle and put it on a tree.

Perhaps as my gear lightens up, I'll feel a little more comfortable with hanging it from my suspension.

I hang may smellies in my kitchen sack, including stove and pot. Clothing gets stuffed into another sack to form a pillow. Headlamp, camera gear, and water bottle(s) are stashed next to me in the tent. As is a book if I brought one. Everything else is left in my backpack on the ground in the tent's vestibule.

Not much winter camping anymore, but having spent a few Sierra nights out, now usually 3-season, and, being a bit anal -
Everything has a place.

- Similar to most above, any spare clothes (of which there are few - fleece, rain pants, waterproof shell ...not much more) in a stuff sack pillow with my down vest used as a pillow case...plush.

- Kitchen just left out - usually on some nearby rock-slab table.

- Bear can right outside my tent door - a good place to sit while putting on boots.

- Hiking poles (salt licks) are problematic. Stuck in ground with "clean" wet socks over handles - Protects handles and dry socks in the morning...or stash the poles under tent, outside edge, along with my fishing rod tube.

- Backpack now mostly empty, sleeps under vestibule...all pockets left open. Boots crash there too. Headlamp loosely strung around my neck; night water bottle just outside tent door...

- Sun glasses, maps, stash, and any other pocket crapola gets put in my Tilley, upper tent corner.

Do critters leave medications alone? I've wondered about whether they need to be treated like food and toiletries. I mostly keep them with the food -- the places where animals were most active had bear lockers or ammo cans and I figured that there was a good reason for that, so I threw the FAK in with the food. But I like to have ibuprofen and tums with me when I can.

I'm not sure that ibuprofen has enough smell to count. And what smell is has is more like plastic than edibles. I wouldn't sleep with the fruit-flavored chewable kiddie version. Or the Tums.

In griz country? I'd hang it all, maybe even including my dirty socks