Our family does a lot of weekend trips. Before kids it was easy to just throw my stuff in a bag and go but now it is a lot more stressful. The worst is getting somewhere and realizing you forgot something important like the camera part of the monitor! I have done that before. My husband is super organized but I missed that gene, one time I was packing and frantically wondering what else I needed to pack for the kids, he said he couldn’t understand why I didn’t have a packing list. I had no clue what he was talking about and once he explained it made perfect sense. Keep a list on either paper or your phone of what you packed and then the next time you can reference your list and you will be much faster and know that your aren’t forgetting anything!

Now I will share my embarrassingly messy list….ready….here is my packing list.

Ok now please erase that one from your mind and think of one with swirly fonts and pretty pink and green lines. Ha! This is actually a list I made (and used over and over again) a couple years ago since there are diapers and sippy cups listed on there…now I don’t have to worry about those items so have a little bit less to pack. Yea!

Whether you put it on paper or on your phone it helps so much to make sure I have all our important items.

We could also talk about whether you like to pack a few days in advance or whether you wait until the night before like I do. I swear I do have a system! I like to have every piece of laundry done and put away and I work on that for the 2 days prior to the trip and then the evening before I am able to pack everything at once. That is the way it works for me. How do you like to pack? Would a packing list help?