Packing List for Tent Camping – Free Printable
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Camping Checklist – Making Sure You Have Everything You Need for a Great Camping Trip!
Packing List for Tent Camping – Free Printable
If you’re planning any tent camping this year, you know how frustrating it is to prepare all of your items for camping & then to get all the way to your campsite & realize you forgot a few key items you need. I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to us in the past, so we came up with a detailed camping checklist to use as we’re gathering our camping supplies. We also have a special organization system now to keep all of our camping items together.
Sia and I combined our lists for what we both feel is important to bring camping & we developed this Ultimate Packing List for Tent Camping (this is obviously for car camping sites, not backpacking as you wouldn’t have nearly this many items – ha!). Not all of these items may apply to every camping trip, but we tried to come up with as inclusive of a list as possible for different scenarios you would encounter when camping in the mountains, at the beach, in hot or cold weather, you name it. You can then just cross off those items that you won’t need for a particular trip.
We will be sharing soon what our favorite specific camping supplies are, too, if you are looking for ideas of where to find these supplies that we mention in this packing list.
Free Printable – Packing List for Tent Camping:
We have created this Free Packing List for Tent Camping printable that you can use. It is a PDF document for you to print. Here are a few things to know about the free printable:
- There are blank lines in each section so you can add in your own supplies
- The food & clothing sections are all blank lines so you can add in your own clothing items you prefer as well as the food based on the meal plan you have for camping. We know this will change depending on the season/location for clothes, and the meal plan may always change, too.
- One idea is to laminate it, store it with your camping gear & then you can use a dry erase marker to mark off the items as you pack
System for Organizing Camping Supplies:
The key to packing for a camping trip is to keep as many of your camping items together during the year as you can. Sia & I both use a very similar system in that we have a designated spot for our camping supplies and we try to keep as many supplies as we can in storage containers.
How we pack:
For our family, we have a shelf in our garage dedicated to our camping gear. We keep two large storage containers on this shelf in addition to our camping equipment/gear (such as tent, sleeping bag, etc). The storage containers contain as many of the smaller items (cooking/cleaning & general items & gear as we can fit (lanterns, cookstove, etc).
As we are packing for a camping trip, here’s what we do:
Bring all of the storage containers inside to go thru the list to see what we’re missing (make sure everything is clean & washed inside the containers – we do this when we get home from a camping trip but double-check when we are packing). We try to keep a dedicated set of everything for camping, but this is not possible with everything, so we gather supplies on the list that need to go into the containers for the trip.
Use the packing list to list out all of the food we will be bringing as we make our meal plan ahead of time. If we are going camping with friends, we split up the meals so that we each plan & bring items for half the meals & then we agree on the items that each person will bring in addition (s’mores ingredients, drinks, etc). For example, we might bring the ingredients for Saturday breakfast, Saturday dinner & Sunday lunch. Our friends might bring ingredients for Friday dinner, Saturday lunch, and Sunday breakfast. We bring the non-perishable food items in reusable bags if there is no extra room in the containers.
Once the two containers are packed with all of the necessary items, then we just pack those in the car, along with our tent, camp chairs, sleeping items, clothes, and coolers.
At camp, we empty out the gear that we need to use at the campsite (Lanterns, cook stove, etc) & then use the extra space in the containers to hold all the food and supplies to keep them all in one place. We can then easily store them under or beside the picnic table at night or store them in the car if we’re in an area with critters who will get into them.
When we leave camp, we put all the supplies, leftover non-perishable food items and dirty dishes/cookware into the containers and bring them back home. We empty out all the dirty cookware/dishes when we get home & give it another good washing in the dishwasher. {We do wash dishes & clean things at the campsite, but this just ensures it’s clean by the time we get home & before we store everything away}
Everything gets put back into the containers clean & organized and it’s ready to go for our next camping trip!
I know this may not fit everyone’s needs as you may not want to bring the big containers with you in the car due to space, but it works well for us to ensure we remember all of the key camping items. You could just keep everything organized like this in the garage in containers & then have smaller methods for traveling with it when you go camping. We keep a copy of this packing list in our camping gear, too, to use for the next trip. Although I think we’ll start laminating it & keeping that inside, with a dry erase marker.
More Camping Resources:
Free Camping Sites in the Northwest (WA & OR)
30+ Camping Recipes the Whole Family will Love
6 Kid-Friendly Camping Activities
5 Ways to Save on Your Camping Trip
7 Survival Tips for Camping with Kids
Great post, I am definitely a list person and it’s the only way I function :) I will have to pin this for our camping trips coming up. And we also use large totes to store stuff, it makes it so easy and organized.
I love lists, too! It’s the only way to hope you don’t forget something. :) The tote method definitely helps keep everything together.