Check-list ... holiday packing

Camber Sands last year

Having just made myself write down everything we need to take on holiday on Saturday I can actually understand why we - or rather I - always forget something.  Missing tooth brushes, hair brushes, phone chargers, bathing costumes are just par for the course of every holiday or trip.  The real highlights have been leaving my keys in Beijing, losing all my luggage in Hungary and this Easter shipping the whole family up to our rental cottage in Yorkshire a day early.

And it's not just the resultant chaos that I hate, it's the actual packing process itself when however hard I try to be organised I become my mother! Now my mother is amazing and in so many things I aspire to be her but my memories of my mother packing for childhood holidays are of an increasingly frenzied and cross, mad lady trying to defy the laws of physics to get a case closed and a zip done up.

So I am determined this week it is going to be different.  I have written a list - do we really need all this for one week in Norfolk? - and between now and Saturday I am going to calmly collect things together and serenely and sedately on Friday evening pack everything neatly into bags into which everything will fit having previously handed over spare keys to the neighbours and cancelled the milk.  We shall see ....

It's going to be just me and the little one on the train with our car seat on wheels, an enormous case and even bigger rucksack so there's plenty of stuff you might need that we don't.  From asking around I've hopefully included most of these things in this packing check-list.