How I Get It All Done - #36

 We are leaving tomorrow (Monday) for 4 days of camping at Wompatuck State Park. Our campsite will  have electricity but it's B.Y.O. water and sewage will be contained and emptied at a dump station on the day we exit the park. I am excited about this trip as the plan is to stay in the park the whole time and do all kinds of outdoor activities! We'll see how it goes!

I've previously written about how I prepare for a trip.  All of that still applies but I wanted to show how I actually get it all done - simply, organized - rarely ever forgetting anything and leaving our home neat and clean.  While I do keep a bunch of stuff - food, clothes, bath items - in the trailer, I usually remove most stuff to wash or use up especially if it will be a few weeks in between outings.

I like to refer to packing the camper as "shopping".  I keep a bunch of canvas and reusable shopping bags just for this purpose.  I take a bag into the closet - and fill with undergarments, socks -  based on how many days we will be away. Then I move onto clothes - depending on where we are going and this trip is easy - all casual, nothing dressy - strictly a sneakers week - I pull out t-shirts for both of us - some sleeveless, jeans, shorts - sweatshirts and an extra pair of sneakers each,  Easy peasey.  Sometimes I will just leave the clothes in the bags and put them into the camper to put away later - but this time I opted to put everything away in our "wardrobes" - one less thing to do when we arrive at our destination.

For bathroom items - meds, etc... I use a basket to accumulate stuff we need to take. If I leave it on the counter a couple of days before we go - I toss stuff in I want to take and it makes it easy for Charlie to add what he needs. He always waits until the last minute to pack! When we are getting ready to leave - I just take the whole basket which goes inside our trailer's bathroom cabinet.

Food is also shopped.  First, the non-perishables. I go through the pantry and bag canned goods, peanut butter, olive oil - anything I might need. I usually have a pretty good idea of the meals I will be preparing and I'd rather have more than I will actually use; gives us some options. Once the bag is filled I transfer the contents to the camper's pantry.  I also bring paper towels, toilet tissue - if needed and also bags.  Since plastic grocery bags are fast becoming obsolete, I bring whatever bags I have and can use for trash; I don't buy trash bags.  I may have to do that one day, but for now, I use whatever I can scrounge up. Perishable foods are the last thing I pack just before leaving.  We don't keep the refrigerators on in between trips but they start as soon as we are plugged into the truck and on the road. To make it easy, I pack up all my frozen in a bag and refrigerated items as shown in photo  Makes it easy just to grab and go - plus I've already thought out what I am bringing and not just taking things in the eleventh hour, and I've purchased fill in items at the store to make sure we have all we need.

Water is another essential, even if a campground does supply a water hookup,  I just don't like to drink the water than runs through the hose and our tank. I'm sure it's fine and I will use it sometimes in cooking, but I like to bring our own. I have 4 gallons that I fill and use for drinking, coffee... in boondocking situations or if our water tank is not filled, we will use them for the toilet, washing up and washing dishes as well and try to keep them refilled when I can. For this trip because it was so close to home, we did fill the tank. But I actually find that if we are boondocking for a night or two a distance away, I prefer not to carry a tank full of water which greatly increases our towing weight and reduces our already low gas mileage. It has been my experience that we only use a small fraction of the tank water when boondocking; using the gallons I bring and wet wipes for cleaning ourselves in between does a good temporary job.  The boondocking is always followed up with a stay at a full service campground to empty our tanks and get a good shower!

For this trip, we also took our bicycles.  The weather looks promising, Here we go!