My travel planning secrets

"Did you keep the medicines?", "Where are the hand napkins?" these are the standard questions I ask after we start the journey. Getting "no" answer is a surprise and definitely influences the mood at that time. I always wish that I do my best so that we do not forget important things.

Now, we are making progress. Here is what we have done:

1)      Based on past experience on similar kind of travel, identified all the required items. Created a checklist. Our personal checklist has the following:

Medicines, Chewing gum, eatables, spoons, hand napkins, diapers for kid, water, dresses for all 1 pair/day, extra pair of socks, comb, perfume, camera + batteries + charger, mobile charger, towels

We never had experience of forgetting money, credit/debit cards, etc. Hence, I did not include in the checklist. Please note that my checklist is in a page in my diary that I carry. So, it’s easy to reference.

Before travel date, we go through the checklist items to ensure that they are purchased,  are at home and part of travel baggage. Placement of items in appropriate bags is important. Food and medicines in cabin luggage is a bad idea. Anything that is required while traveling should be kept handy (like camera, snacks, water, etc)

2)      During the course of journey (round trip) and stay, based on experience, we update the checklist. For instance, in our recent trip, we forgot taking comb and we updated the list.

This approach has been helping. No blame game and we are happier with our travels. More we involve the family members in travel, the better are the results due to buy-in. Short comings will result in checklist item changes. In very less time, we will become great planners of our own travel. Agree with me?

 Reblog