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Our packing list

Picture of Jen Johnson
Jen Johnson

I\’m in the process of replacing a lot of our belongings, since we took so much of them with us to Hawaii and they have now been exposed to mold. Besides that, I feel like I want to start fresh with linens in the Casita. The good news is that we don\’t actually have that much stuff, so it\’s not terribly difficult to replace it all. It\’s just a tiny fraction of all the stuff we used to own.

I thought I\’d write up a list of what we\’re using since I\’m going over all of it right now. It was a lot of work and trial and error figure out what we needed. Hopefully this will help others starting out, and will also help me the next time we need to replace everything.

Clothing

We do laundry every day so I don\’t keep that many clothes on hand. I buy kids clothes on sale at Children\’s Place, adult clothes and some kids clothes onsite from Costco in a city with good air, and jackets on sale from MyTrail. I haven\’t had trouble with new clothes smelling moldy.

We travel with the following clothes for each person:

  • 4 short sleeve shirts
  • 4 long sleeve shirts
  • 4 shorts
  • 2 pants
  • a comfortable sundress for me, for when it gets really hot
  • 6 underwear
  • 2 pajamas, generally plain ones in case we have to walk to a bathroom in our pajamas
  • socks
  • Tevas or Chacos, and tennis shoes
  • Flip Flops for easy on and off around the campsite, since we take off our shoes before we come in the Casita
  • A down jacket and a rain jacket. We were mainly camping in spring and summer and still used our down jackets almost every day. We were very glad to have them.
  • bathing suits, swim goggles, and a swim cap and nose plug for myself
  • sunglasses for everyone
  • sun hats

Linens

Ikea is our friend for linens. We use sheets and blankets because they\’re easier to keep clean and more comfortable than sleeping bags.

See my post Making the Beds for how we replaced the cushions that came with the Casita with Latex mattresses.

On top of that, for each bed, we have:

  • Mattress Protector
  • Pillow
  • Fitted Sheet
  • Comforter
  • Duvet and pillowcases
  • Fleece blankets

I had extras but we don\’t use them. When I wash the sheets, I wash them first thing and hang dry, and then put everything back on before we go to bed. So we really just use the one set.

I have about 6 cotton kitchen towels. We use microfiber bath towels because they are easier to wash and dry. Everyone has a different color so we know whose is whose. After we use them, we hang them to dry in the Clam tent so we don\’t add moisture to the air in the Casita.

I use microfiber cloths for cleaning, a dish brush for dishes, a chain mail cleaner to clean cast iron, and a sponge for cleaning surfaces. The sponges get pretty gnarly so I tend to go through them pretty quickly.

I carry these reusable shopping bags and insulated bags from Trader Joe\’s and Costco. I remove as much packaging as I can when I come home from a shopping trip to make things easier to store and remove paper that might get wet and moldy.

Cosmetics and pharmacy

Normal medical supplies:

  • Ibuprofen
  • Night-time cold medicine
  • Bandaids
  • Neosporin
  • Claritin
  • Non-toxic tick and mosquito wipes
  • Technu for poison oak and ivy
  • Sunscreen (we ended up not needing this)
  • Prescription meds

We use an IonCleanse footbath on a regular basis. We recently saw a well-known medical provider who did some Zyto testing and said that he rarely sees people as low in toxins as we are. I credit some of that to the IonCleanse (and the rest to spending most of our time in good air.)

We take all kinds of supplements and homepathic and herbal drops and a few prescriptions. I use these to sort them out about once a month so I don\’t have to open every bottle every day.

Cosmetic-wise, we\’re super low maintenance. I have a comb for myself and a hair clipper set for the kids and DH. We all use the same kids bath soap from Costco. I use Lavalin deodorant cream now instead of aluminum-based antiperspirant. I use Cetaphil cleanser for my face since it just needs to be wiped off with a kleenex, and face moisturizer from Trader Joe\’s. Toothpaste, toothbrushes, retainers, and bite guards. We keep a toenail clipper for manicures and pedicures. Neti pot. My only splurge is the Davines shampoo and conditioner that I get from my hairdresser. It\’s supposed to be somewhat healthy. Who knows. I no longer bother with makeup of any kind.

Trick: You can check the safety of cosmetics in EWG\’s Skin Deep Cosmetics database.

Kitchen supplies

See the My Kitchen post for a list of things in my kitchen.

Laundry supplies

See the post How I do laundry for a list of things that make laundry easier.

Cleaning supplies and dehumidifiers

See the Keeping the Casita clean and dry post for a list of things I use to keep mold at bay in the Casita.

Homeschool supplies

Last year, I pulled both kids out of school. PANS and school were just not compatible. We\’ve homeschooled since then.

During our three-month trip, we unschooled. We saw a lot of national parks and national monuments. We got a lot of use out of B\’s Every Kid in a Park pass. We talked about the places we passed through. The kids read a lot. And that was enough.

Now, I feel like their brains are healed enough, and they\’re bored enough, that I want to put more formal learning in place. I want them to start working through a math curriculum. I\’m letting them choose between Singapore Math and Beast Academy. I\’ll buy the paper books so they\’re not dependent on wifi and don\’t have to be on a computer to do math. We found last year that the online curriculums don\’t work anyway, since most of them are set up to follow a linear path in giving kids harder and harder problems, and PANS brains don\’t work in a linear fashion. It was super frustrating for everyone.

Last year I dabbled with Brave Writer for a language curriculum. I liked it so we\’ll probably use it again. We\’ll probably read middle grade novels to learn history. There are a lot of great ones. And of course, we\’ll do lots of field trips and on the spot learning.

I\’ve joined some Facebook groups for local homeschoolers and am going to try to find some local friends and outings for the kids, and for me.

Entertainment

We have a lot of electronics.

  • Macbook for me, Windows laptops for the kids
  • Kindles for everyone
  • iPads for the kids
  • Google Fi phone for me and a Tracfone for the kids.
  • Tiny Bose speaker, which I use to play Pandora offline from my phone. I recently splurged on this because I missed music. The silence was just depressing.
  • Headphones for everyone

Also see my post Staying connected and reducing EMFs for information about the other electronic equipment we carry.

We left a lot of Legos behind in our moldy house, and it was one of the hardest things for the kids to let go of. We let them buy more Legos when we started traveling. But they never really use them. There\’s just nowhere to spread out. I think they\’re also kind of growing out of them.

We love board games and carry a few. Some of our favorites are Uno, Exploding Kittens, Bears v. Babies, Sagrada, and Munchkin. Caution, some of these games are highly irreverent. Games tend to get moldy and we\’ve already had to replace them twice.

The kids have a supply of paper, pencils, and other basic art supplies. I haven\’t had time for hobbies so far, but recently bought a new wraparound bracelet project from Beadshop in case a miracle happens and I have some downtime.

Casita/Trailer Stuff

I used Eileen Glick\’s Casita Travel Trailer A-Z Owner\’s Guide to figure out the Casita. It\’s a fantastic book. I got the electronic version and keep it on my laptop. (I wish a Kindle version were available.) I also used her Amazon store to figure out supplies I might need.

I also got a bunch of useful mods for the Casita from Little House Customs. My favorite mod was removing the stove fan and replacing it with another light. It freed up a lot of space. We don\’t use the inside stove anyway, and when we do in a pinch, I can just open the windows and turn on the Fantastic Fan. We used tic tac tiles from Amazon on the sink backsplash and they look really nice. A pack of 10 was a good amount.

Here are some other things I\’ve found particularly useful:

Stuff we use every day

Towing, parking, and leveling equipment

Plumbing

  • We use Camco filters and drinking water hoses for our water supply. We have a pressure regulator/filter as well.
  • We use these for our greywater hoses along with quick connects. This lets us store the hoses in the bumper of the Casita. Our Casita doesn\’t have a toilet so we don\’t have blackwater.
  • Since our Casita doesn\’t have a potty, we use this potty when the campground doesn\’t have one. It needs to be emptied about once a day. I add EM-1 when it starts to stink and we try to throw paper in a trash bag because it tends to get stuck in the potty.
  • We replaced the outside faucet with this and like how it works

Stuff for boondocking

  • Solar Panels and waterproof controller (we had a mechanic install connectors for this on the outside right below the battery), as well as extension cords so we can move the panels around to the sun
  • Water storage cubes with a spigot in case we end up somewhere without water hookups
  • Battery monitor (good for keeping track of the van\’s battery and for boondocking)

General camping gear

  • We spend our days in the Clam tent. I don\’t know what we\’d do without it. It doesn\’t stand up to wet snow, and high winds can also take it down. But the rest of the time it\’s fantastic.
  • These tent stakes are great for keeping the Clam tent in one place. I should have ordered more of them when I could get them.
  • We use this table to organize stuff inside the Clam tent. You can\’t put anything heavy on it but it works fine for lightweight stuff.
  • We have three folding camp chairs that we got from Sierra Trading Post. They no longer have the ones we got.
  • In my tow vehicle, I keep a tent, a groundcloth, and sleeping bags and sleeping pads for all of us, in case the Casita needs to go into the shop or gets contaminated. So far, we haven\’t had to use them (knock wood.)

Just in case

  • A small car battery charger that fits in the glove box and is also good for charging the kids\’ electronics on a long drive (We have one from Costco that I couldn\’t find, but this looks similar)
  • Spare fuses (haven\’t needed these yet but good to have them)

What else?

If you\’ve camped, what else have you found useful? Please share in the comments so I and others can benefit!

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