Packing List Template

A packing list is the sheet that saves the trip from the thing left on the bed, and most of the free ones are either two hundred items for an expedition or a blank page with the word Packing at the top. This one is thirty-two sensible items in four short lists: clothes, toiletries, documents and money, and everything else. Every item has a box, and it is the sheet you print the night before and tick on the floor beside the suitcase.

The items are written in. The free version has the thirty-two that cover most trips, the ones people actually forget: the charger, the medication with two days to spare, the warm layer, the reusable bag. The paid version takes yours, in your words, up to twelve clothes, ten toiletries, eight documents and twelve of everything else, so the list for the ski week and the list for the wedding are two different sheets, each right.

The trip goes at the top, with the dates beside it in any words: October 3 to 10, or the long weekend. Leave the dates empty and a blank line prints to write on. One decision worth explaining: the four lists are fixed. A packing list that lets you invent categories becomes a project; four is enough for a suitcase, and the boxes are the part that matters.

Six color themes, one of them light ink for the household that prints one before every trip. The boxes are big enough for a tick from a pen, and every line has a limit the customizer holds you to, so nothing runs off the column.

Print it at 100%, not fit to page, on plain copier paper, and fold it into the suitcase for the trip home. The free version is this design with the sample items, in the Sage theme, on Letter, with a small credit line at the foot. The paid version carries your items, your trip and your dates, all six themes, and comes back in Letter and A4 from one purchase, with a link that works for a year.