How to Pack the Car (And the Departure Routine That Prevents Forgetting Things)

Car camping has one enormous advantage over every other kind: weight does not matter. It also has one recurring problem: a boot packed in the wrong order means unloading everything to find the thing you need first.

Load in reverse order of use

The last thing in is the first thing out. So work backwards from what happens on arrival:

1. Tent, poles, pegs, mallet — last in, first out. Shelter goes up before anything else is unpacked.
2. Sleep system — pads and bags out next, so they can loft while you do everything else.
3. Camp furniture — table and chairs, so the kitchen has somewhere to live.
4. Kitchen box and cooler — cooler last so it stays shut and cold as long as possible.
5. Clothes and personal bags — these go in first, at the bottom or front. You do not need them until bedtime.

Boxes beat bags

Soft bags sag, hide things, and collapse when you take one out from underneath. A few rigid, clear plastic crates make an enormous difference: they stack, they stay square, you can see inside them, and they hose down.

The system that works for most families is three:

• Kitchen box — stove, fuel, pots, utensils, washing-up kit. This one lives permanently packed and never gets unpacked at home.
• Camp box — lights, batteries, cord, tape, first aid, tools, matches, bin bags.
• Food box — dry goods, separate from the cooler.

Clothes go in a duffel per person. One bag each, not a communal one — communal clothing bags are how a six-year-old's socks get lost for the entire weekend.

Cooler packing

• Pre-chill the cooler the night before with a sacrificial bag of ice. A warm cooler spends its first few hours cooling itself instead of your food.
• Block ice lasts about twice as long as cubes. Frozen water bottles do the same job and become drinking water.
• Freeze the first night's dinner flat in a bag — it acts as ice on day one and dinner on day two.
• Pack in reverse order of use, same principle as the car.
• Two coolers if you can. Drinks get opened twenty times a day; food does not. Separating them roughly doubles how long the food stays cold.
• Raw meat sealed and at the bottom. Always.

What actually goes on the roof

Only bulky, light, weather-tolerant things, and only if you have a proper rack and box or bag. Chairs, the tarp, a screen shelter. Not the cooler, not anything heavy — roof weight raises the centre of gravity and changes how the car handles, and every rack has a stated limit that is lower than people assume.

Check the rack straps at your first fuel stop. Everything settles in the first thirty minutes.

The four-minute departure check

Run the same check, out loud, every single trip. Same order, every time — that is what makes it work.

1. Shelter — tent bag, poles bag, pegs, mallet. Open the bags. Count the poles.
2. Sleep — a pad and a bag per person. Count the people, then count the bags.
3. Light — a headlamp per person, the lantern, the power bank. All charged, checked on.
4. Heat — stove, and fuel. Shake the canister. An almost-empty one feels exactly like a full one until you are cooking at dusk.
5. Water — containers, and filter if you need one.
6. Weather — rain shells for everyone, and a warm layer, regardless of the forecast.
7. Paper — booking confirmation, and an offline map downloaded to a phone.

Poles, pegs, fuel and charge are what people actually forget. Not the tent — the pegs for the tent.

Free, no email required The Clarion Camp Checklist

Eight groups covering sleep, shelter, light, kitchen, clothing, safety, the easy-to-forget things and the dog. Print it, screenshot it, or work down it on your phone in the driveway.

Use the checklist →

Leaving with the family, not just the gear

Two small things that make the drive better. Feed everyone before you leave, or the first hour becomes a negotiation. And give each child their own small bag for the cabin — a book, a jumper, a water bottle, a snack. Ownership of a bag is weirdly effective at reducing "are we there yet".

Coming home: the ten minutes that make next time easier

• Dry the tent completely within a day or two, or the waterproof coating is gone. This is the big one.
• Store sleeping bags loose in a big sack, never compressed.
• Restock the kitchen and camp boxes now — fuel, batteries, matches, bin bags. Future you will not remember.
• Write down the three things that annoyed you most. That list is a better shopping list than anything you would guess at cold, and it is always shorter than you expect.

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Not sure what time to actually leave? The leave-by planner works out sunset for your date and location and tells you when to pull out of the driveway.