Getting ready for a trip.

[HeeHawHoney]

We are getting ready to load the RV with the necessities for our Labor Day weekend at the beach. I am not looking forward to the packing process. When I am lugging bags, and laundry baskets, of supplies out of the house, is when one of the benefits of being full-time is very apparent.

My question is this:

Do any of you have any tips that make loading the RV a little easier?

[toedtoes]

I agree about cleaning out your closet for camping clothes. That's what I did for the most part. My exception was buying thermals because I don't need them at home, so didn't have them. What I did try to do is make sure everything I put in there is interchangeable - all tops go with all bottoms. That way I get the most out of a limited supply.

[2gypsies1]

HeeHawHoney wrote:
I see that I'm going to have to invest in "camper clothes". That makes perfect sense to have at least a couple of changes that live in the RV.

Definitely don't go out and buy clothes for camping. Just do some closet cleaning! Take along clothes that are older or that you rarely use. This even goes for underwear :E , night wear, sweatshirts and even older jackets if you have better ones for at home. Take your old stuff and leave it. You don't have to dress up to go camping.

Save that shopping trip for new clothes for your closet at home after transferring your old clothes to the RV.

[toedtoes]

Jim Shoe wrote:
I bought a 60' x 60' building with three 12' x 12' garage doors. I had two vented gas furnaces installed for comfort in the winter and a 30A circuit installed next to my 'C' so I can fire up the A/C in the summer if I'm loading. Also have a fridge and upright freezer to store food and drinks for upcoming trips, and a full set of tools if I need to fix something during down time. Full bath, including shower.
For recreation, a fully stocked bar and back bar, pool table, Dish TV, two pinball machines and a juke box that plays 45's. Portable tables and chairs for up to 60 of my closest friends. And no neighbors to call the police. Obviously, I'm not married or I would have been killed by now. 🙂

Hmm, you got room for a little American Clipper in there too? 😉


I just spent about 30 minutes emptying my tanks and refilling the fresh water. All I have to do to go somewhere is:

1. Load cold and frozen foods
2. Load camera gear and backpack (preloaded with meds, electronics, etc.)
3. Load the dogs and the bird
4. Unplug and drive away

Since I'm usually traveling 2-4 hours to my preferred campgrounds, and check in is 2 p.m., I find myself watching a movie in the morning before I leave - just so I don't get anxy to get going.

[wbwood]

We leave ours packed besides clothes, electronics (ipad, laptop, cameras) and food. Our coach is parked in our driveway which is on a slope and we can't keep fridge running. So while it's close to house, on the slope, we try to load what we can then (besides cold food). Normally, the day before we leave, I pull it to the top of our driveway and get the fridge going. If we have anything to load after that, then we use laundry baskets and the golf cart (that all the campers on here love :D) to drive up the hill to the coach. Makes things easier. We don't have "camper" clothes. Well at least not much. There are some clothes that we leave in there, but only a few things.

[Veebyes]

These days getting ready for a trip is much more time consuming though somewhat easier.

Day 1: Get up at 6 to start a full day of air travel & sitting around airports arriving where the trailer is too late to get out of storage & into a CG.

Day 2: Get trailer out of storage after reconnecting battery etc. Park outside of market & load from cart right into trailer. Head to nearby CG to finish preparing for what is usually a minimum 2 month trip.

[Jim_Shoe]

I bought a 60' x 60' building with three 12' x 12' garage doors. I had two vented gas furnaces installed for comfort in the winter and a 30A circuit installed next to my 'C' so I can fire up the A/C in the summer if I'm loading. Also have a fridge and upright freezer to store food and drinks for upcoming trips, and a full set of tools if I need to fix something during down time. Full bath, including shower.
For recreation, a fully stocked bar and back bar, pool table, Dish TV, two pinball machines and a juke box that plays 45's. Portable tables and chairs for up to 60 of my closest friends. And no neighbors to call the police. Obviously, I'm not married or I would have been killed by now. 🙂

[FrankShore]

Veebyes wrote:
What in world is the OP moaning about?

Try this out. It is what we had to do every weekend that we went boating, And we used to go overnight boating EVERY weekend May through October.

Pack up 4 55qt coolers, clothing, swimsuits, towels etc & load the car.
Drive to where we have a skiff needed to get to the boat.
Lug all the stuff down a flightof stairs. Load the skiff.
Do the 2 mile ride to where the boat was moored out in a bay.
Lift all the stuff up out of the skiff into the big boat & put all the stuff away.

Only after all of that was done did we start to prep the boat to move.

The whole process from first item in the cooler to key turned on the boat took over 2 1/2hrs.

If only the boat could be parked right outside the house like the RV.

Yep, I feel your pain! It's the same here!

[Veebyes]

What in world is the OP moaning about?

Try this out. It is what we had to do every weekend that we went boating, And we used to go overnight boating EVERY weekend May through October.

Pack up 4 55qt coolers, clothing, swimsuits, towels etc & load the car.
Drive to where we have a skiff needed to get to the boat.
Lug all the stuff down a flightof stairs. Load the skiff.
Do the 2 mile ride to where the boat was moored out in a bay.
Lift all the stuff up out of the skiff into the big boat & put all the stuff away.

Only after all of that was done did we start to prep the boat to move.

The whole process from first item in the cooler to key turned on the boat took over 2 1/2hrs.

If only the boat could be parked right outside the house like the RV.

[westend]

Have the chauffeur load the RV.

[hokeypokey]

Our trailer is permanently stocked with most things like camping clothes, bedding, cookware. For other things, I use a wire bound dollar store notebook and refer to the list I created for the medications/perishables that need to be moved to the trailer. This valuable little book also includes a checklist to follow when we break camp. There's a record of repairs too. Lists, lists, lists - but it makes life so much easier !

We have 3 baskets with handles and they are used to transport the "stuff". Makes easy work out of it for us.

[tatest]

I pack and unpack, because outside storage is just too hot for much of the year to leave behind anything heat sensitive or perishable. I work with the checklists my late wife developed for her inside part of it, but I don't take so much that it is any more than a 30 minute job, or more than 5-6 trips from the house to RV. The packing is a lot less work than the pre-trip mechanical inspection, water system sanitizing and flushing, which is a few hours spread over one or two days.

One thing that has helped has been keeping the checklist handy, so that I can note what did not get used, and what I needed that I failed to bring. Enough of this refinement, you'll find that you are packing a lot less stuff than you formerly packed.

[toedtoes]

2milesup wrote:

rockhillmanor wrote:

Here's a moving dolly from Harbor Freight a whopping 12.00 bucks rated for 1,000 lbs! Same one can be bought at any big box stores.Screw a sheet of plywood on top attached a rope pull and you can schlep a ton of stuff out in ONE trip!

Do you check torque on the wheels' lug nuts? How often must you reseal the top of the plywood? What is the cart's GVWR and CC? The rope's rating? Sway control? People will need to know...

:W

Don't forget - you got to have a big enough tow person.

[kvangil]

Like everyone else says, we leave it packed, except for clothes and food. The clothes get placed in a couple of those large re-usable grocery bags, and the food get put in coolers or as few bags as possible. That way, we only make a couple trips from house to camper. Then we stock everything away into the fridge/shelves when we setup camp.

[2milesup]

rockhillmanor wrote:

Here's a moving dolly from Harbor Freight a whopping 12.00 bucks rated for 1,000 lbs! Same one can be bought at any big box stores.Screw a sheet of plywood on top attached a rope pull and you can schlep a ton of stuff out in ONE trip!

Do you check torque on the wheels' lug nuts? How often must you reseal the top of the plywood? What is the cart's GVWR and CC? The rope's rating? Sway control? People will need to know...

:W