Camping Checklists, Grouped and Explained

Why these lists are grouped rather than alphabetical

A camping kit is five or six systems, not eighty items. Shelter, sleep, kitchen, light and power, clothing, and safety. Group the list that way and two useful things happen: you can pack each group into its own bin, and you can see at a glance whether a whole system is missing rather than hunting for one item among eighty.

Each group on our lists also states why those items. “Two water containers” is a line on every camping list on the internet. “Two water containers, one drinking and one washing, because one jug means constant walking to the tap” is the version that stops you deciding one is enough.

The bins trick

Keep two plastic bins packed between trips: one kitchen, one camp. Restock the consumables when you get home, put the lids on, and next time loading the car takes ten minutes. Only clothing, food and the cooler get packed fresh each time.

This single habit removes most forgetting, because the things people forget are the things that get unpacked and put away somewhere else: the mallet, the can opener, the lighter, the tent stakes.

The five things people actually forget

1. The second water container. Drinking water and washing water are different jobs.
2. The mallet, because it lives somewhere separate from the tent. Keep it in the tent bag.
3. Enough fuel. Take a spare cylinder; it keeps indefinitely.
4. A hat and dry socks kept only for sleeping. The cheapest warmth upgrade there is.
5. Trash bags. Every trip generates more rubbish than expected.

Printing them

Each checklist page is formatted to print cleanly: use your browser's print function and the navigation, footer and images drop away, leaving the grouped list. That covers the two things people actually want from a printable list, which are the ability to tick items off and the ability to hand it to somebody else.

They are also the top of the funnel, and we will say so

Several items on each list link to a roundup where we recommend a specific product, and those links earn us a commission if you buy through them. We think that is the right way round: the list is the useful thing, the recommendation is downstream of it, and you can use the entire list without clicking anything.

The items we suggest spending on first are consistent across all three lists, because the reasoning does not change with the trip: the sleeping pad, because the ground is what makes people cold; the light, because everything after dusk depends on it; and the shelter, sized properly. Full disclosure at how this site is funded.