Tips for Packing Childrens Suitcases for Summer Camp

Are you sending your children off all by themselves to summer camp soon? Are you worried that your children will wear the same underwear everyday, wear mismatched clothes, and never brush their teeth? When they come home from summer camp are they missing the mates to their socks, but have another child’s towel?

Children rarely think about taking care of their hygiene or their belongings when they are having fun. If we can make it easy and maybe a little fun, they are more likely to follow through. If they don’t, counselors usually try to identify belonging so mark everything with your children’s names.

Mark every piece of clothing with at least your last name including each sock. Use a permanent black tip marker. Try to mark socks and shoes on the bottom. Mark shirts, pants, underwear, and jackets on the inside tag so it isn’t obvious when being worn. Use your home printer and a sheet of blank address labels to make sticky tags for other belongings. Print off a sheet of address labels with your child’s name and address.

Place these stickers on luggage, sleeping bags, dirty laundry bags, pillows, toothbrushes, shampoo, sun block, and insect repellant.You name it; I put labels on everything including fishing poles. Don’t forget to send a disposable camera with your child to record the week.

If your child is too young, colorblind, or just doesn’t care about matching clothes you can prepare each day’s outfits in advance by using gallon size baggies. Write the day of the week on the outside of the baggie with your marker. Then place socks, underwear, shirt, and shorts in a bag for each day of camp. Remember to write your child’s name on the garments first.

Use a school pencil bag with a zipper for a hygiene bag, these are less expensive then make-up bags. In the bag, place a toothbrush, and trial size containers of toothpaste, shampoo, body wash, sun block, and deodorant. Put your child’s personal labels on these items.

Explain to your child that all of the dirty laundry should be placed in the laundry bag. I like the ones with drawstrings so they can hang it on the corner of their bed. These bags come in handy on the way to camp. The sleeping bag and pillow fit into one quite well. On the way home, they fit in the suitcase.

We have been doing this for over 10 years of children camping and haven’t lost very many possessions. We once received a disposable camera in the mail that one of the children had lost at camp. It had the child’s name and address sticker on it, so the camp mailed it to us. Another time, a friend went to camp after my children and saw a pillow with our name on it. She brought it back to us.

Photo Credit: 2008 Julia Fuller.

by Julia Fuller