Check you have all your suitcases, coats, bags of souvenirs and food and drink. If anything is still in the boot or your car bring it out. Anything left behind in the taxi - phone immediately. (Always get a receipt so you can phone the correct cab company and identify the taxi and time if anything is lost.)
Check for damage to suitcases in case you need compensation. Photograph, phone and write immediately.
Wash off or wipe off stains on fabric and dirt on wheels. Place note on the handle of any bag which has damaged handle or damaged wheels so that you can avoid that case on your next business trip when you need to look smart, or don't want to spend time lugging an awkward bag.
Alternatively take it for repair. Go online to check for a replacement suitcase well in advance of your next trip. Or use damaged, torn or stained item on a trip where further damage might occur.
Problems
Wet Swimsuits
Sometimes you arrive home in a flurry and forget your wet clothes. In the tropics, Singapore, I swim all year daily. When we were when living as ex-pats in Rockville, Maryland, I swam daily. I had to rotate swimsuits.
Make sure the wet one was always drying in the same place. Otherwise I would be delaying everybody, or postponing my swim and finding the afternoon rain had started. In a thunderstorm - you might be willing to risk it but pool attendants insist you vacate the pool for your own safety and to set an example to children.
In Europe we return from the gym daily or pool or from jogging with wet swimsuits and sweat-soaked tee-shirts. Once, after a holiday, I discovered a wet swimming costume in a suitcase, three weeks later. It smelled terrible, was stained green and black. My brand new costume!
If I washed it in a washing machine, that might destroy the elastic. The alternative was to throw it away. That was not an alternative. So I threw it straight in the washing machine, holding it with a disposable bag. I didn't want to touch it or distribute the spores around the kitchen.
After one wash it looked, clearn. It was clean enough to handle but too smelly to wear.
After a second wash it smelled all right when held at arms length. But not right when sniffed close up. Other people might not notice. But I still did not want it next to my skin.
After the third wash it was restored.
FOOD
After other trips, even just to a local restaurant, I have found food going off in my bag the next day or a week afterwards.
DRINK
Half-opened bottle contents may need finishing or go in the fridge. New wines should be stored horizontal if in bottles with corks to keep the cork moist and prevent shrinkage which would let air get in and eventually turn the wine off. Store wines in a cool dark place, out of reach of children and out of sight of the public and passers-by, ideally under lock and key to prevent theft.
I now have a mental checklist. If I am really tired, I make a physical checklist on the train or plane home so I can just follow it when I fall through the door.
MILK
If you bought milk at the airport or en route put it in the fridge. If you have saved milk cartons from an airlines meal, a hotel bedroom, or from coffee on the train, you can use that to make a decaff coffee or tea for yoursel of others.
KEYS
As you leave the hotel, check you have handed them their key.
Check the key to get into your home is handy in an inside pocket, not still packed in the lid of one of your five suitcases. If you are collecting your car from the airport, check the car key and any paperwork you need are in your pcoket or bag.
Check And Record Location Of Your Stored Tickets, Passport
Have a set place for your passport, especially if it is cocnealed in a drwwer ,box, suitcase, cover. I once lost my pasort which I had left inside the lid of my suitcase because i thought that way i could nto rush off without it. I cancelled my trip because I could not find my passport in the study drawer.
On another ocasion I was given a pretty silver passport cover, free with a magazine. A few weeks later, I looked everywhere for my passport. I could not find it. I missed a trip to France.
Later that year, I was diligently checking every notebook, writing the contents, the year, the trip, or EMPTY, on the front of empty notebooks, with post-its, to find empty notebooks to take on future trips, when I found the missing passport.
Why Keep Tickets?
Do not throw away your plane or train tickets until you have taken a photo, and/or noted where they are stored. (eg, left of middle shelf on bookcase, in study / in red box file on top bookshelf marked New York Trip documents).
Why? You might need your plane ticket to claim airmiles, or check they have all been registered. You might need your train ticket, eg in the UK for one month afterwards to claim about ten per cent of the fare back as compensation for delay over half an hour.
It may be saving paper to leave everything on line. Perhaps you can photograph the vital line or reference numbr and print that. When you reach the check in point and your phone is out of battery because of the flight delay, or no reception, you will find it handy to have the reference.
When you reach home and thre eof you turn to each other and ask, "Who's got the door key handy?", you want to be the efficient, reliable person who says, "I have - here you are!"
(Hint. Do not give your key to somebody else who can now lose both the keys. Open the door for them and replace your key where you know where it is.)
UNPACKING CHECKLIST
1 KEYS
a) Check house keys.
Leave them in the ouseide of the door, or back in your pocket, or leave the door on the latch when unlocading suitcases from the car.
Did you remove them from the front door?
Are they back in your pocket or bag or on the hook or table for when you rush to the shops for milk or off to work or social engagement or to see the family?
2 Check Other keys.
b) Keys to your home, keys to your second home, or office.
c) Car keys. Hire car keys.
2 DOCUMENTS
Plane tickets.
Train tickets.
Visas and expiry. (You don't want to pay for another visa when yours still has another year on it.)
3 Check passports and train and plane tickets. You might save on the cost of a visa by bringing your next weekend away forward a week or two.
3 FOOD
Check all carrier bags and handbags, pcokets and suitcases for food. Put it away in the fridge. (Or eat immediately.) If food is likely to go off, write a Post-it note on the front of the fridge to remidn yourself and others what to finish first.
4 CLOTHES TO WASH
Some people keep dirty clothes in a labelled wash bag, or a laundry bag saved from a hotel. Other systems are:
Turn dirty clothes inside out; keep in a bag.
List items you have worn, or check them on your packing list. (This tells you what to wash this time, and what to take instead next time so colleagues see different outfits. Alterantively, it tells you to take the clothes on your worn and washed list, leave behind the clothes you didn't wear on this trip, next time you pack for that desitnation.
5 UNPACK EVERYTHING
If you are too tired, you could use the one item an hour system. Every hour, or every time you walk past your suitcase, remove one item. When you are near the end, the task won't seem to overwhlming. Another system is to tip everything onto your bed. You have to clear it all by bedtime.
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and phtographer, author and speaker. Please bookmark and share links to your favourite posts.
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