Packing To Leave & Return Home

Packing box and see-through box. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Planning To Leave

I once came home with only one slipper. A popular modern saying which is set as an impromptu speech (a two minute 'table topic', selected from the table or screen by number) is 'We learn faster from our mistakes - do you agree?'

Yes. After losing my slipper, I learned to keep a list of what I packed.

What have my family left behind, or nearly left behind? The food for the jourrney left in the fridge. The toddler's toys in the hotel cot and cupboard. The pen, noebook, map, hat and gloves in the ca's glove box.

Packing lists are useful for three reasons. Firstly to check that I packed everything on leaving. Secondly, to be sure nothing went astray in transit on arrival. Thirdly, to be sure everything is with me on leaving the hotel or holiday home.

1 Packing Lists

1 Make a packing list before you leave. 

That way, when returning home, if the slippers are missing a tick on your checklist, you know to check under the bed or in the bathroom or in the cupboard.

For A Brief Trip

2 Addresses

Take the addresses and phone number of the place and people you are leaving, . Also make sure every member of your group has all numbers of those at the destination. This ensures everybody is organized. Your passenger can check or ring ahead if you are the driver, stuck in traffic, unable to check a phone number. Or you can separated on the journey. Or your jacket contained your paperwork goes missing.

3 Umbrellas

Pack an umbrella. Or keep one in the car. You can keep it in the glove box, the boot, under the seat. Remember it is there. Retrieve it from a hire car. Collect it from the umbrella stand at the entrance to a restaurant.

4 Fill the vehicle tank

Fill the car with petrol. 

If it is not full, allow time to stop and fill up. This applies when leaving 

Put the address in your satnav in the car and in your mobile phone. Get familiar with the car satnav and the google maps or other service such as Street View on your mobile phone.

Check for train cancellations. Check weather warnings. Check road motorway closures and diversions.

Packing

I have managed to leave all sorts of things behind. You may know the humorous song, because of battle the kingdom was lost, because of the horse the battle was lost, and all for the loss of a horseshoe nail.

What have I lost? A bathrobe behind a bedroom door. It belonged to my boyfriend. I was checking out while he was on the last day of the conference. That relationship came to an end. I married somebody else. 

A passport in a shoulder bag on the back of a dining chair of family friends in France. We never got to Italy from France.

Crockery in the dishwasher. Food in the microwave. The dictionaries - I have loads at home - why buy more, unless you don't want to carry them outwards, but then your packing is heavier on return.

Friends have left behind pets, which went missing. One family even had to cancel their emigration flight because a child who didn't want to leave went and hid.

To sum it up, packing needs preparation, and precision in planning, when you need to return home from a hotel or a winter home overseas, or moving country for a new job, or back home to look after parents or see grandchildren. Your mind is on your destination and plans. But you need a checklist of things you must take with you and do.

Let's start with the commonest situation.

Leaving A Hotel

Check items in the bathroom. And on hooks behind the door. On the shower shelf.

On the balcony. Items hanging over railings. Left on chairs. 

The Bedroom

Check under pillows, inside bedding, under the bed.

Empty the fridge. Ensure you have your food, drink, medicine. Check any food, drink, or pills, left downstairs in the hotel kitchen or bar.

 Check all the hotel drinks and foods are returned if you took them out to make room for takeaway food.

Reception Checkout

Check you have handed in all room keys. 

Pay bills, and check bills. 

Leaving A Ski Resort

Remove drying boots and clothes from balcony and radiators.

Check for any skis and boots and jackets left in a locker room. Return locker keys. 

Reclaim deposits on rented skis, boots, clothes, snowboards. 

Allow time to clean off ice and dirt, pack skis and boots and snowboards in zip up bags or special packaging, and large item check-in at airport.

Beach Resorts

Remove swimsuits, swimming hats, bath towels, beach clothes, wraps, and swim shoes from balconies or radiators and bathrooms, and lockers.

Pack children's beach rings, buckets and spades, or allow time to give them away. Unless the airport has an area for tourist to leave beach items for others, to loan and recycle instead of using landfill for abandoned items.

Leaving A Winter Home

Turn down heating. However, leave enough heating to prevent broken pipes bursting and leaking. Arrange for family to check property heating and plumbing

Leaving For A Holiday or New Home

Check all travellers have passports, o ID including driving license, plane or ferry or train or coach or bus tickets. 

Check neighbours will push in post.

Check all members of the party have address and phone number of destination, last check-in time, onward travel from airport to destination. 

Overnight clothes in case of lost luggage, photo of luggage to fill in forms asking colour and make of lost suitcases.

Arrange neighbours to water plants, or put plants outside, or add watering systems.

Check no items are left behind a front door or bedroom door. 

Rental Car

Check  no luggage or bag is left on the doorstep. Nor on the top of the car. 

No keys left in the front door.

No car keys left in the car - unless that is required by a rental company. Nor in the boot, or glove box

Leaving Your Old Home For A New Home or Holiday

Fridge

Empty fridge of milk, or take it to neighbours. If you leave it on their doorstep, warn them in advance, or leave a note or email to tell them it was from you.

Gas, Electricity, Lights

Check you have turned off gas, electricity, lights. Check you have set timers to turn on lights or sounds to deter burglars, or engaged house sitters. 

Insurance

Your insurance might have a limit on the amount of time the property can be left empty. They may extend the time 

1 f you inform them in advance, 

2 have relatives  and/or neighbours going in and out to make the place look busy, 

3 or are willing to pay an extra premium to insurance, if you decide this is cheaper than a house sitter. 

How to cook eggs for breakfast and drink fresh coffee in a hotel room

I read about a woman who returned to Australia and was quarantined in a five star hotel but without a microwave oven.

An Iron As Hotplate
She made herself apple crumble and other foods heated up on an upturned iron, which acted as a hotplate, secured between two heavy books.

She chopped up an apple with a penknife. (Any hotel can send you a knife. A five star hotel has 24 hour room service.)

Her cooking utensil was an aluminium tray you get with takeway food. I presume the crumble was a ready mix. But you can mix flour and water with fat such as butter to make crumble. the advantage is crumble is it is just flour rolled up into balls, no need for a rolling pin to roll it out into pastry. A hotel usually has sugar sachets.If you have flown overseas or on a long flight within a country, you might have meal service inclding a sachet of salt.

Most fast food places have condiments which seem unnecessary at the time but can be just the ticket later. For example, most take away piza comes with extra sachets of cheese and pepper or spicy sprinkles.

You can also buy packets of individual portions of cheese. If you save bread from your brakfast, ideally with a butter or margarine sachet,  you can add a cheese portion, or the cheese sachet and sprinkles left over from the pizza, and you have a mid-morning snack.

I was wondering whether she could have demanded a microwave, or bought herself one (if she was getting free food for a fortnight, she could afford a cheap microwave.

Some hotels don't like you cooking in the room. Why? consdier their point of view. It uses their electricity. It is a fire risk. You are making crumbs which attract rats and cockroaches and flies. You are deprivin them of sales of over-priced food from their kitchen.

On the other hand, they might be short-staffed and keen to keep you happy or just flexible.

Do a health and safety assessment first. What could go wrong? How can you prevent it going wrong?

Can you leave the room as you found it?



Simple solution - Suites
A simpler solution was one we adoped as a family of three in the USA. If you are staying longer than a week, go to an all suites hotel. There you have a larger living room, often a bigger dining table where you can eat or work, and a microwave.

You need to buy in food to bring with, or have it delivered.


UK flag

Eggs
Years ago we were in a UK hotel room which had nothing but a kettle and we needed breakfast. I said, What I would like is an egg.

The corner shop across the road had eggs.

No chance of making scrambled eggs. But what about boiled eggs? We had hot , boiled water, from the kettle. Just pour the water over the egg in a cup.

We did consider putting the egg inside the kettle. If the egg breaks, you get an awful mess.

Coddled Egg
You could bring your own kettle from home, a small one, ideally one with a flat base inside and not an exposed element, so it is easier to clean and empty.

My husband used to do this as a student at Aberdeen university in Scotland. He had an egg pricker to make a hole in the egg so it would not burst. He added vinegar to the water to coagulate whites if the egg splits or leaks through the hole.

Coffee Pods
One year we were on holiday in Wales and my husband was not happy with the quality of the coffee. he drove to the nearest city and bought the cheapest coffee pod machine which came with a set of coffee pods. We were on holiday for a long weekend. He had his breakfast coffee and mid monring coffee and lnch time coffee and mid afternoon coffee and after dinner coffee for 2 days.  Some for me too.

He drinks black coffee. A pint of milk was available from the nearby Tesco supermarket and stayed cold on the windowsill.  He reckoned the price was not much more than the cost of bying all those coffees in the restaurant or bar.

With planning and ingenuity, or asking what is available, you can often find a solution.

Interesting Websites
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8356091/Woman-makes-apple-crumble-homemade-TimTam-IRON-hotel-quarantine.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ico=taboola_feed

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and phtographer, author and speaker.
Please share links to your favourite posts.

How To Deal With Spilled Yogurt On An Airline Seat

Problem
I am sitting in an airline seat and I feel something wet. Oh, my goodness. Is it stress incontinence, diarrhoea, am I disintegrating, having an abortion or miscarriage from the fifty year old baby, or what?

The good news is that I am not leaking. The bad news is that I have found a yogurt pot containing only a little of the contents.

I must have had a yogurt with breakfast. The collecting was so fast and efficient that they were grabbing my plate before I had finished. I must have kept the yogurt and lost it. Just before landing, I discovered I was sitting on it. Yes, strawberry or similar yoghurt, all over my caftan, my silk skirt and slip - plus the seat.

Protective clothing
Incidentally, the protective caftan on top of the skirt was a good idea. I had felt daft, wearing two layers of skirt. However, I am not alone in this. Muslim women all wear umpteen layers of clothing. This recent incident confirmed common sense, that a washable top layer protects the clothes underneath.

The staff were very efficient. The male steward gave me two hot towels heated in the galley microwave. By the time I came out of the toilet, wet, but free from yogurt stains and smells, another crew member was wiped off the seat.

I had already forgotten about the seat. Of course, they had not. Evidently, I am not the first and only person ever to have sat on a yogurt, or other liquids, on a plane seat.

She suggested that I use the blanket on the wet seat. I agreed. I didn't want to be a wet blanket. Goodness, I have just noticed another metaphor whose practical meaning I had previously never noted.

Lessons Learned From Squashed Yogurt Pot
I have always wanted my travels and life to be a shining beacon to others, not a terrible warning of what not to do. I admit it, you can learn from me to finish your yogurt immediately and never save it.

Author

Travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, Angela Lansbury.
See my other posts on this blog and:
http://luxurytravelforless.co.uk

Porridge in England, Scotland and Asia, and Stirring Saucepans

Salt or sugar, sweet or savoury, porridge is stirring stuff. Porridge is called oatmeal in the USA and Canada. In England we have porridge for breakfast with sugar, but in Scotland they eat porridge with salt. Maybe this is something to do with a previous century when sugar was imported from sugar cane in the caribbean and shipped to ports on the west coast of England and sent down to London.

Supermarket Choices
Porridge is still a favourite breakfast served in hotels in winter in the UK. Nowadays most supermarkets in London, England, and elsewhere in the UK can offer porridge oats in large bags at a low price. You can also buy ready-made porridge in one person portions in a sachet for the microwave, with sugar and milk included, just empty into a bowl, using the sachet as instructed to measure the exact amount of added water. (I add fresh milk either as part of the liquid during cooking or afterwards to the bowl when serving and eating.)

Online UK supermarkets which have pictures and prices of porridge include Asda, Tesco, Ocado (home delivery branch). You will see pictures of brands such as Jordans, Oat So Simple.

Checking the various flavours, you could pick the one with lowest calories. Lucky you if you are not counting calories. All my favourites were the highest calories.

I was impressed by the huge variety offered even in a small branch of Tesco supermarket.

A big bag of Tesco's own is competitively priced.

Quaker Oats. Only £1.14 for a big bag from a small branch of Tesco.  A little goes a long way because they swell up when you add water.

You could start with a bowl of fresh fruit, chopped up with a few nuts (if you are not allergic to nuts), plus milk. Then have porridge.

A traditional hotel breakfast would offer porridge as a starter, followed by fried eggs or other eggs and bacon and sausage, possibly cooked/fried tomato and mushroom. All very calorific and ideal for warming you and marching along the valley by the rivers (now flooding!) on the breezy hillsides, through the dark pine forests, though the cold winter weather to work or school or working out in the cold fields on a farm. Oats are starches, which are a form of slow-release calories which keep you going all morning or all day, as opposed to quick-energy foods such as sugar which stimulates you with a burst of energy and then a sinking low later.

Diet versus Cholesterol
We gave up porridge with sugar when we started a diet. Then we read that if you have high cholesterol porridge seems to - in simple terms - to attach to the baddies and carry them off.

Stirring
If you have a saucepan with a see-though glass lid you can see what is happening. Today we were looking at stirring porridge. If you make porridge the old fashioned way in a saucepan, somebody stirs the porridge to stop it sticking. When you stir, you help the oats mix their starch into the water forming a 'cream'.

With too little water you would end up with a sticky clump like a cake. Too much water and you would start with a clear soup with bits in it. To solve the problem, simply add more oats or more water. If you buy a pack of oats it often tells you how much water and how many spoons or cups or the weight, but you can tell by eye. If you make porridge every morning, you get into a system, half of a particular saucepan or bowl.

Why would you cook in a saucepan and stir, rather than tipping into a bowl and using the microwave?  For one person, you might prefer a microwave, less washing up and you are a microwave person who wants results in one minute, so you buy a sachet.

If you are a dedicated cook, you reckon it's hardly any work to add water to oats in a saucepan and stir until it is exactly right.

Another advantage of stirring is that it doesn't overcook and get burnt and stick to the bottom of the inside of the pan. (If so, if you are lucky you can eat the top half. If the nasty burned flavour is all through, you will have to start again with another pan. Simply soak pan in water for an hour or so. Frankly, it's dangerous. You could start a fire. Burned food gives you cancer, according to the cancer research websites. Easier to stand and watch. If you need to answer the phone, keep a mobile within reach, check who is calling, or watch the food as you answer and tell the people briefly you are cooking and will phone back.)

Self-Stirring Saucepans
Years ago, as a newlywed, (back in the 1970s) I invested in a pan with a stirring device in the lid. I quickly tired of this. It had two disadvantages. The first was that it made an irritating whirring noise. The second was that it was complicated to clean. I'm not sure if it went in the dishwasher. Probably not, because it had batteries in the lid.

Finally it had batteries which needed replacing. That was a cost. A nuisance to change batteries. You thought it had broken but the batteries had run out. A general nuisance. Or you forgot and started cooking in another saucepan which was nearby and caught your eye. The stirring device got in the way if you wanted to use the pan for anything else.

However, looking on the internet in early 2016, we found the Japanese had invented new devices. One is a shaped saucepan, somewhat like a V shape, art deco appearance, which creates a vortex. One is a dedicated saucepan. Another is a device you can move from one saucepan to another. Some have patterned interiors.  All very scientific, domestic science.

UK Stir Pan Prices and pan Stirrer
Amazon has a stirring saucepan at about £12. Tesco has a sale on and their lowest price is just under £10. You can order online, click and collect from your nearest branch of Tesco. A member of my family just ordered one.

Looking at the specifications again, I see that what we ordered is not a saucepan but a device which sits in any saucepan (of the specified range of sizes). It is driven by batteries. Batteries are not supplied. It takes rechargeable batteries. That's good. You save money. You are less likely to run out of power.

I am looking forward to using it. Our main use initially will be for the daily porridge. But it will be useful for other sauces. I wonder whether it will affect consistency? We don't have lumpy porridge.  I doubt whether the porridge will taste any different.

Regarding taste, we have tried cutting down sugar to nothing, but the porridge is very bland. If you add just a tiny amount of sugar and a tiny amount of salt, that suits us. We a have sometimes forgotten to add salt and had to add a little at the table.

Asian Savoury porridge
In Asia they eat porridge for breakfast in Singapore. Also in hotels in Asia. In restaurants and fast food shops. And in lounges at airports such as Singapore Airlines, especially in the Asian countries, so you will see it in a lounge on a stopover from Australia to Europe via Singapore. If you are in Star Alliance and stop at a country with no Singapore Airlines lounge, you may find yourself directed to another airline's lounge.

In Asia or on a flight with many Asians you are likely to find you are offered p or r i d g e (good thing I re-read my post - predictive text turned the word into horrible!), nearly always savoury, often with meat or fish or vegetables mixed in.   If you treat porridge like potato or pasta or bread, it is just a bland vehicle to which you can add anything you like for a one pot breakfast when travelling or in a hotel suite or at a second home, or arriving in your new rented or bought home.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porridge

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, researcher, author, speaker.
See books by Angela Lansbury on Amazon and Lulu.com
Follow me on Google+, linkedIn, Facebook.