EVERY new mom, organized or not, has done it: you think you’ve got everything you need, you load it all in the car, and when you’re too far from your house to go back, you turn to your significant other and say “Oh $%#@, we forgot the __________!
Making a baby checklist for different types of excursions all but eliminated this problem in my house. Here’s how I was able to utilize my checklists successfully:
· Use your computer to make the lists. What your baby needs can change almost daily, and it’s important to be able to edit and save your lists at will.
· Make different baby checklists for different adventures. For example, a checklist for a daytrip looks completely different from a weekend trip to the mountains, which looks absolutely alien from a 2 week vacation to (sigh) Hawaii. I had two different lists- The “Daytrip List” and the “Weekend Trip List” since those are the ones we did the most. We never needed a baby checklist for Hawaii. If you do, then you are awesome.
· Check off each item on the baby checklist as you pack your baby’s things. This might seem a little silly, but there were a few times when I didn’t and regretted it. Let’s face it, you can get a bit scatterbrained when you’re trying to pack your child’s things while also cleaning up spit-up and keeping your baby happy in his bouncer. It takes less time than you think and you’ll have peace of mind knowing you didn’t forget something essential.
· Be specific about what you need to pack, especially on the big trips. For example, instead of just having bibs on your list, write down how many bibs you’ll need per day you will need so you won’t fall short or have to do thousands of loads of laundry.
· Have a special section on your saved baby checklists for extra items that you don’t take with you all the time but need to remember to bring just the same. By extra items, I mean birthday presents, that book you borrowed and need to return to its owner, or the bottle of wine you said you could bring to the party.
· Save seasonal baby checklists. You’ll need all that swim and sun gear in the summer, but not necessarily in the winter.
· Keep the baby checklists as simple as possible. I just wrote mine in Microsoft Word with bullet points that I could fill in as I packed the needed baby item. No spreadsheets or color coding are necessary. Cool, but not necessary.
Attached to this entry are a couple of my baby checklists from when Will was a wee one. Please use and change to make them work for you.
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