Working On Being an Organized Happy Camper

I am not an organized person. Not one iota. And the older I get, the more it bothers me to be disorganized. And yet it seems the harder I try the less organized I am. But after our first camping trip this year I knew I had to do something with the camper. Now our first trip wasn’t planned. Joe surprised me and brought the camper home from storage and we decided to take it out that weekend. No planning whatsoever. I dusted it, vacuumed it, washed the linens and off we went. And even though we had a great time, including me, I knew I would have enjoyed it more if I was more organized. Plus – Joe took our neighbor’s at the campground on a tour of the camper. They wanted to see ours since we both had Rockwood trailers. We toured there’s and they toured ours. Which was fine until Joe opened up the closet doors. I was mortified! We had packed all our clothes and stuff in totes and I had stuffed everything into the closet when I found out they were going to come see it. The closet was already a disaster and so shoving more into it was not good! (I took before pictures of the closet on my phone and can’t seem to get them off my phone and onto my computer. But trust me, it was bad!) These are the after pictures:

Anyway, before last weekend’s trip I went through and cleaned out and organized all the cupboards and closets. (All except the cupboard holding all the toys, coloring books, et cetera. That will have to wait until a day I don’t have Drew with me!) I pitched and pitched and pitched, found a spot for everything I kept, and made sure before we left that instead of having all our clothes and things in totes that were laying around on the floor, everything was put into draws and closets. And low and behold – I enjoyed the trip so much more. It’s all common sense I know. But being organized is so darn hard for me. But I gotta say, when Joe wanted the griddle to fix breakfast and I knew exactly where it was and there wasn’t a bunch of stuff sitting on top of it that had to be moved to get to  it, it was heaven! And having all our clothes put away and not in totes, again, heaven!

Now, no matter how you try, spending the weekend in a camper with four adults, Joe, me, Aaron and Eric, one seven year old along with a four year old running in and out and Abby using the kitchen for Bayah’s bottles as their hot water wasn’t working, it’s impossible to have a place for everything and things were constantly in disarray but I worked at keeping things as picked up as possible. And anything that had a place was put back in it when not in use. But really – who wants to spend the whole time picking up and putting away? Not me. I’m there to be outside and having fun! But, just having a place for everything and knowing where to find things and getting rid of all the extras that had gradually crept in over the years – camping is going to be so much more relaxed this year for me.

And then to take things a step further I did this this week. I lost my list of everything that needed to be put into the camper before the first trip every year a couple of years ago. It was on my phone and somehow it got deleted. And I wanted to start keeping track of our trips again. I used to be an avid scrapbooker and I kept books of all of our trips. But I haven’t scrapbooked in years and for some reason I’ve been wanting to keep track of our trips again. I found these forms online at allthosedetails.com and modified them to fit my needs, printed them off, ordered a small 3-ring binder and page protectors and voila – the perfect book for camper organization! I have my checklist of things needed to stock before the first trip and things to keep stocked, an area for campground reviews, and an area for recipes as there are recipes that we almost always use when camping and now I won’t have to take the recipes out of my kitchen binder and keep in the camper during the summer months. Or like last year, forget to bring back in the house at the end of camping season and so they are lost to me during the winter while the camper is in storage. I still have to make copies of those recipes and get them in the binder but I’m now well on my way to being an Organized Happy Camper! And I’ve ordered another binder so I can be a little more organized at home. A place for grocery lists, grocery store price comparisons, pantry organization lists, Christmas present ideas and items bought throughout the year, flowers I’ve planted one year, how they did and what I want to change for next year, those lists just go on and on!