Packing Fails and What we need next time

As we close up our inaugural trip in the truck camper, I think over the items we don’t need.

The cooler. While we needed this on our week trip up to obtain the camper, it was not used on the entirety of the camper usage portion of our travels, so we might as well leave it home next time.

And, except for some food items, pretty much everything else we brought was used.

NOW, what did we bring that didn’t exactly work out as expected?

The Instant Pot is a little big for our storage space, and we may downsize to a mini. It came in quite useful during this trip, and it can be run on a single Honda EU1000 generator.

The generators, I’ve gotten incredibly sick of playing musical boxes and fill the back of the Jeep with stuff. As we have two Honda eu1000s, and they are in the Jeep rather than truck camper storage, we’ve discussed trading in our two for a single Honda eu2000. The body is not much larger and it would fit in the generator storage compartment of the truck camper.

Which means what is in generator storage will need shifting. That does create a bit of a domino effect.

What we forgot?

Dog accessories! Toys and coats! Sheesh. Needless to say, those were items we picked up along the way.

Shoe storage is difficult for two people. We will need to work on that.

I need a clothesline.

I want full size kitchen utensils: serving spoon, spatula. I’ll bring mine along next time, rather than dealing with MSRs foldup set (great for camping, not so great for living with 24/7, or cleaning).

I want metal plates and bowls. Our plastic ones scratched quickly and I have been concerned about cleanliness and bacterial growth since my first bowl of spaghetti. (I just tossed the dishes with red scratches I could not clean.)

My clothes worked out fairly well. However, I did not wear half of the pants and none of the skirts or the dress I brought. In slightly warmer temps, I might have worn a skirt or two. But pants and a single pair of shorts (worn ad nauseum early on) were my staples. I need more tops next time. I brought equal numbers, but should have twice as many tops as bottoms. My tops are worn to death ... and even washed, the hint of travel stench may turn them into rags once we reach home.

The bathroom sink faucet is too close to the bowl edge to be good at anything besides filling the bowl. You need more room to successfully wash your hands or toothbrush.

The rear left burner of our Dometic stove stopped working consistently. It will not light half the time.

We still have problems with the Patriot II losing contact. But it tends to "fix" itself within a couple minutes of failure. (We did forget to unplug it from power one night, and almost ran the Jeep’s battery down ... yikes!)

The drawers are awfully hard to open. They stick something extreme. This could be good or bad, we have yet to make a final decision. On one hand, we have found refrigerator items dumping out upon opening the door, but have NEVER found an open drawer or fridge.

On the other hand, once the drawer actually opens, I worry about items flying out. Like knives, seasonings, and can openers. The flying knives is a scary scenario.