To ask for your most unhinged packing lists?

Well Im thinking about my Spanish family members who wont eat 'UK food' and bring a load of stuff with them.

The additional benefit of the carbon monoxide alarm is that it has a test button. This can also be used as a call for help alarm too in the event of danger or attack.

l always take one of those plug in nightlight thingies with me as well. It saves stubbing your toes on bed legs or walking into a door if you go for a wee in the night and it’s pitch black.

Sink plug and a doorstop

Baby Powder for seaside trips. (The largest, cheapest container you can find) Just sprinkle over wet and sandy feet and it brushes straight off.

You see them (usually from China and SE Asia) on these airport programmes. They try to bring in a whole suitcase of dried meat and fresh noodles with meat

Coffee pot. As in espresso maker. Sorry not Sorry but we go self catering and I just need my special morning coffee. Also DP laughs at me because I must do a spreadsheet of what goes in the case !

Oooo am loving this thread!
I take a satin pillow case from home everywhere (to reduce my.hair frizz), extension lead abroad so you need fewer plug adaptors, travel washing line with a few pegs (especially handy for caravan holidays where you can't guarantee they will have a hang out the window airer thing). Also take a wine bottle stopper and decent corkscrew/ bottle opener because nothing kills a holiday faster than getting to end of stressful travel day with 2 young kids, finally unpacked and gor them to bed and then realizing you have nothing to open that lovely bottle of wine you've brought along!

LOL. Just imagine the bodily fluids on the mattress you're sleeping on and the sheets...

Wouldn’t the smoke get you

When I remember I take my big plunger if I’m staying in a French property. I live mainly in France and our plumbing is atrocious!

When went to the Alps for winter, my partner packed his 3D printer - not the small one - the big bugger!
Also :
oyster knife (and a couple of dozen oysters packed in ice).
Battery starter pack
Full tool kit
Our King & Queen mugs 😆
The dogs pushchair.
Last season he took a load of wood to build a ski rack in our rented apartment!

Used to take hours to load the van - and unload it! I’ll miss all the random stuff this season as he died earlier this year 💔

I have seen men in tears because a cafe in Majorca doesn't have Heinz Tomato Ketchup.

I am also talking people that stay at hotels and don't even look at the local dishes. They turn up their noses at it, even though never tried it.

My parents saw a box of decaf PG tips in a Spanish supermarket - €8 for a box of 40.

I take a fire blanket in my hand luggage on plane journeys to wrap around me and the DC in the event of a survivable impact crash where fire is likely to be the main cause of death.

There wouldn't be room for my husband also, but since he chooses to sit separately from us so he can relax during the flight unbothered by the kids, he can take his own chances, as far as I'm concerned.

And those three specific foods (Monster Munch, Heinz baked beans, and bacon) are the things I load up on when I'm in the UK. Or ask people for when they go there.

I'm not even from the UK, they're just fkn delicious!

Let people like what they like hey.

Theres lots of people from abroad who travel here with tons of their home food as well, bottles of this, packets of that because they dont want to eat food from the UK.

This is a really random one, but if you go to the seaside and you your kids like to spend time in the arcades on the 2p falls machines, take a tub or two with you. It's so much less faff than bank bags or holding them all in your hand, and when you use the change machine, you just put it there and let it catch them all.

Some places give them away, but many don't; so if you take a couple with you when you leave if you go to the former, you have them ready for when you go to the latter!

We always take a box of random kitchen stuff, as it's amazing how many holiday lets don't have lots of the normal stuff you expect to be there. Decent sharp knives, potato peeler, potato masher, scissors, cheese grater stick, slotted spoon, wooden spoon, bottle opener, tin opener etc.

It's not daft though. A big multisocket extension lead means you only need travel adapter. All the other electrical equipment just plugs into the extension bar, no need for multiple adapters.

A tumble dryer?! Ok that one wins. How did you have room for your cases?

🤣🤣🤣

Love this thread, thank you OP! I'm reading it on my first holiday in 10 years and my lists were off the charts (not helped by a chronic illness and many meds to bring for management). I definitely feel less of an overthinker reading some of these!

Foldable draining rack for plates etc when self-catering.

You win the thread!

When we went to Disneyland Paris, I took a Ziploc bag of snacks for each child for each day of the trip. It was a bit of work and took up a fair amount of space but it meant that, each day in the park, if one of the children said they were hungry, they were handed their Ziploc bag to choose something to eat. It meant no squabbling over who got which snack and saved a fortune on buying snacks in the park.

i took the tumble dryer to Haven once . It was during Covid and they were only offering very expensive service wash on site!

I can understand perhaps if you are staying in a gite in the middle of nowhere - but, as I have said many, many times - Spain, France and Italy are not third world countries, you can get 90% of what you want in their supermarkets, and if you can't do without a suitcase full of stuff from home because you don't like Spanish, French or Italian food, why are you going there?