What do you bring on holidays that makes you look cheap but in your mind is entirely practical

[AnotherTroyforHertoBurn]

I will start.

I bring a food container with detergent only for emergencies, refuse to wash clothes on holidays.

I also bring dishwasher tablets in case there aren't enough in the villa.

Ditto a starter roll of toilet paper as the last time it was like sandpaper.

This is not done out of meanness, this is because to my mind foreign supermarkets are for oohing and aaahing over the different foodstuffs and drooling at the fish counter.

A holiday is not for turning down the aisle of mundanity in the supermarket and buying the above. They come with us every year and they come home again, they are well travelled.

DH has stopped arguing. Only took 34 years.

I'm astonished at how much stuff people take. We just take our favourite teabags. If we have to buy dishwasher tablets, so be it. Any leftovers can always be bought home if I can be arsed.

Detergent as I have really sensitive skin and new brands can make me really itchy.

We have always taken breakfast cereal for the kids as they have food allergies and don't trust the potential for cross contamination from those dispensers in hotels. Plus it's almost impossible to find out the ingredients with any certainty.

Looks awful when we have a box of coco pops on our table though. 😂

Actually I always take loads of medication. It's just not as easy to buy paracetamol or immodium in other countries.

I have a travel kettle, some long life milk, tea bags and a decent sized travel mug. I live in the US and hotel rooms never have kettles, only coffee makers and the dairy provided is always cream or half and half which tastes terrible in tea.

Beyond that, it depends on what kind of holiday, more than a week and I take some clothes detergent and nice chocolate

i will also do a fancy supermarket run once there and buy some breakfast basics and a bottle of wine/fee snacks. I am an early riser and DH likes to sleep in, so I like to be able to have a small breakfast while he sleeps in. He likes to have a last glass of wine in the evening after I am in bed. Theoretically we could order room service, but we are too cheap for that!

Nothing, I think. If I can get my packing down to a teeny little piece of hand luggage I will. I'm more likely to wear two jumpers and a coat, put my sandals in my pocket, break my toothbrush in half and steal a wodge of loo paper at the local museum.

Abroad - tea bags and a small kettle. I’m allergic to coffee, even hot water from a coffee percolator can affect me, and a good cup of tea is virtually impossible to get outside of the UK and Ireland.

SC in UK - laundry and dishwater tabs, oxo cubes, toilet roll, sharp knife

Hotel in UK - extra tea bags!

Coffee, sugar and long life milk sachets, so I can have a coffee when I get to wherever I'm going without having to find a shop or if the shops are closed when I arrive. Done enough package holidays where you arrive at the apartment at 11pm and can't buy supplies till the next morning.

I always pack a few ice cube bags. Some sc places we have been to have those teeny tiny trays. The bags take up no space but I hate being without cold drinks

Tea bags. In fact I often carry some in my handbag. Bothing worse than a cafe which gives you a teapot the size of a football with one puny tea bag in it.

Goodness you’re all so polite

if I’m SC in uk and run out of dishwasher tabs etc
i drop owner a line to say please can we have some more
never ever been told no
would be very odd for an owner of a property to NOT want to actively assist a guest in keeping their property clean and tidy!

My husband and son (and me) enjoy arcade games when on holiday. In many places they give tickets that you swap for prizes but they're always crap plastic bullshit for 1000s of the bloody tickets so I buy thibgs that each of us actually wants and set up my own ticket exchange in our apartment 😊😊 I also make a full picnic in a cooler box and buy drinks for all long journeys on the way to holiday destinations. I may keep all coffee/tea/sugar/toiletries from hotels for my caravan friends too 😮

We always do ferry and drive so don't have to worry about packing space too much. I wouldn't take as much stuff if I was flying. Also probably wouldn't take a sharp knife as I don't want to be hauled aside at security....
Although it's been about 15 years since I went on a plane so I'm not sure how I would manage with packing, I'm so used to having the car and taking whatever I like. I usually take far too much stuff as I like to be prepared for all eventualities!

Again, I simply say - “oh this is too weak for me, please can I have an extra tea bag as otherwise I’ll be waiting for it to brew all day!”. Never been refused or even looked at quizzically

I do the same on self-catering.
But even on an all inclusive resort holiday, I will take my put up anywhere washing line and clothes pegs because I hate dirty laundry and often want to re-wear my favourite clothes but am too distrusting and cheap to pay for them to be washed by the resort or hotel.

Salt,pepper.marmite,tea bags ,coffee,crackers ,bottle opener,JClothes,primula cheese spread,sandwich bags .

Definitely teabags - but I'm caffeine free and it's hard to get black decaf tea abroad. A toilet roll in case of emergencies and usually a few dishwasher and washing machine tabs. I'm another one who likes to come home with a clean suitcase - especially when it's hot abroad and it all dries so quickly and nicely! That's obviously for villa holidays, I wouldn't bother for a city break.
On road trips staying at multiple hotels we also take a travel kettle with two little travel mugs (which fit inside it) as we've been caught out not being able to make a cup of tea in our room before. Living up to the British reputation of being obsessed by tea. Normally I'd take a bag of uht milk sachets so we can have milk in our tea, but brexit has put paid to that!

We’ve been going to the same timeshare in the UK for 10+ years, so I’ve got it down to a fine art!
We go hand luggage only so I order a shopping delivery, including toiletries, for the evening we arrive.
But our timeshare already has tea, coffee, salt and pepper, cleaning supplies, toilet paper etc.
Departure day is a packed lunch of leftovers and we leave anything that’s too good to throw away with a note for the cleaning staff. They have a fridge freezer just for that.

BUT
If we’re going to an unknown self catering place by car I take
4 toilet paper
1 kitchen roll
4 pocket packs of tissues
corkscrew
kitchen peeler and knife
emergency packet soup or risotto
washing & dishwasher tabs
enough dry dog food to last the whole stay (life’s too short and dog is fussy)
<<<<this bowl and strainer set (because I can)

My first thought on reading the thread title was:
Taking IKEA blue bags to the beach makes me look cheap but they’re the best thing ever.

I take instant coffee (I do not like real coffee) as I do not want to wake up the first morning and not have a cup of coffee immediately.

DH takes Lapsang souchong because it can be hard to find.

I rarely throw away pillows but when they are only fit for bin I keep them and put them in an about to be thrown out pillow case to make an economy seat on ultra long haul a tiny bit more comfy.

I've even done this when flying business as the pillows are still crap. Its weird how a manky-but-from-home pillow can make such a difference

And then when home it's finally resigned to the dustbin. It's squirrelled away in a tote bag when traversing the airport...

Oh god I've revealed myself there.

Everyone else is confessing to looking cheap by bringing lapsang Sou Chong or an apron (an apron! I've never used one in my life!) and I'm confessing to bringing manky old pillows.

@Discovereads Where did you get your washing line from please?

I always go AI so all i take is some laundry detergent for the odd bit of hand washing

When DS (ASD) would only ever eat one type of cereal, we took that cereal.

Thankfully he's into weetabix now so that's usually covered.

I take clothes pegs after a particularly windy holiday in Portugal - for pegging up sunshades/windscreens made of towels, pegging out swimming stuff to dry, pegging bags closed, pegging ill-fitting curtains together, pegging bags of half eaten food together - seriously game changing!

And tea bags but that's cos I'm 50 now and frankly cba starting the day without my cuppa.

Tupperware and sandwich bags for making up picnics or saving leftovers.

Salt sachets - usually stolen from mcdonalds or similar.

Toilet roll and baby wipes.