What do you take from home for Self catering abroad

[Baconking]

I'm ready to make a list of must brings from home for a self catering week in Portugal next month.

Not clothes and the like but decanted washing up liquid or handy must haves so we don't have to buy them while there.

We don’t usually self cater but we are this year, in Portugal so I’ll take tea bags (I drink a particular type of tea that isn’t usually available overseas) and this year, I might take a handful of washing machine pods and a few dishwasher tablets, that’ll be it, everything else we’ll get when we’re there. We’ll have a look to see what’s supplied then go shopping and I know it’s uneconomical but we’ll get small sizes of things and probably just leave whatever is left over. We only plan to eat breakfast at our accommodation and maybe lunch on a couple of days, so we’ll buy as we go.

Tea bags. Lee and Perrins.

Abroad: weetabix (child with SN)
UK we might bring more but will more likely do a shop when we get there or get a delivery.

Except the usual holiday clothes, towels, toiletries etc. dh and I only took teabags😬

We stayed SC in Greece for 10 days. The apartment has a small kitchen but all the main utensils you’d need, a sweeping brush, bin bags, some cleaning stuff and a hairdryer. It was quite basic but great for us, it was 2 mins from the beach and a ten min walk to all the restaurants and taverns. I think we had intended to cook more but the restaurants were fantastic and a lot cheaper then we had been expecting ( it was quite a number of years ago)

I recall buying some washing up liquid, a couple of cloths and toilet roll but that’s it really.
We ate out every night, as well as breakfasts and lunches some days. The meals we did make in the kitchen were pretty basic, salads and fruit, pasta. Very minimal cooking involved. It was just dh and me back then, we have 2 dcs now & I feel like we’d need to take quite a bit more then teabags!😆

Tea bags, a metal scourer in case they have stainless steel pans and a green scourer…..

Teabags and a sharp knife.

Nothing apart from garlic salt so i can take advantage of the excellent tomatoes that we can't seem to get here.

Tea bags and a few small sachets of long life milk if arriving late and shops will be shut.
Detergent sheets for washing clothes
Salt, pepper, chilli powder, curry powder
Tea towels - just a couple

Always take a teatowel, floor wipes (larger size, great for cleaning), a travel bottle of washing up liquid, an jar of coffee and pack of teabags and my favourite mug.

Be aware that since Brexit the rules have changed about what you can take into the EU. No milk or dairy for starters. But just over half of those who voted chose to vote for this.

food.ec.europa.eu/animals/animal-products-movements/personal-imports_en

To those who say that they don't want to cook , well sometimes after a long day out and swimming , we don't feel like having to get dressed up to go out to eat especially with kids . Tend to buy frozen pizzas on a shopping trip for this but may also bring a small bag of pasta . It definitely no tuna - do people even make that still ?

We take several bottles of concentrated squash because we can’t always find sugar free and one of the kids avoids sugary drinks.

We all have a small packed lunch box, reusable coffee mug and water bottle as well because as a large group it makes it massive difference if we can take our own drinks and snacks on trips out.

Blimey! We take absolutely nothing with us and just go to the shops when we get there.
buy breakfast basics and then eat out the rest of the time. They’ve usually left enough washing up liquid and dishwasher tablets etc in case they’re needed but if you start taking bits and pieces where does it end? You’d always need to get something and if you’re going to the shops anyway it just seems sensible to see what’s there first and add what’s not there to the list.
Don’t mind leaving what’s not used behind, would far rather that than be faffing about decanting things into fiddly pots and packets and wondering if I was going to arrive at my destination with a small pot of 30ps worth of washing up liquid has made its way across my pile of clothes.
Understand if you have dietary restrictions but we don’t so more than happy to take our approach. And yes, tuna pasta eaten in the house seems not very holiday like to me. Same for a spag bol or any hasty thrown together mid week rush dinner tbh.
Each to their own though, we all enjoy different things!

Swiss army knife
Tea bags
Some freezer bags, clips
small tupperware containers (I normally take snacks for the journey in them).

I take some handsoap and a couple of dishwasher tablets with me. I always buy washing up liquid if not provided.But it's very rare nowadays that nothing is provided.

We also take a meat probe for when dh uses the bbq.

Given you're flying:

Tea bags
Those IKEA plastic bag clips
A couple of clothes washing pods.
Could pack a decent knife

I find almost all self catering places have washing up liquid and dishwasher tablets, and most have oil, salt, pepper etc.

Last SC I did was in the UK but I took salt, pepper, coffee, tea, sugar, Dunns tropical seasoning, paprika, crushed chilli flakes, lazy garlic, frying pan, tongs, some condiments and some cleaning stuff.

If I was doing SC abroad I'd probs just take salt, pepper, coffee, tea, sugar, paprika, chilli flakes.

I've read about some people taking their air fryers on holiday with them!

A few herbs and spices. Salt and pepper.

Looking at some of the items here, l really wonder about the size and weight of your baggage. When visiting other countries it is really better to support the local economy rather than bring everything home from home. You can discover new things too.

Having said this, l accept there are s handful of things that you might need to take because they are not available elsewhere.

We’ve done a few eurocamp holidays (we drive) and my list of stuff to take gets longer each year, but for me the absolute essentials are washing up liquid (100ml lasted over a week washing up 3 times a day) sponge, rubber gloves and a teatowel, salt, pepper and a little bottle of oil, bag clips, some ziplock bags, a couple of bin bags, and a pack of kitchen/bathroom cleaning wipes.

It varies depending on luggage space, we're often short, but if we had the space we'd take tea bags, mugs, coffee filters, dishwasher tablet or washing up liquid (easy to just have another small bottle in the toiletries kit - it's not worth searching reviews to find somewhere that provides it) and tea towels.

I deliberately buy bin bags abroad to bring home because we can't get bags that fit our perfectly ordinary Ikea kitchen bin here but in Spain they're perfect (and cheap) so I get a couple of rolls to bring home if we have luggage space. We buy plenty of food and alcohol, and eat out at least once a day in local restaurants.

We also have a nice collection of plastic tubs (yogurt pot size and slightly larger) from Mercadona in Spain - good for using throughout the holiday and also to take away leftover bits of cheese/olives and ham to eat at the airport instead of queuing for ages to pay a fortune for Burger King that you don't actually want but is pretty much the only food available that's not fridge cold.

OP also make sure you take enough sun cream as it's often far more expensive overseas.

Tea bags, tea towels and a sharp knife if possible.

Clips for crisps / packets
ziplock bags for food
laundry pods - 4 or 5

otherwise one of the joys of a self catering holiday is mooching around foreign supermarkets surely?!

otherwise one of the joys of a self catering holiday is mooching around foreign supermarkets surely

Taking a few bits to avoid waste, save money or make sure you get your preferred brand/type doesn't prevent going to the supermarket though as you'll still need food, drinks, snacks etc.

I just don't want to pay £££s for crappy or imported UK brand tea bags when I have a massive box of them at home and space in my suitcase.

I was also slightly annoyed when the cheapest washing up liquid was 2 euro and we used about 5% of it. I know it's only 2 euro, but apply that to several other things and it starts to add up.

Unless you are somewhere like Australia or Cyprus, even extensive mooching will fail to find decent teabags. Just the apparently undrinkable Liptons rubbish.