It can be quite frustrating when you get to the airport or your destination and realize that you have forgotten important documents or toiletries. Your excitement about your trip suddenly turns to worry and anxiety, wondering how on earth you forgot your items and what to do next.

In this post, we’ll be discussing 5 practical strategies to keep you from forgetting things before or during your travel.

1. Pack Early

Last-minute packing is one fast way to forgetfulness. You’ll have less time to process what you need for your trip, you’ll also be in a hurry and may skip something important before you depart your home. 

It is advisable to start preparing for your trip weeks or days ahead. In fact, a day or two before your trip, you should have finished almost all your packing. When you do things early, you’ll have enough time to even remember things that you’ll have otherwise forgotten.

2. Prepare a Packing List

A packing list is so important for any travel. It is also very easy to prepare. Using the ‘old-fashioned’ pen and paper or the more modern ‘note app’ on your phone, you can simply make a list of the items you need for your trip and tick them when you have packed them.

See it as your own checklist for preventing forgetfulness. 

It is known that checklists help prevent forgetfulness, this is why they are used by pilots in aircraft and even surgeons in the operating room.

Your list can contain items like travel insurance, tickets, hotel booking print outs, international passport, driver’s license, vaccination card, clothes, shoes, bags, belts, toiletries, cash, bank cards, headphones, sunscreen, and phone chargers.

3. Have A Standard Place For Keeping Things

The way this works is to keep things in a particular place, this way, you’ll know whether you’ve packed an item or not.

For instance, I personally like to keep my travel documents like my passport, flight tickets and hotel bookings in a particular zippered compartment in my carry-on luggage. This way, all I need to do is check that compartment to be sure I am not forgetting anything. Getting yourself a piece of good luggage can help you stay organized. 

The more organized you are when packing, the lesser the chance that you’ll leave anything behind.

4. Set Phone Reminders When Necessary

This is helpful because even the most meticulous travelers can still forget things sometimes. You can set reminders on your phone for things that you can easily forget. For instance, you can set one to remind you to book a flight, book hotels, buy your toiletries, buy travel insurance or even to call an airline to confirm their carry-on size.

This way, you’ll not need to put a lot of information on your mind and feel bad if you don’t remember them.

5. Back-Up Your Important Documents

This hack is one I personally use a lot. I ensure I have copies of my important documents backed up in cloud storage like Dropbox. This way, even if I don’t remember to carry some of them, I can easily print them or access them on my phone.

Also, it decreases the number of papers you need to be carrying around with you.

To do this, create a folder in Dropbox or Google Drive called ‘Documents’ and uploaded files like your passport data page, driver’s license, flight tickets, and hotel bookings.

If you travel often, you can create sub-folders for each destination you’re heading to so that you can access documents for each destination in a separate folder.

Conclusion

Everyone is prone to forgetting things once in a while but forgetting an item when traveling can be particularly painful. You can use the strategies discussed to decrease the likelihood of forgetting your important items when planning your trip.

Article by Omie Charles-Davies, a travel enthusiast who has visited. He also writes at travelefficiency.com