Over the past month I have come to the conclusion that having to pack for any length trip may be the actual worst. For me, with spring semester comes lots of travel. Every other weekend my team and I are off to a new state for races. The trip is never longer than a few days, but somehow I will forget something every single time. Tomorrow morning we will be making the trek from Ohio to D.C. It ends up being around an 8 hour drive.
Have I started packing yet? Of course not. Are my clothes from two weekends ago still in my duffle bag? Possibly. Am I procrastinating packing for this weekend by writing an article about how much I hate packing? Absolutely.
One of my friends told me that in order to not forget anything you have to pack a total of four times. I don't know about you, but the majority of the time I only have enough time to pack everything I think I need once. Two weeks ago we left for our scrimmage at 5:30 a.m. I started packing at 11:30 the night before. How I managed to wake up and not look like a complete zombie is beyond me.
Even worse than procrastinating when you're trying to pack is when you know what you need to pack, but one or two things are in the washer. You finally decided that this is going to be the time when you just suck it up and get it done a few days ahead of time, then that happens. Not only do you have to wait until your laundry is done, but what if something magically disappears out of your bag before you can finish completely packing. Now you have to repack everything just to double check your list.
No matter how many times you pack or repack you are ALWAYS going to feel like you're forgetting something. You're never going to remember what it is until you're too far into the trip to do anything about it.