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Hi

We are off camping to cornwall for 10 nights at the begining of august, with 3 young children. Already I am having the nightmare of how much clothing to take, we have only been for 3 nights before and even then i think i may have packed too much :/

Any tips or advice would be greatly recieved. x

I can go for up to eight weeks at a time. The campsite washing machines and I got to know each other very well! Take whatever powder/liquid/tablets you usually use, for automatics. Saves getting itchy from whatever the campsite may supply.

Don't take new clothes, unless it's one special outfit each for posh going out. Have campsite clothes that are at the end of their lives...almost too small, marked, well worn etc. Don't put the kids in clean stuff first thing...clean undies, sure, but they wear the current campsite outfit till it gets wet/muddy. Stains and dust don't matter on campsite and you'll go mad trying to keep clothes nice so don't bother. You can change them just before you go off site and when you get back put them back into the scruffy stuff. At the end of the holiday, bin it.

Take clothes that can be washed together,,,you'll go nuts trying to keep whites/coloureds/darks in seperate washes. My idea of a perfect camping wardrobe is the entire family wearing camoflague everything tbh. I'm working on it! And do not even think about taking anything that needs ironed.

I give everyone their own holdall of appropriate size. The ones I use most have end pockets for undies etc but you can use carrier bags (Morrisons are good because they're part transparent) as "drawers"...one for t-shirts, one for bottoms etc. Saves a lot of raking around. If you don't want so many holdalls, use the biggest supermarket bags they sell at the checkouts.

Take x2 as many pairs of socks as you think they'll need. Trust me on this one....

If you need extra when there, have a quick walk round the town charity shops. My DD is  still wearing the two pairs of charity shop camoflague cut-offs I found for 50p each in a charity shop on holiday two years ago. As an aside charity shops are also great for lots of cheap books and toys...use them for the holiday then take them back to the charity shops before you leave. Saves packing so much!

I would only pack 1 pair of PJ's for them.  In an emergency, it's easier to wear 'day clothes' to bed than the other way round.

We are going for 3+ weeks, so will have to wash.  I would far rather do a wash on holiday than have it all to come back to.  You may also find the need to 'go and check the washing' gives you 10 mins peace from the kids.

We will probably do 2x 'hot' outfits, 2x cold outfits, plus make sure they have a fleece/crocs/coat etc.  If there is room, then I do try and chuck another outfit in, but even then we still seem not to wear everything.

Thanks so much guys, lots of great advice! I popped into primark and got some great bargins for kids, t shirts and shorts £1, dont mind how ruined they get :)

Just doing my check lists and will be so happy when we ae eventually there!

Thanks again

Dawn x

Some great tips there for me too.

I've been using my vacuum food saver and vac packing the kids boxers and socks. It's not so much that I need to minimize the space, it's just stopping them from getting tangled up with all the other stuff.

I split their t-shirts into two piles and vacuum packed and sealed them too. They have 6 t-shirts, separated into two lots of three (each). I plan to do a wash halfway through our fortnight long holiday. The t-shirts are rolled up and three to a bag. I'm hoping that they'll be reliatively well ironed by the time I open up the second pack for them later on in the holiday.

I'm going in 2 days time! Tomorrow is really my main packing day as we're leaving the following day at 9am. I've been house cleaning and packing for the last few days getting ready. I hate coming home to a messy house.

So I'm going to take Vals advice and go and look for double the amount of socks I was thinking of taking!