Outdoors
Car Camping Checklist
No weight limit, so the camp kitchen and the comfortable chair come too.
Four steps
How to print a car camping checklist
- 1
Start from this list
Opens with 36 items chosen for this kind of trip.
- 2
Cut what you do not need
Remove whole sections or single items.
- 3
Add your own
Anything the list cannot know about: medication, the dog, a specific stove.
- 4
Print or save as PDF
Tick boxes are sized to tick with a pen.
- 5
Keep it for next time
Your edits stay in this browser.
What decides this list
The boot is the limit, and it is a generous one, so this list is the opposite of the backpacking one: bring the heavy pan, the proper chairs and the big water container. The real constraint is not weight but finding things, which is why it is worth packing in boxes by category rather than by whatever fits next.
The thing most often left behind
Something to level the pitch and something to hammer pegs with. Both live in the shed rather than with the camping kit, so both get left behind on the first trip of the year.
A habit worth having
Load the tent last so it comes out first. Everything else can wait in the car while you get shelter up, and doing it in the wrong order in the rain is a lesson people only need once.
What is on it
5 sections and 36 items to start from: shelter and sleep, camp kitchen, camp comfort, vehicle, safety and admin. All of it is editable, so treat it as a starting point rather than a rule. The things worth adding are the ones no list can know: medication, whatever the dog needs, and the one piece of gear you always forget.
Related printables
The general camping checklist is the balanced version for a weekend at a site with facilities. For the journey there, road trip games and travel forms cover the car, and scavenger hunts work well once you have arrived.
Answers