Posted on 6 Comments

Beach Getaway Printable

I made this handy packing checklist for kids to help us get to the beach faster.

It’s certainly taken me long enough, but I’m finally learning that I will get out of the house and to the shore much more quickly if I delegate the boys’ own packing duties to them.  However, I also know that if I give them an instruction such as “pack a bag for the weekend,” what they will bring with them is a pair of shorts, a crumpled up t-shirt or two, and thirty pokemon plushies.

Yes, they do need a little guidance in determining what goes in the bag.  What is appropriate for a last-minute sleepover at Grandma’s house doesn’t really cut it for four days on the beach, where the temperatures can range from “dang hot” to “Mom, did you pack me a sweatshirt?”

365 day 139 - Doodles
I’ve made them graphical checklists before, but this time I decided I wanted something that I could easily change in the future, if our needs changed.  And I wanted something I could share here, something that might work for some of your families as well.

I started by making some doodles and then scanning them into Photoshop.  I then added color to the images, and built an easily-editable multi-layer printable checklist.

The boys loved them and, more importantly, everything that they packed was exactly what we needed for the trip.  Yay!

You Can Customize the Checklist

The beauty of this checklist is that it is completely editable, if you know Photoshop and are comfortable manipulating layers.  Both of the checklists above were generated from the same image file, except that one of them is more boyish, and the other is more girly.  To switch between the two versions, it’s a matter of hiding some layers and making others visible.

How does it work?  Well, the checklist is really a multi-layer Photoshop image. There’s a Background layer, which is simply white.  There’s the check boxes layer, which (you guessed it) is just a series of twelve boxes.  You shouldn’t need to modify either of those.

The customization is handled through the two layer groups: drawings and text.

Say you loaded the image above into Photoshop, but you thought your son would be more comfortable bringing pants to the beach than he would a skirt. You would open up the drawings layer group, and hide the skirts layer.  Then you’d make the long pants layer visible in its place.  You’d also want to do the same with the skirts and pants wording within the text layer group.

You can hide any of the drawings and any of the text you wish.  Also change the wording on the text if you like (want him to pack four t-shirts instead of three?).  You can move things around, and you can scan your own drawings in for things I may not have thought of.  Really, there are so many ways to customize the list to fit your own situation, if you’re willing to play around with it.

Grab a Copy for Free

The Beach Getaway Printable is downloadable below. You can get it for free, or you can buy me a cup of coffee (or even a fancy cup of coffee) for my trouble, if you like. Your choice.

You don’t need to own a copy of Photoshop in order to play with this checklist!  Any photo-editing program that reads .psd files and can manipulate layers should work. Photoshop Elements and Paint Shop Pro (a favorite of mine) will definitely work, and I think Gimp probably does, too.  You can google it to find others.

I recommend making your changes on a duplicate of the original file, particularly if you’re not entirely comfortable yet playing with layers.

Don’t want to mess with image editing? I also included a couple of ready-made sample .pdf checklists that you can use as-is.

Have fun!

LET’S KEEP IN TOUCH!

Sign up for occasional Polka Dot Cottage news and get a coupon for 10% off your next order!

Don't worry, we won't bother you more than once or twice a month!

Posted on 6 Comments

6 thoughts on “Beach Getaway Printable

  1. New blog post: Beach Getaway Printable http://bit.ly/mrr42c

  2. Such a cute idea. I think you have the beginning of an app.

    1. My husband suggested the same thing… I like that idea!

  3. this reminds me of my packing list.

    1. Oh, yes, I had forgotten about that! I used it once, ages ago, and I remember my boys getting a nice giggle out of the fact that there were dresses and hair things on the list. Fun 🙂

  4. great and cooooool idea. (unfortunately the beach is in front of our house and the grandparents far away…) cheers from ireland, eliane

Leave a comment!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.