A couple weeks ago, our little family of four went camping at the Oregon Coast (a mere 2 hours from where we live!). This was our first camping trip since Austin was born. He'll be 2 years old in September. Obviously, we don't go camping much. Which means TENTS. A thin piece of plastic between us and the rest of the campground. I knew our neighbors were going to love us! We decided to split up and Austin and Ryan were in the large tent and Mikayla and I were in the {teeny tiny} small tent. We figured this way the kids wouldn't wake each other up. The bad thing was I got stuck with the early riser who wanted to be up and riding her bike at 7:00 in the morning! I love that girl.



Onto my point...



I haven't participated in Works for Me Wednesday in quite some time, and I couldn't help but share this little tip that helped shred hours of packing for our camping trip. Since we don't have a trailer, we depend on Rubbermaid tubs to hold our camping gear. We have two large tubs that stay on the shelves in the garage for 361 days out of the year. So, after brushing off the dust, we opened up the tub and lo and behold there was a typed out list right on top of everything that was inside the tub...including a small list of things we needed. Hello, organization! It's so good to see you! I was so thankful that I had taken the time 2 summers ago to do this. I didn't have to take the extra time during the chaos of packing to dig through the tubs to see what we had or needed.







tub #2 holds camping cookware

tub #1 holds misc. camping supplies tub #2 holds camping cookware

**FYI: I learned these storage tips from my mom when we would go camping when we were younger. She had the exact same organization method: tubs and plastic thing-a-ma-jigs. Thanks, mom, for passing along your wisdom and knowledge for camping organization (and a whole lot of other things, too!)

And, while I'm chatting about organization, I thought I'd share my handy little organizers I use for camping. You know those plastic bags that infant onesies, curtains, sheets, etc. come in? Save them! They make great little organization tools for lots of things. (I even made a ribbon holder out of one.) These two tubs are filled with these plastic thing-a-ma-jigs.You better believe that I took the time to take inventory again after we got home from camping (even if it took a week to get to it). So, everything's ready to go for camping in 2011! *wink*Check out We Are That Family for more Works for Me Wednesday.