The 4 Ps of Packing for Scout Trips

If your Scout loves packing for campouts and vacations, consider yourself lucky! 

If your Scout seems to hate packing, he or she is not alone. This is common among new Scouts. A little bribery — like for a perfect pile with every item on the gear list — can help. Once they’ve earned a few ranks, Scouts should be expected to be packing 100% independently. Just print that gear list and hand it to them on Tuesday. There are Scouts in the troop who have missed outings just because they waited too long to pack for a trip.

Try out this 2-day packing method to set good gear habits for your Scout. 

Follow the 4 Ps of Packing

1. Print the Recommended Gear List: On a Tuesday before a Friday outing, print out the Recommended Gear List that’s most appropriate to the outing and hand it to your Scout. This is a good reminder and sets expectations; you need to pack soon! We keep all our Recommended Gear Lists on our troop website’s Permission Forms and Gear page for easy reference. We format these as checklists and occasionally update these time-tested gear lists.  

2. Pile: On Wednesday, ask your Scout to make a pile of all the gear on the list. This gives Scouts time to find missing items and perhaps even do laundry. Parents should not gather gear for their Scouts! It’s their responsibility and they will learn quickly from natural consequences. 

3. Prove it! For first-year Scouts, we recommend that parents do a gear check after the Pile phase and before the Packing phase. With your Scout, go through the gear list — at least the key items — and ask them to show you the items in their pile. Key items are warm layers, rain jacket, sleeping bag, gloves, good footwear.  

4. Pack it up: On Thursday before the Friday outing, ask your Scout to pack up their gear into an appropriate bag like a duffel bag or a backpacking pack. Garbage bags, luggage suitcases, and footlockers/bins are not appropriate for Scout outings! 

Spreading out the work of gathering gear and packing it helps making packing for outings less daunting and less of a chore for Scouts. Eventually, over time, Scouts will get much faster and more reliable about packing the right gear. And it will just become second nature to the point where they might even just grumble a little instead of pitching a fit. Veteran Scouts will keep all their camping gear in the same place at home after outings (hopefully after having done laundry), which makes packing blazing fast.