Most Forgotten Camping Items + Camping Packing List
These most forgotten camping items can throw a wrench in your outdoor experience when you inevitably leave them at home.
While camping is already a time when you need to be inventive and self-reliant, forgetting some items will cause you to have to be more creative than others.
My family has been tent and RV camping for years, and we always seem to forget something, no matter how many times we think we’ve reviewed our supplies lists.
In an effort to keep us more organized, I’ve created a list of the items we forget the most—and a downloadable camping packing list that will prevent us from leaving anything behind on future trips.
Below, you’ll see which items tend to be forgotten the most often as well as the impact on both tent and RV campers.
You can also grab a free copy of our camping packing list, too.
This post contains affiliates. If you purchase through the links, I will receive a commission at no charge to you.
Most Forgotten Camping Items
Packing is incredibly stressful no matter what type of travel you’re doing.
However, packing to go camping comes with its own challenges as you’re often miles from a store if you forget something.
Plus, you have to pack food, water, and other basics that just aren’t a consideration when you’re staying at a hotel.
With all of that to think about, no wonder campers often forget to pack some things!
Matches/ Lighter
Over the years, we’ve bought so many packs of matches and lighters.
And somehow, we always manage to forget them.
That means we struggle with lighting a fire when we’d like to hang out by the campfire, when we want to grill out with charcoal, or when we have to relight the pilot light in our camper’s gas stove.
And it just isn’t camping without a campfire!
One way to combat this problem is that we have bought multiple lighters and match boxes, and have tried to scatter them everywhere. When we’re hiking into a campground, my husband and I put matches in each of our hiking packs with the hopes that one set actually makes it to the campsite.
Yet, even with that planning, we somehow manage to lose them—they’re like socks in the washing machine!
ALTERNATIVE: Another alternative that we’re using is a ferro rod, which my husband keeps on his keychain.
Even if we do manage to lose or forget our matches and/or lighter, the farrow rod is incredibly reliable for starting up a campfire.
Hose
When we first started RV camping after we bought our pop-up camper, we sailed into our campsite, only to realize that we couldn’t hook up to the available water.
We’d forgotten a water hose, which seems like the most obvious thing in the world when you’re booking a site with full hookups.
Thankfully, we were staying at the Cherokee NC KOA, which has a big box store within a half hour, so I was able to pick up a hose the next day.
If you’re tent/car camping, a hose can still come in handy if you want to cut down on the space between your tent area and the water source.
Utensils
I know, I know. Who goes on a camping trip without packing a fork!?
Me, apparently.
And more than once!
While both tent camping and RV camping, I have gone to make a meal only to discover that I didn’t pack a single spoon, fork, or knife.
My husband’s spoon that clips to his backpack with a carabiner, making it extra unlikely to get lost or forgotten
And that really makes feeding my family a challenge.
In our camper, I am working towards duplicating everything in our normal kitchen on a smaller scale.
This means buying a camper-specific set of silverware, pots, pans, and even a crockpot!
Since I can just leave the utensils in the camper, that means I (probably) won’t forget them again.
For our tent camping and backpacking trips, we’ve invested in reusable utensils so we don’t have to worry about packing (and then carrying out) disposable utensils.
These camping utensils are versatile and even come with a carabiner to clip to our packs.
I know that camping gear can be expensive, so we’ve slowly been adding to it over the years. Don’t feel as if you need to buy everything at once.
Towels
Drip drying isn’t fun.
But that’s the reality of the situation when you’ve forgotten your towels.
Your alternative is using your previous clothes to dry off, but that comes with its own issues, too. I tend to wear a lot of wool while we’re camping and hiking (they form the backbone of my women’s hiking clothes capsule wardrobe).
And when you’re wearing wool, you’re not just wearing it once. The fabric is amazing and doesn’t pick up smells easily, so you can wear it again and again even in high-intensity situations like camping.
That means that if I have to use my wool shirt as a towel, I will then be putting on said shirt hours later when it is still wet. Gross.
I’ve also found that our bulky bath towels at the house usually get left behind because they’re something I have to move from their normal place in our house into the camping gear.
Anything I have to touch twice before packing it is at a high risk of being left behind.
Working on my next career as a Turkish towel model
Instead, I’ve purchased some lightweight, quick dry Turkish towels that stay with our camping things.
They are great for throwing in our packs or the RV, and they can even be used as a bathing suit cover up in a pinch.
These are more expensive than a towel you’ll get from a big box store, but they take up so much less room, and they last seemingly forever.
We’ve had ours in heavy rotation for over 3 years, and they still look brand new.
Water purifier
PIN ME!
For an RV camping, a water purifier is something that goes onto your hose at the on-site water spigot. If you don’t have one, it’s probably okay as campgrounds are hooked into city water.
However, for a backpack camping trip, a water purifier is an absolute necessity as it’s the only way you’ll be able to get water after whatever you haul in is gone.
While my husband and I were recently going through our camping gear in anticipation for our family’s first big hike-in camping trip, we realized that we’d lost our water purifier.
(This post really does make me sound like a total flake who can’t keep up with anything, but we’ve been through 2 moves and a major house renovation in 4 years, so who knows where anything is at this point.)
We’ve since bought 2 more Life Straws, one for each of our overnight packs.
While I usually go for the lightest option when hiking, the redundancy here is the difference between an enjoyable weekend, and one cut short from lack of drinkable water.
Phone charger
While technology isn’t the first thing that you’d think of when packing for a camping trip, let’s face it: we’re living in the 21st century. And that means having a phone around to take Instagram worthy photos of your campfire. #campinglife
If you’re RV camping, you’ll just need to pack your usual wall phone charger as you’ll have shore power once you get to the campground.
However, if you’re boondocking, car camping, or backpacking into your site, you’ll need to have a portable cell phone power bank on hand.
This addition to your gear will ensure that you have a way to recharge your phone while you’re in the woods.
So, charge your power bank before you leave, and then remember to pack it AND your power cord to connect the phone to the bank when ready.
Extra socks
When camping, there’s nothing worse than having sweaty, gross socks and no replacements.
I’m really particular about my feet staying warm and dry, and I’ve been so mad at myself when I forget to pack an extra pair.
My kids are especially bad at packing extra socks, so I have to remember even more when it comes to our packing list!
While I’m on my sock soap box, I’d like to say that not all socks are created equally, and that wool socks are the way to go, 100%.
Even though they’re pricey compared to that 5 pack of cotton socks at Walmart, the Darn Tough socks are what I live in. I’ve slowly been replacing my old cotton socks with their wool ones, and my feet are so much happier.
Pillow
I’m one of those people who hauls their pillow around on trips, so it majorly throws me off when I forget my pillow at the house.
If you’re RV camping or tent camping, you’ll have the ability to set up your sleeping bags or bedding exactly as you’d like, pillows included.
If you’re backpacking, you have 2 choices: stuffing your clothes into a dry bag, or bringing along a little blow up pillow.
I find the clothes-in-a-bag situation lumpy and uncomfortable, but it 1) requires no extra packing, and 2) is what you’ll end up with if you are absent minded.
I have a little memory foam blow up pillow in my backpacking stuff, and I am always extra vigilant about ensuring it makes it to the campsite.
Dish soap
You’ve had dinner and are ready to relax around the campfire.
But you still have a couple of dishes to wash. You suddenly remember that you forgot your dish soap. The dirty dishes sit there and mock you silently.
Who else has been there?
When we went on our 6-week road trip to Arizona, dish soap was one of the things I forgot completely, and one of the reasons why we had to hit up a Walmart before we made it to New Mexico.
For backpackers, you’ll need to go the extra mile and find an environmentally friendly camp soap like Camp Suds (our go-to!) that will allow you to do dishes outdoors when you don’t have access to a grey tank.
Hand sanitizer
When you’re outdoors, someone is going to get dirty or hurt (or both, if you’re hanging out with my kids).
I like to scatter small bottles of hand sanitizer around the camper, my hiking stuff, and our vehicles so that I can quickly grab some when the need arises.
I recently ran out while we were camping, and it was such a pain not to have it at my fingertips.
The small, travel sized bottles take up little room and weigh next to nothing, so you can easily throw them into your hiking bag, too.
FREE Camping Packing List!
I don’t want you to forget about any of these items—or anything else that you’ll need while camping.
I created a downloadable 4-page PDF that includes everything you will want to pack for your next camping trip.
I’ve got sections for food, kitchen items, clothing, first aid items, baby supplies, and more. And there’s even a half page of blank notes for you to add anything specific to your family’s needs.
This camping packing list is exclusive to our email subscribers, so join the Camping Kiddos Crew, and get your download immediately after signing up.
