Search for a packing list template and you will find a hundred pages offering a "free printable PDF" that asks for your email address first. You give it, you get a newsletter, and the PDF turns out to be a generic list with twelve items on it.
So here is the whole thing, on this page, in the open. No signup, no download, no gated file. Print it, copy it, or ignore it and use the app — all three are fine.
1. How to Use This
To print it: press Ctrl+P (or Cmd+P on a Mac). This page has a print stylesheet, so the navigation, header image, footer and related links drop away and you get the text on plain white — no dark backgrounds eating toner, and no wall of URLs printed after every link. Categories are kept from splitting across pages.
To copy it: select from the start of the template to the end and paste into your notes app. It pastes as plain nested text, so it works in Apple Notes, Google Keep, Notion, or anything else.
To use it properly: the template is a thinking tool. It is deliberately generic, which is its strength for a first pass and its weakness after that — more on that in section 5.
2. The Master Packing List Template
Documents & Money
- Passport (check expiry — many countries require 6 months validity)
- Visa or entry authorisation
- Boarding passes, downloaded offline
- Driving licence or ID
- Travel insurance details and 24-hour assistance number
- Two payment cards, on different networks
- Some local cash
- Accommodation address, saved offline
- Vaccination or health documents if required
Clothing
- Tops — 1 per day, capped at 4
- Bottoms — 1 per 2 days
- Underwear — trip length + 1
- Socks — trip length + 1
- Sleepwear
- Outer layer or jacket — worn in transit
- Mid layer or sweater
- Shoes — 2 pairs maximum, wear the bulkiest
- One smarter outfit, if the trip includes an evening out
- Swimwear, if relevant
Toiletries
- Toothbrush and toothpaste
- Shampoo and conditioner (solid bars skip the liquid limit)
- Deodorant
- Skincare basics, decanted
- Razor and shaving supplies
- Hairbrush
- Contact lenses, solution, spare glasses
- Period products
- Small quick-dry towel
Tech
- Phone
- Phone charger and cable
- Power bank (carry-on only — two maximum)
- Travel adapter for the region
- Headphones
- Laptop or tablet, and its charger
- E-reader
- Camera, batteries, memory cards
Health
- Prescription medication, in original labelled packaging
- Copy of the prescription
- Painkillers
- Plasters and antiseptic
- Antihistamine
- Rehydration sachets
- Motion sickness tablets
- Sun cream
- Insect repellent
- Hand sanitiser
Trip-Specific
- Beach: second swimsuit, cover-up, sun hat, water shoes
- Cold weather: thermals, gloves, warm hat, scarf
- Business: shirts, blazer, dress shoes, presentation adapter
- Hiking: boots, daypack, water filter, headlamp
- Kids: nappies, wipes, snacks, comfort item, spare outfits
The Final Sweep — do this at the door
- Phone charger unplugged from the wall
- Laptop charger unplugged from the wall
- Medication off the bedside table
- Anything still charging
- Passport physically in the bag, not just remembered
3. Why Documents Come First
The ordering above is not alphabetical or arbitrary. Documents lead because they are the only category where forgetting something ends the trip.
Everything else on this list can be bought at your destination. A forgotten toothbrush is a two-minute problem. A forgotten passport is a cancelled holiday.
So if you check nothing else, check that block, and check it the night before rather than at the door. Passport expiry in particular catches people out — a passport valid on your travel date can still be refused if it does not have six months left on it, which is a requirement across much of Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Europe for non-EU travellers.
4. Adapting It: Change Counts, Not Categories
The template is the same for every trip. What changes is quantity.
| Trip length | Tops | Bottoms | Underwear | Laundry? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 nights | 2 | 1 | 3 | No |
| 4 nights | 3 | 2 | 5 | No |
| 7 nights | 4 | 3 | 8 | No |
| 14 nights | 4 | 3 | 8 | Yes, once mid-trip |
| 21+ nights | 4 | 3 | 8 | Yes, weekly |
Look at the bottom three rows. Past a week, the numbers stop growing. You do one wash instead of packing more, which is why a three-week trip fits the same bag as a one-week trip. Our 7-day packing list explains the rewear ratios that make those counts work.
5. Where a Template Stops Being Enough
Being straight about the limits of the thing we just gave you.
A template does not know your trip. It cannot tell that your Thai domestic flight caps cabin baggage at 7kg, that the temple you are visiting requires covered shoulders, or that power bank rules changed in March. Those are the details that actually cause problems, and a generic list has no way to surface them.
It does not scale. Every trip means rewriting or reprinting it, and manually recalculating counts.
It does not remember. Whatever you learned last trip — the thing you forgot, the thing you never used — is gone unless you write it down again.
For one trip a year, none of that matters and paper genuinely wins. From about the third trip onward it starts to grate, which is the point at which people either build their own reusable system or use something that already does it.
That is what PackPilot is for. Enter your destination, trip length and activities, and Zippy generates a categorised list with the counts already scaled, plus the destination-specific items a generic template cannot know about. Bag assignment tracks what is in the cabin bag versus the hold, and everything works offline. Free, no subscription.
The carry-on only guide covers fitting all of this in one bag, and the app itself is described in more detail if you want to know how the generation works.
6. Five Things That Make a Template Useless
Most packing templates fail for the same handful of reasons. Worth knowing before you commit to one, including this one.
It lists items instead of quantities. "Socks" is not useful. "Socks — trip length + 1" is, because it survives contact with a different trip. Any template that just names categories makes you do the arithmetic every time, which is the part people get wrong.
It is organised by room instead of by category. Lists written while walking around the house — bathroom things, bedroom things — fall apart the moment you pack somewhere else. Category ordering matches how you actually load a bag.
It has no final sweep. The single biggest source of forgotten items is things still in use at the moment of packing: the charger in the wall, the medication by the bed, the phone itself. A list that ends at "toiletries" misses all of them, which is why the block above sits at the door rather than in the tech section.
It is too long. A 200-item template does not get used, it gets skimmed. Everything above fits on roughly one printed page deliberately — a list you actually read beats a comprehensive one you do not.
It never gets corrected. A template used once and reprinted identically learns nothing. The version you mark up after three trips is worth more than any list on the internet, including this one.
7. Paper or App: An Honest Comparison
| Printed template | App | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup time | None | A minute, first time |
| Works with no battery | Yes | Yes, offline-first |
| Scales quantities to trip | No, manual | Yes, automatic |
| Remembers last trip | No | Yes |
| Destination-specific items | No | Yes |
| Satisfying to tick | Genuinely, yes | Less so |
| Cost | A sheet of paper | Free |
Use paper if you travel once or twice a year, or you simply prefer it. There is nothing wrong with a printed list and it has beaten every app ever made on reliability.
Use an app if you travel often enough that rewriting the list has become the annoying part, or you take trips different enough from each other that one generic list does not fit.
Plenty of people do both: the template to think a trip through the first time, the app to run it every time after.
8. Getting the Most From a Printed List
If you are going the paper route, a few things that make it work better:
- Print it two days before, not the morning of. You want time to buy the thing you discover you do not own.
- Pack against it in one pass, ticking as you go, rather than ticking things you intend to pack.
- Keep it in the bag. It is just as useful for repacking on the way home, which is when things get left in hotel rooms.
- Annotate it. Cross out what you did not use, add what you missed. That marked-up copy is a far better template than this one for your next trip.
That last point is the real value. A generic template is a starting point; your template, corrected after three trips, is worth ten of them.
Related Travel Guides
- How to Pack Light: The Ultimate Carry-On Only Travel Checklist
- 7-Day Packing List: What to Pack for a One-Week Trip
- The Best Travel Packing App for Android: AI Checklists That Work Offline
- Expert Travel Packing Guides & Checklists
- PackPilot AI Travel Checklist App
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. The full template is printed on this page. There is no download form, no email capture, and no PDF behind a signup. Press Ctrl+P or Cmd+P and a print stylesheet strips the navigation, images and footer so you get the list on plain white, or select the text and paste it into any notes app.
Six categories cover almost every trip: documents and money, clothing, toiletries, tech, health, and trip-specific extras. Documents first is deliberate — it is the only category where forgetting something can end the trip rather than inconvenience you. Everything else is recoverable by buying a replacement.
Change quantities, not categories. The categories stay identical whether you are going away for two nights or three weeks; only the counts move. Use roughly one top per day up to four, one bottom per two days, and underwear for the trip length plus one. Then add the trip-specific block for beach, business, cold weather or hiking.
Paper is better for one trip. It needs no battery, no signal, and no setup, and crossing items off physically is satisfying. An app wins from about the third trip onward, because it remembers, scales quantities to trip length, and does not need rewriting every time. Plenty of people use both — the template to think it through, the app to actually run it.
Chargers, by a wide margin, followed by adapters and prescription medication. All three share a trait: they are used right up until the moment you leave, so they are still plugged in or on the bedside table when the bag gets zipped. The template puts them in a final sweep for exactly that reason.
Yes, and it scales the quantities rather than giving you the same list every time. Enter destination, trip length and activities, and Zippy builds a categorised checklist with counts adjusted for the trip. It works fully offline, so the list is available at the airport and in accommodation with no signal.