All our clothes are out and cleaned, ironed and repaired if necessary. They are stacked on the dining room table. Which has been a positive because as I walk past I look and contemplate.... do I really need that dress? Will I really wear it? So pulled it out of the pile today. We still will have to do a quick load of wash the night before we leave to get pjs, and undergarments together.
Yesterday I accomplished a lot after work. I managed to get all our prescriptions together and put into its own cosmetic case. Remember to carry all your prescriptions with you in your carry on bag and that all drugs are in their original containers.
Put all my lotions together (body, face, foot) in a bag. Then a small cosmetic bag for three different nail polishes with a clear polish and individual packets of polish remover along with file.
Packed up my jewellery too and had to consider what I will be wearing and what necklaces will go with what, earrings etc. Packed all my earrings in two of the magnetic spice containers. Also make sure you take your jewellery with you in your carry on bag just in case. I have nothing expensive, but many items that are extra special to me.
For me it is so much easier to pack like minded items together in either a cosmetic bag that I can store in one place and find easily, or in a large ziplock bag that contains many smaller items so that it is easier to unpack and pack and of course find.
Charged up the two camera batteries. Tip: Make sure you have a backup battery for your camera that is always fully charged. You don't want to miss out on a shot because your battery died.
Charged up the GPS and added some locations that we will need to access quickly when we are in Fort Lauderdale, so it is ready to go.
Decided to do most of the banking ahead of time with only a few items to pay or do while we are away. What did we ever do before online banking? With being gone for 7 weeks we had to figure out what bills will be coming in and do we pay them in advance or pay monthly. Thankfully we don't have many bills. Hydro is minimal so we just paid the two months now. Cell phone, again it isn't much so we paid for the two months we are away. Internet/cable we set up a scheduled payment on their due date. Credit card will depend on the amount so we will have to access the bill online to find out what it is at and pay while we are away. Our city utility taxes is due at the end of March so we called City Hall to see what our amount will be (they haven't processed the bill yet) and we will pay it on line on the due date. I wrote out a schedule of our bills, pay days and what we need to do in chronological order.
Bernie called up our two credit card companies we use. We have a MasterCard World Elite Traveller card and we use this card the most. Love this card, it comes with travel insurance (check the limits but you can often add on if you don't meet the parameters - Canadian - believe the US is very different) and great rewards with no fees for redeeming and access to Priority Access Lounges at airports all over the world.
We contacted MasterCard and informed them where we are travelling and for how long. They track what countries we are visiting too. We then contacted Visa as we have a basic no fee card thru Vancity. This second card is just an extra card that we carry in case something happens with our main card. We store it in the safe on board, this way if our MC is stolen or compromised we have another card to access right away. We check out card statements online regularly on board and know that MasterCard is very very good about security.
Our house sitter came over and we outlined the details of the place, mail, locks, neighbours etc.
I even found a bit of time to do up a door sign for our cabin. It is posted above.
I find that a little bit of planning and organizing makes the whole trip run a little smoother.
If you haven't seen my must take on a cruise packing items here is a link to the video http://youtu.be/7aZL4u-EprE
Great ideas, Vickie! Thank you. Here is another one to add to your collection: Cabins are usually short on drawers. Best tip I ever found was to bring a collapsible hanging shoe "shelf". It has ten shoebox sized cubbies all stacked vertically with a Velcro cuff at the top to grab the closet rod. It takes the space of about 3 shirts but fits all your socks, underwear, bras, bathing suits or whatever. I like the ones with the clear sides so I can see what's in the back of the cubby.
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