Paperless Packing List with Notability and Google Sheets with an iPad

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I use Notability and Google Sheets for paperless packing lists.

I'm always amazed at people who don't use packing lists.  I would forget at a minimum 10% of the stuff I needed to bring, which would be inconvenient in the extreme.  Even if I don't use a packing list to aid while packing, for shorter trips for example, I always use one as a check afterwards to make sure I remembered everything.  

I know that there are a billion apps out there specifically designed to create packing lists -- and I've tried out a bunch of them.  But for whatever reason, I really prefer having all of my packing items on a single "piece of paper" and marking them off one by one.  I don't like having things organized by someone else's categories or the effort required to change those categories.  I want to be able to sort my list in a way that makes packing efficient (so basically by location in my house) AND I have problems with the visual spacing of the items on these app -- I always have problems with spacing.  I seem to want things much closer together than the average developer. 

So I needed a solution that looked and felt like a low tech packing list, but was paperless and took advantage of some high tech options like ease of duplication and quickly adding situational items.  So here is my solution using a combination of Google Sheets and Notability. 

Google Sheets Categorizing

The first thing I did was create a giant list of packing items in Google Sheets.  Then I labeled each by category in a separate column.  Here are my categories: My list, downstairs, my husbands list, my dog's list, and last minute.  These were the groupings that I wanted to see on my packing sheet.  Then I ordered them manually within those categories based on packing convenience and assigned them numbers so that they wouldn't get sorted  out of order.  In the next columns, I tagged each item to appear in three packing templates: Master list, Lara's One-night list, and Family One-night list.

Templates in Notability 

I wanted a slightly neater looking list than this spreadsheet format, so I opened Notabilty and created 2 templates.  I used the text function to make labels for the categories and then I screen shot the spreadsheet by category and brought it into Notability using the Add Media button.  I cropped the photo to show just the items in the category I wanted and placed it on the page.  I did that for each of my categories.  That seems like a lot of work, right?  Since I didn't want to go through this every time, I made this note into a template by calling it Packing List - Template. Now, whenever I have a trip coming up, I duplicate this template by pressing down on the title, choosing to duplicate and then renaming the new list.  In this case, we have a beach trip coming up to Lewes Beach. I'll delete Template Copy and replace it with Lewes Beach. Now I write in other stuff I want to bring or need to remember. I replicated this process to create the Family One-night template, but my one night packing list template is shorter, so I just brought in the screen shot and didn't bother creating categories in the Notability note. 

Packing Lists for Kids

You'll notice that I don't have any kids stuff on my master packing list template. I used to, but at 15 and 13 they are old enough to pack for themselves AND they don't really want me involved except to give high level instructions.  I can't persuade everyone in my family to go paperless, so I have to print theirs out.  Here's my kid packing list template.  I assume they have a main bag and a smaller "carry on" even if it's just a car trip.  I leave blanks so that I can fill in the things like number of outfits, socks, bathing suits and nice outfits they might need.  I have a blank next to shoes so that I can specify when they need to remember to pack flip flops, nice shoes, etc.  And there is an area underneath where I can add extra items like a field hockey uniform or a tennis bag for tournament trips.  I can fill this out in about 3 minutes, then I print it out and cut it in half -- one half for each kid.  My kids really depend on having this as a guide for packing.  

Situational

You'll notice that my packing list doesn't cover every situation, right?  There are obviously different items required when we go to the beach or travel internationally.  For trips that happen more routinely, I have situational lists that I can cut and paste onto my packing list.  These are also organized in that same spreadsheet in Google Sheets in a separate tab. I have them already pulled into a note in Notability called Situational or Other Packing Lists. So, let's say we are taking an international trip. I'll go into the situational note, copy the list, go back into my packing list and paste it in. Now I can choose to edit it and crop it to only show the parts that apply to my trip which would be airplane and international travel. If several portions of the list apply, I can make another copy and crop it or just use the whole list and mark off the parts that I don't need.

Simpler System

If you don't have multiple templates to manage, you can simplify this whole system by bypassing the use of Google Sheets and typing your list directly into Notability. Visually, I prefer my system, but it does add a level of complexity that may not be required in your situation. 

I have been using this system for many years and I still love it.  It's expandable and reasonably easy to edit.  My templates and situational note permanently reside in Notability. I delete all of the other lists as soon as the trip is over. Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!