One of my best tricks for planning a coordinated me-made capsule that covers all my bases is to plan well in advance for vacation sewing.
Instead of waiting until the week before a trip that I need presentable pyjamas – and of course I’m going to make them myself – I’ve started planning my entire season’s capsule around whatever traveling I’m going to be doing. This guarantees that I focus on the most practical and versatile garments.
This summer, we’re taking a 16-day road trip around the province to visit family. I’ll likely end up doing laundry for the kids at each stopover, but I like to challenge myself to pack enough to get me through the whole trip while also bringing the fewest garments possible. I love a good challenge!
My brain thinks in charts and tables, so I started creating a series of templates to help me plan. I figure I would pretty them up and save them as a PDF for all of you to download. The first page of the planner has you identify the basic information you’ll need to plan your vacation capsule.
The second page helps you plan looks for all of the activities you’re going to be doing while on your trip. I like to plan one “just in case” look for an activity I *might* do, but won’t likely end up getting around. I don’t want to waste room packing an entirely unique outfit, so I challenge myself to re-use pieces I was already going to bring and limit myself to only one special item to make that outfit stand out. This is usually a nice shoe or bag to zhuzh up a basic dress or a nice dress that I can wear with a more casual shoe. I also always pack one loungewear/athletic wear look just in case. You never know when you’ll decide you want to go on an impromptu walk or get stuck somewhere and want to be cozy.
The last pages are your packing lists, separated into categories like tops, layers, or footwear. Each list has columns to check off whether you already have this item, will be borrowing it, can make it, or will need to buy it. The idea is to see how reasonable you’re being with your expectations on your time and money.
My hope with this Vacation Capsule planner is to help you get yourself organized well-enough in advance to pack the most pretty and practical wardrobe me-made wardrobe possible. Happy planning, pals!
Take a look at this other post if you want to see an example of how I used the planner to figure out my 2022 summer vacation packing list.
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Hi Sam. I’m not completely understand what you mean by “looks”. I take it this is the step between activities and garments, I.e., an activity requires a certain look which translates into a combination of pants, tops and layer. But you might have a series of days which require a certain look, and so you require several combinations of garments which all give a similar look? Is that what you mean. I love your wardrobe planning sheets, thank you! Susan
The term look is a bit subjective here. For me, it means a specific combination of top, bottom and layer. I have no problem re-wearing outfits, so I’ll usually wear the same look twice if I’m doing the same activity twice. If I’m doing the same thing multiple times (ie driving), I’ll come up with multiple looks so I’m not wearing the same thing 17 times. Make sense?
Yes! Thank you.
[…] do my best work when I’ve seen an example, so I thought I would share with you how I used my Vacation Capsule Planner to figure out what I need to make and then ultimately pack for our road trip in late […]
Thank you so much for making this planner available! I plan to use this to prepare for a longer trip I’ll be taking later this year. Would you consider making this a fillable PDF?
(By the by, as a fellow Canadian, I also really enjoy the Canadian Capsule planner.)
I’ve definitely thought of making this a fillable PDF. As far as I understand, I would need to buy a certain version of adobe to do this. What I might do is update this next summer as perks for my Patreon subscribers, but it’s not in the cards for right now. I’m trying to keep putting out free content that is free for me to make, but need to be careful about content that requires money to create. I hope you understand!