Summer Camp Packing List for Counselors
My first year as a counselor I packed like I was the camper. Cute. Wrong. I brought four books and zero extra socks, and by Wednesday my feet were a war crime.
The staff list is its own animal. You are not packing for one tired kid, you are packing for eleven of them plus yourself plus the random 2am nosebleed and the lanyard that vanishes by lunch on day one. Adults at camp need different stuff. Headlamp with a spare battery. A water bottle you will actually refill. The boring grown-up things nobody puts on the kid version.
A lot of what kept me sane that second summer at a place called Birch Hollow was printed, not bought. Labels, little camp graphics, a journal I taped a checklist into. The designs below are digital files from an indie design shop, so if one of them saves you a frantic Sunday at the copier, that is the whole point.
The journal I actually wrote my staff list into
I am a list-in-a-notebook person. Always have been. This camp journal became my staff brain that second summer, and I mean the whole brain. Packing list inside the front cover. Cabin roster. Which kid was allergic to what, in pencil so I could fix it.
I printed it on regular paper at the library, three-hole-punched it, stuck it in a cheap binder. Held up fine until a thunderstorm got into my tent at Birch Hollow and the pages went wavy. Still readable. Lesson learned, slide it in a gallon bag.
One nitpick. The pages are pretty, lots of art, so leave yourself room. I ended up writing tiny in the margins by week three because I underestimated how much a counselor scribbles in a day.
Bright camp art for the staff bin labels nobody could ignore
Color is not decoration when you are a counselor. It is a survival tool. I slapped these vibrant graphics on the front of every storage bin in our cabin so the kids could find the craft stuff without asking me forty times.
Printed them at home on sticker paper, the cheap matte kind. The reds and yellows pop enough that a kid across the cabin can spot the right bin. Cut them out during staff orientation while half-listening to the swim-safety talk.
The nitpick. PNG files like this come in big, so on a slow home printer the first one took ages and I almost gave up. Resize before you print or you will burn through ink fast.
Plain camp graphics for the door sign and the duffel tag
Every staff cabin needs a sign so the new lifeguard stops walking into the wrong building. I used this one. Printed it big, taped it to the screen door with packing tape, done in five minutes.
The same art went on my duffel tag too. There are forty identical green duffels at staff check-in, I promise you. Mine had a little camp graphic and a strip of orange tape so I could grab it and run.
Clean lines on this one, which I liked. The only thing, it is fairly simple, so if you want something busier for a bunk door this is more of a quiet workhorse than a showpiece.
The camp-vibes art I put on the welcome cards for my cabin
On move-in day I leave a little card on each kid’s bunk. Name, a hello, the cabin rules in friendly handwriting. This vibes art went across the top of all eleven of them.
I made them the week before camp, at my kitchen table with a glass of iced tea and my partner asking why I was working unpaid. Printed eleven, plus two spares because there is always a last-minute roster change. There was. A kid named Theo showed up Tuesday.
Watch the contrast if you print on colored cardstock. I tried it on kraft brown first and the lighter parts of the art basically disappeared. White paper, then it sang.
Summer art for the staff bulletin board everyone ignored anyway
Staff communication at camp is a bulletin board nobody reads. I tried to fix that. Printed this summer graphic as a header, put the daily schedule under it, hung it by the coffee.
Did the coffee thing work? Sort of. People actually glanced at it when they were caffeine-desperate at 6:45am. Small wins. The art is cheerful enough that it did not feel like a corporate memo, which was the goal.
One honest note. It is a single graphic, not a set, so I had to pair it with my own text. Fine for a header. If you want a full pre-made flyer this is a piece of one, not the whole thing.
The retro SVG I ironed onto the whole staff’s shirts
Our director wanted matching staff shirts and had a budget of roughly nothing. So I cut this retro camp SVG on my sister’s vinyl machine and we pressed it onto plain navy tees ourselves. In my summer camp era. The kids thought it was hilarious.
The SVG cut clean, layers separated the way they should. We did fourteen shirts in one long Sunday with three pizzas and a borrowed heat press. By shirt nine I had the timing down.
The nitpick is real though. SVG means you need a cutting machine, this is not a print-and-go file. If you do not have one or a friend with one, skip it. We barely got the press hot enough on an old machine and one shirt peeled by August.
A whole clip art set for the counselor who does ten jobs
This is the file I reach for when I have a hundred tiny things to decorate and no time. A collection, lots of little camp pieces, so I am not hunting for one matching graphic at midnight.
I used bits of it everywhere. Award certificates for the end-of-week campfire. Bunk name tags. A scavenger hunt sheet I made up on the fly when it rained and twelve kids were climbing the walls. One set, many rescues.
The catch with a big collection is the file organization. Mine downloaded as a heap of separate images and it took me a bit to figure out which was which. Worth it, but give yourself ten minutes to sort before you need them in a hurry.
Simple camp art for the first-aid and lost-and-found labels
Not glamorous, this one. I used it for the labels that actually matter on staff. First-aid bin. Lost-and-found tub, which by July is basically a clothing store of single socks and one shoe.
Printed small, four to a page, on plain paper. Taped them on with clear packing tape so the steam from wet swimsuits did not wreck them. The art is clear enough to read fast, and when a kid is bleeding you want to find the bin fast.
It is plain, like I said. That is the job. If you came looking for something fancy for a cabin door this is not it, but for the functional staff labels it does exactly what I needed.
The camp graphic that ended up on my packing checklist printout
Here is where the counselor packing list actually lives for me. I made a one-page staff checklist in a free doc, dropped this camp graphic at the top so it did not look like a tax form, and printed a stack.
Headlamp. Spare batteries. A real rain jacket, not the kid poncho I brought year one. Two pairs of camp shoes because one pair will be soaked by day two, ask me how I know. I checked boxes with a pen clipped to my lanyard.
The graphic is small and tidy, which suited a header. If you want a giant centerpiece image it is undersized for that, but as a checklist topper it was exactly enough to make me not hate the page.
Vector clipart for the activity station signs we rebuilt every week
Activity stations need signs, and at camp those signs get rained on, sat on, and used as a frisbee. This vector pack let me reprint them fast without losing quality, because vectors scale up clean.
I made archery, canoe, and craft-hut signs the size of a laptop and laminated them at the front office. Reprinted the canoe one twice. A camper named Marcus decided it would make an excellent paddle. It did not.
Like the retro file, the vector format is the catch. To really get the scaling benefit you want software that opens vectors, otherwise you are just using the preview images. I am not a designer and I managed, but it took a YouTube tutorial and some swearing.
The cute rainbow art for the homesick-kid corner
Every cabin has a homesick night. Usually around Wednesday. I made a little comfort corner with a beanbag, and this rainbow sunshine art went on the wall above it to make the spot feel soft instead of clinical.
Printed two, one for the corner and one I taped inside the cabin door because honestly the counselors needed the cheer-up too by midweek. Cute without being babyish, which matters when you have a mix of ages.
The nitpick. The colors are gentle, so on a low-ink home printer they came out washed out the first time. I bumped the saturation a touch in the printer settings and the second print looked right.
Campfire SVG for the staff mugs and the cabin door at last
Closing out with the file that earned its keep. This campfire camping-life SVG went onto our staff travel mugs, vinyl cut and pressed, so we could tell our identical cups apart at the dining hall.
I also cut a big version for our cabin door, white vinyl on the dark wood. It survived the whole season and three door slams a day from kids who never learned to close anything gently. Still stuck when I peeled it off in August.
Same honest warning as the other SVGs. You need a cutting setup. We had one borrowed weekend with my sister’s machine and crammed all the staff projects into it, which I do not recommend doing the night before move-in while exhausted.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to pack for summer camp?
As a counselor, not a camper. That is the whole shift. I learned it the hard way my first year when I packed books and forgot socks. Now I start with the boring adult stuff first, headlamp, spare batteries, a real rain jacket, two pairs of camp shoes because one drowns, then the fun stuff if there is room.
I keep a printed staff checklist and check it twice, once a week before and once the morning of. The morning pass catches the things you set out to remember and then left on the kitchen counter. Phone charger. Every time.
How to organize a summer camp?
Way above my pay grade if you mean the whole operation. But organizing your cabin as staff, that I can do. Labels on everything. Bins by color so kids find their own gear instead of asking you. A door sign, a schedule board, name tags on bunks day one.
My trick is to do all the printing before camp, when you have a copier and a calm afternoon. Once you are there, the days vanish and you will never find time to make a single label. I batched mine at the library the week before Birch Hollow and thanked myself daily.
What to pack for summer camp?
For a counselor, the list nobody warns you about. Two water bottles because you will lose one. A whistle on your lanyard. Extra sunscreen, the kids never bring enough and you become the dispenser. A small flashlight for cabin checks. Quick-dry everything.
And backups. Spare batteries, an extra pair of socks per day, a second phone cable. The kid version of a packing list is about the kid having fun. The staff version is about you being functional when everything goes sideways at once, which it will, usually at dinner.
Can I print these at home?
The PNG and clip art ones, yes, your home printer handles those fine. I did most of mine on a basic inkjet, just resize the big files first or you will watch the ink drain. Cardstock for door signs and labels, plain paper for checklists.
The SVG files are the exception. Those are for a cutting machine, not a printer, so you need a Cricut or similar or a friend who has one. I used my sister’s. If you do not have access to one, stick to the print files and you are covered for almost everything.
Before You Pack Up
Six summers in, my staff duffel is mostly the same now. Headlamp on top. A laminated checklist taped inside the lid, corner already curling. The campfire mug that survived a whole season because I could finally tell it apart from everyone else’s.
Last July at a lake camp two hours north, a brand-new counselor watched me pull labeled bins out of my cabin in about ten minutes flat and asked how I did it. I handed her my printout and told her to find a copier before Sunday.
More Camping Ideas We Love
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