So how do YOU prepare for a trip?

For me, preparing for a trip has at least two major components:  readying the house to leave it for the duration (I hate coming home to a messy house or unfinished laundry), and packing/planning for the trip itself.

Depending on the state of the house when I start the preparations, that part might actually take more time than packing for the trip.  But not this time - I let those staying behind know that I'm simplifying things.  (I've finally learned my lesson:  they're adults, they will eat if, when and what they want, and whatever I try to make is likely to remain frozen or go bad.)  All this trip demands is a quick pass through the bathrooms, run the vacuum and dust, a little laundry and I'm free to roam around the countryside, guilt-free.

As I counted down the days to our road trip to Florida, I tried to do as much ahead of schedule as possible (although some things still got put off to the last minute, as happens with us procrastinators.)

So my week went something like this:

Sunday:  check the extended forecast for the area.  Pray fervently for safe trip, good weather and NO HURRICANES. Check. Repeat daily until we leave.
Monday:  take car to get tires rotated, balanced (and aligned - ouch).  Check
Tuesday:  get toenails painted (very important part of preparations); plan menu and grocery list for condo (because I really hate spending wasting hours at the local grocery as we try to devise a menu and grocery list on the fly.  That is always an expensive and wasteful effort - we inevitably forget something, and buy way too many items that we don't really need.)
Wednesday:  take car for oil change, emissions test and tags.  Wash & vacuum car. Check and check. Plan route with Google and TomTom.  All done.  Post pictures of the weather report and route on Facebook, because my enthusiasm knows no bounds.
Thursday:  final grocery run (okay, I bought those staying behind *some* snackage), tidy the house, pack my suitcase. (Yeah, these rather important things got put off until the very end.)  Check with condo manager to get door code and parking info. Check.
Today:  pack grocery staples I'm taking, put suitcases, camera, laptop and paperwork in car, and get last-minute work and a final load of laundry done before school lets out and we hit the road.

So, how does everybody else count down to leaving?  Is this routine pretty typical, or do you have a better way of getting everything done? Don't be shy...I'd love to hear your ideas!

Happy vacationing!