Every August we rent a house in Maine for a week. It's never been the same house twice. The first year we packed clothes and nothing else and the kitchen made me cry on day two. Now I pack a tote bag of small things and the rental starts to feel like ours by Tuesday afternoon.
The list is twelve items. It fits in a soft duffel and a canvas tote. The whole tote weighs maybe ten pounds and the difference it makes is genuinely embarrassing for how small it is.
The twelve
1. A linen pillowcase you've already washed. Slipped over whatever the rental provides. Mine is from H&M Home, $15, three years old, gray-blue. The pillow itself can be anything. The pillowcase against your face is what your brain is going to register.
2. A real beach towel. Not white. White is the giveaway that this is a rental. I have a heavy striped one from Target ($22 in 2022) that's gotten softer every year.
3. One beeswax candle and a small holder. Lit at dusk on the kitchen counter. Mine is from Trader Joe's, $5.99. The holder is a brass one from a flea market, $4.
4. A small French press. The Bodum 12-ounce, $25 on Amazon. Every rental has a coffee maker that someone broke. Bring your own.
5. Two of your own mugs. Heavy ones. Not white. Mine are East Fork seconds I bought on sale at $32 each — I would not buy them at full price, but the seconds are worth it. The rental mugs are fine. They're just not yours.
6. A wooden cutting board the size of a paperback. For cheese and the morning bread. IKEA, $9.
7. Maldon flake salt in a small tin. $7 for the tin, lasts a year. The Morton's the rental has is fine for boiling pasta. Not for the tomato.
8. Garden snips. For wildflowers on the walk back from the beach. Felco Classic, $20-something. Lifetime tool.
9. One striped linen tea towel. The kind that's been washed forty times. Mine is from a flea market in 2019, $3.
10. One book. A paperback you've already read. Not the one you're trying to get through. The vacation is not the moment.
11. A small stoneware vase. For the wildflowers. East Fork makes one for $18. A jam jar works too if you're cutting it close.
12. A small Bluetooth speaker. The JBL Go 3 is $40. Music in the kitchen on Tuesday morning is the moment the rental becomes yours. I'm not joking. It's that exact moment.
The total, if you bought everything new today, is about $200. I bought it over six years and most of it was on sale. The duffel and the tote stay packed in my closet between trips. I just grab them.