Every travel day in our fifth wheel starts the same way: one of us opens the Notes app, taps “Uncheck All,” and the list is ready to go again. Thirty items, two people, one shared checklist. It is the least glamorous tool we own and it has saved us more money than any gadget in the basement.
We get asked about it whenever a travel day shows up in a video, so here it is: the exact list, why the odd items are on it, and how to set up the same shared checklist on two iPhones so you and your partner are working from one document instead of two drifting copies.
Why the Notes app, of all things
We tried fancier options. The Notes app won because it is already on both of our phones, it works offline in the middle of nowhere, and two people can check things off the same list at the same time. When Fabiola checks “Close propane tanks” outside, it disappears off the top of Nathan's list inside. Nobody asks “did you get the vents?” through a closed window anymore.
The checkbox feature is the whole trick. In a note, tap the checkmark circle in the toolbar and every line becomes a checkbox. Check items off all month, then reset the entire list in two taps before the next drive.
How to share the list so it's one document, not a copy
This is the part people get wrong. If you text the note to your partner, they get a copy, and copies drift apart within a week. You want collaboration, where both phones edit the same note.
- Open the note in the Notes app. The note has to be in your iCloud account, not the “On My iPhone” folder.
- Tap the share icon at the top of the note.
- At the top of the share sheet, make sure it says “Collaborate,” not “Send Copy.” If it says Send Copy, tap it and switch.
- Tap “Only invited people can edit” if you want to check the permissions. You want your partner to be able to make changes.
- Send the invite by text message. Your partner taps the link once, and from then on the note lives on both phones.
From that point, a checkmark on one phone shows up on the other in seconds. To reset the list for the next travel day, the option is well hidden but it exists: double-tap the text of any item in the list (the words, not the checkbox), tap the little arrow on the pop-up menu that appears, tap “Checklist,” then tap “Uncheck All.” One more setting worth knowing: in Settings, under Notes, “Sort Checked Items” decides whether finished items drop to the bottom automatically. We keep that on, so whatever is still unchecked is always staring at us from the top.
The checklist
This is the real list, straight out of our Notes app:
- Test RV lights: left, right, brakes
- Clean truck windows, outside
- Clean truck windows, inside
- Hard lock main door
- Hard lock office door
- Clean hydraulic jacks
- Turn off water pump
- Close fan vents
- Put the stairs up
- Put bathroom things away
- Fridge lock
- Put heavy dishes in ottoman
- Secure couch pillows
- Close all windows
- Move kitchen sink floor mat
- Put honey wagon in truck bed
- Microwave plate
- Attach wheeled chairs in office
- Attach regular chairs to desk
- Put a little travel water into the RV
- Zip tie medicine cupboard
- Remove pool noodle
- Put living room TV away
- Bungee microwave door
- Charge cameras
- Secure travel map
- Turn off motion sensor on bed light
- Lock shower door
- Close propane tanks
- Starlink
Some of those need no explanation. A few of them earned their spot the hard way, so let's talk about them.
The lights test, right after we hitch
This one sits at the top of the list, but it actually happens right after hitching, because the trailer lights only have power once the seven-pin connector is plugged into the truck. So the moment the pin is set and the cable is in, one of us stands behind the rig calling out “left... right... brakes” while the other works the truck. A trailer light that quit since the last drive is a ticket at best and a rear-end collision at worst, and it is a five-minute fix in a campsite versus a miserable one on a highway shoulder. We test every single travel day, even after a one-night stop.
Why we wipe the hydraulic jacks
The leveling jacks on our fifth wheel are hydraulic, and the polished rods pick up dust, pollen and road grime while we sit. Retract them dirty and all of that grit drags across the seals. We learned what a leaking jack looks like firsthand, and we would rather spend ninety seconds with a rag than another afternoon with a mobile tech. A quick wipe of each rod before retracting is one of the cheapest pieces of preventive maintenance in RV life.
Water: pump off, tank mostly empty, a little left in
Two water items, and they look contradictory until you tow with them. The pump goes off so that if a line or fitting lets go while we bounce down the road, the pump cannot happily push our fresh water into the walls for three hours. And we add a little travel water, just a few gallons, because rest stop bathrooms are a gamble and a working toilet plus a hand-washing sink turns any pull-off into a rest stop. Water weighs about eight pounds a gallon, so we carry enough to be comfortable and not a drop more. If you have never seen where those pounds actually land on your axles, weighing your rig at a CAT scale is an eye-opener.
The flying object patrol
A fifth wheel going down an interstate is a slow-motion earthquake, and half our list is really one rule: nothing gets to move. The fridge gets its lock so the doors cannot swing open and redecorate the hallway. Heavy dishes ride in the ottoman, down low where they can do no harm. The microwave gets its glass plate pulled out and the door bungeed shut, because that plate is the single most breakable thing in the kitchen and it rattles like it wants to prove it. The medicine cupboard gets a zip tie, the couch pillows get tucked, the office chairs get strapped, and the living room TV comes off its mount. Every one of those items exists because something, somewhere, once hit a floor.
The honey wagon rides up front
Our portable waste tank, the honey wagon, gets emptied and moved into the truck bed before we roll. We used to carry it on the rig's rear ladder, until enough comments pointed out what the manual also says: don't store anything on the ladder during transit. It rides in the truck bed now, which also means it is ready when the next site turns out to be farther from the dump station than advertised.
Cameras, Starlink, and the travel map
A few items are pure us. We charge the cameras because travel days are exactly when things worth filming happen, and a dead battery has cost us more than one good moment. Starlink does not come down at all; it gets repositioned back onto its magnetized spot on the roof. That is the whole trick of the mount: set it on its magnets and it rides there happily, which means we still have internet while we are rolling down the highway. And the scratch-off travel map gets secured, because it tracks every state this rig has been in.
Propane: we close the tanks
We know full-timers run down the road with propane on to keep the fridge cold. Ours is not that kind of fridge: it runs on electricity, and our battery bank carries it through a travel day without noticing. In our rig, propane only has two jobs, the furnace and the water heater, and neither of them has any business running while we tow. So the tanks are closed before the truck starts, every time. A closed valve means that in an accident, or even a simple tire blowout near a propane line, there is no open fuel source along for the ride. The peace of mind costs nothing.
Steal this list, then make it yours
Copy our list into your Notes app today if it helps. If you are early in the journey, our first travel day mistakes video is the companion piece we wish we had watched sooner. But the honest advice is that the best checklist is the one your own rig writes for you. Ours got built one lesson at a time, and the newest lines are usually the freshest bruises; the jack wipe-down joined the list right after our leak. When something goes wrong on a travel day, the fix is not to feel bad. The fix is one more line on the list, shared instantly to both phones, waiting to be checked off before the next drive.