Cruising often comes with many complimentary items that you don’t need to supply yourself, such as towels and shampoo.
However, there is a selection of additional items that I like to bring with me on every cruise to make my cruise that bit more fun and accessible.
These are the 15 essential items I take with me on every cruise. Each one helps supplement a particular need I have during my cruise, sometimes even just for the fun.
Magnetic Hooks
The walls of your cruise cabin are made of metal. Therefore, it is very easy to attach magnetic hooks and clips to the walls to increase the storage space you have.
These hooks are great for hanging clothes on whilst you’re getting changed or hanging them to dry if they’re wet. Or they can hold hats as well as bags to keep them off the floor or chairs.
Magnetic Clips
When you’re cruising you are often provided with lots of important pieces of paper and leaflets. They can clutter up the small amount of space you have on the desks.
Therefore, I like to use these magnetic clips to move those papers off the desk and onto the walls. This makes them much more easily available when you need them, whilst also keeping that desk space available for other things.
Decorative Magnets
It is not just the inside of your cabin that is made of metal. The door and outside walls are often made of metal too. This creates an opportunity to personalize the entrance to your cabin.
There are many decorative magnets that you can get to add that personal flavour to your cruise. There are those with funny quotes, some are of animals and fruits. You can get magnets with your names, as well as magnets with characters from popular movies.
Really, whatever you can think of can be turned into a magnet for your cruise.
Cabin doors that have been decorated with your personalized magnets can help you and your fellow cruisers identify which cabin is yours in the sea of doors. These also give you and your fellow cruisers a smile of joy when you see them, particularly if you’re cruising with young ones.
Magnetic Whiteboard and Pens
I recently went on a cruise with my family, so we were split up in separate cabins. I used these magnetic whiteboards with pens on each of the cabin doors so we could write messages to each other.
These were very useful for updating everyone with where we were going to be located on the ship at different times. Such as going to breakfast at a certain time or hanging out by the pool.
Towel Clips or Bands
It can occasionally be a bit windy on the pool deck or by the beach. This can make it awkward to keep your beach towel from blowing away in the breeze when you’re not sitting on it.
There are many different variants of towel clips to choose from. There are plain coloured ones, clips shaped like animals, and even these elasticated bands that wrap around the chair to hold the towel in place.
Even if it isn’t windy, they are very useful for holding the towel in place whilst you’re laid down so you don’t have to keep adjusting it, disrupting your tanning time.
Plug Adapters
Cruise ships often use different plug sockets than the ones you have at home. Most of the time there is some combination of US and European sockets. But if your ship is primarily based in another region, the sockets could be more associated with that area.
You don’t want to lose the ability to charge your devices because the plug type you have doesn’t match the sockets in your stateroom. Therefore, it is worth taking along some plug adapters that can change which socket type your device’s plug will fit into.
You can get single adapters where the plug only accepts one type and only fits into one type. For example, these adapters that convert UK plugs to European sockets.
However, you can also get these multi adapters where the plug can be changed to fit multiple socket types. These are particularly useful if you’re travelling through multiple regions during the same trip.
USB Plugs
Between mobile phones, laptops, tablets, handheld gaming consoles, cameras, and headphones; we tend to travel with a lot of devices these days, particularly if you and your family are sharing a full stateroom. There can be a lot of electronic devices that want charging up on a regular basis.
However, there may not be enough plug sockets in the cabin to support all these devices. Especially if the cruise ship you’re going on is older or built back in the nineties before the rise of the digital era.
Some people used to solve this by taking an extension cord on their cruise. The idea being that you could then plug in multiple devices to the one socket.
However, these are frequently becoming banned by the cruise lines due to fire risk. So, a great solution to this issue is mutli USB plugs. These are a single plug that allows multiple USB cables to be connected to it at the same time. You can also find ones with different combinations of USB A and USB C depending on your needs.
Because these only allow one plug to be connected into the cabin socket, they are still allowed by the cruise lines.
Long USB Cables
Continuing with USB Cables, the sockets in your cruise cabin may not be in the most optimal position for where you want to use your device. For example, you may want to be laid on your bed, but the plug socket is on the desk on the other side of the stateroom.
The USB cable that comes with your device is usually only a metre long or even less. Therefore, I like to bring these extra-long three metre USB cables so I can still use my device whilst it is charging.
Lanyards
A major component of every cruise is your ship card. This ID card is vital to your cruising experience. It opens the door to your cabin, you order drinks with it, and you use it to embark and disembark the ship at every port.
Keeping it safe and easily accessible is crucial. Therefore, many people like to use a lanyard to hold it around their neck whilst they’re out and about.
When in their cabin, the lanyard can then be hung from the magnetic hooks mentioned earlier, so that they don’t get misplaced and to remind you to take it with you.
USB Fan
Staterooms can sometimes have a lack of airflow, particularly indoor cabins with no outside access. These small compact fans that are powered by batteries and charged by USB can be helpful for providing that cool breeze at night whilst you sleep.
Handheld fans can also useful during cruises in hotter climates to help keep cool whilst you’re out and about on shore.
Nightlight
It can get very dark in your cabin at night. Balcony cabins have the added benefit of ambient moonlight to illuminate them, but Indoor cabins have no access to the outside whatsoever.
Turning on the lights can disrupt the people in your room or even be too bright for your eyes to adjust in that distance between your bed and the bathroom.
Therefore, I like to use these nightlights to help illuminate the cabin at night so you’re not tripping over that suitcase you’ve been living out of all cruise.
Clothes Hamper
Cruising sometimes comes with limited storage space. I don’t like keeping my dirty clothes with my clean clothes.
So, I like to use these fold-up Clothes Hampers to put my dirty clothes in. This keeps my limited wardrobe and drawer storage space available for my clean clothes.
Wrinkle Release Spray
Travelling to your cruise with your suitcase completely crammed full can make your clothes very wrinkled. Whilst the cruise ship usually offers some form of laundry/ironing service, these can become quite costly when used for most of your luggage.
Many cruise lines have also banned taking travel irons or travel steamers too. These are considered a fire risk and will likely be confiscated from your luggage.
I like to take this Wrinkle Release Spray instead. A few sprays on my clothes, then hanging them for a few minutes for the wrinkles to fall out and to dry off and all the wrinkles are gone.
It also gives your clothes a nice scent after being stuffed in your suitcase for a while.
Luggage Tags
Before your cruise, the cruise line will send you and email containing your printable luggage tags that you can attach to your suitcase. This means that when you arrive at the cruise terminal, you can leave you heavy luggage with the porters and it will find its way to your cabin.
Rather than just leaving the paper tag wrapped around the handle, which could be prone to ripping and detaching. I like to use these reusable luggage tag sleeves that you can insert your paper tag into.
These luggage tag sleeves are a lot more resilient and much less likely to result in your luggage getting lost.
Bag Zip Security Clips
Sadly, cruising isn’t a one hundred percent safe way to holiday. Some places and destinations where cruising takes you are prone to pickpocketing and theft.
That is why I like to add these Zipper Security Clips to my bags.
These anti-theft security clips attach to the zippers on your bags, making it difficult for thieves to open your bag and take out your belongings.
They don’t completely nullify the threat, but they do help prevent it by slowing thieves down and making them reconsider targeting you.
Conclusion
Those were the 15 essential items I take on every cruise. Tell me what you always take on your cruise.
