Why I built Packd

Hello world, I’m Michelle, a Dutch digital product designer who started building solutions for my own day to day challenges. As a wife, a mom, a pawparent and camper traveler, packing things was one of those challenges.

Mental overload and forgetting things

Every two weeks we commute for an hour to grandma, so she can look after our son. Packing up the bed, bottles, diapers and much more. Almost every time we would forget at least one thing. Or going for a big hike with our dog, bringing water, the ball, poo bags.. Several occasions we managed to forget the leash, true story. And then traveling with our self-built camper. It’s not just about what you pack, it’s also the groceries, cleaning the camper, and doing small maintenance checks before hitting the road.

MVP, a packing list in Notion

As I found myself creating the same packing lists over and over again, I ultimately created a kanban-style Notion checklist for our camper trips. This way my husband and I could work through the to-dos together and not forget a thing. Just use the same list every time and easily filter the 260 items. However, Notion wasn’t the most convenient place for us to store it. Also the main problem I didn’t manage to solve, was resetting it every time we needed the list again.

Building Packd instead

So, I built Packd! Now I can:

• Create many lists that I need in one place
• Share the lists with my loved ones
• Reset with one click, and all items land exactly where they should be

No more dragging items to the right column. No more “Honey, what else do we need to pack?”.

What’s next

At first I built it just for me. With features you might not expect in the first release, such as CSV upload, but that’s what I needed to import my 260 items into my camper packing list. It’s not perfect yet, but it works for me.

Now Packd is out in the world, being used by people with their own packing challenges. Their feedback will shape the future of Packd, hopefully making it the ultimate packing tool for anyone, any day.

Already using Packd? I would love to hear from you! You can find a feedback form in the app, on the Settings tab.