The Trip Clip’s picture checklists are super versatile and crazy useful, and really, they’re just picture checklists. For most people, that may be all you need to know. If you want a shorter overview of what they are, and a link to buy them, you can find all of that here.
This blog post, on the other hand, is for anyone who has more questions or wants more information before making a purchase decision. Although they are essentially just picture checklists, they are also full of features you might not beware of, so here are all of the tiny details that may answer any lingering questions you have, or teach you something new about what The Trip Clip has to offer!
There are 13 Different Lists + a To Do / Done Board
Here are all of the different kinds of lists you can make with The Trip Clip. Each of the lists below (except the custom list) gives you a curated list of images to pick from. This is helpful because you can visually scan through a set of images that make sense for the specific kind of list you’re trying to make. In parentheses I tell you approximately how many images there are right now for each type of list. Note that I add more pretty regularly (read more about this below).
- Morning Routine (350 pictures)
- School Schedule (300 pictures)
- After School Checklist (350 pictures)
- Chore Chart (180 pictures)
- Bedtime Routine (115 pictures)
- Grocery List (315 pictures)
- Cleaning Checklists (150 pictures)
- Packing List (240 pictures)
- Lunch Box Packing Checklist (215 pictures)
- Personal Care Lists (125 pictures)
- Social Skills Checklists (70 pictures)
- School Supplies List (27 pictures)
- Custom List (1500 pictures)
- To Do / Done Board
You can buy the lists independently, or all together for a discount. If you buy any one of these lists, you will automatically get access to customize and print your own To Do / Done Board. More on this below.
Changing the Picture At the Top
For some of these lists, there is a single picture at the top of the list that always shows up (e.g. the Grocery List always shows a grocery bag at the top).
A few of the lists let you choose what picture you want at the top. Here are the lists that let you choose the picture at the top:
- Cleaning Checklists
- Packing List
- Personal Care
- Social Skills
- Custom List
To change the picture at the top for these lists, click on the picture above the preview of the list (i.e. click the toilet) and a window will open that lets you see your other options.
There are over 1500 images to choose from
For every one of the lists above there is a search box at the top of the page that lets you search the images for the current activity to try to find the one you’re looking for. The search scans the text label for each image, so if you can’t find what you’re looking for, try altering your search to see if you can match something in the set of pictures. For instance, if you want to add ‘go to the pool’ to your list, you can search for pool or swim to see if either of those words pops up something you want. You can also search for bathing suit, goggles, towel, sunglasses, or anything else that might be related to the activity that would work in your list!
Custom List
The custom list is a special list because it lets you add any clipart from across the entire website onto your list. This includes clipart from other activities like the BINGO boards that you might not find on any individual list, and it lets you put items from different lists in one list – in case you want to do something like add items from both the personal care list and the grocery list to a single list. The custom list also gives you a wide variety of choices of images for the top of the list. It can be a little hard to find the images you want for this list because there are so many, so I highly recommend using the Search box for this list.
Because all of the clipart is available on this list, it is the only list you cannot buy individually. The only way to purchase the Custom List is to buy the bundle that includes all of the Picture Checklists.
Add Your Own Pictures
If you can’t find a picture that is right for your list, you can upload your own pictures. The best images will be simple, zoomed in on a single object, square, around 1000×1000 pixels, and have a file size less than 8MB. Once you add a picture of your own to The Trip Clip website, you will be able to add that picture to any one of your lists. Your pictures are completely private and are not visible to anyone else.
Here’s a blog post with more information about using this feature.
You Can Request Additional Pictures
In some circumstances you may have a picture you’d like to see on the clipart lists and adding your own won’t work for you for some reason. In this scenario, please let me know! I get requests from customers all the time for additional clipart, and I do my very best to add the items that are requested. You can see from this roll-up of all of my new clipart posts that I’ve been increasing my clipart collection for years! I love it when I hear from customers with new requests.
I’ve also been working on making sure my clipart is diverse, and I truly need help from my customers to do this well, because I am just one person with one perspective on the world. People from different cultures, ethnic backgrounds, religions, and parts of the world have all contacted me to teach me about things that are important in their lives and to their families and I have loved to learn from them and to find the clipart they need to help make my website more useful for them!
Write Any Text In Any Language
When you add a picture to your list (by clicking on it or dragging it onto the list) the default text that goes along with the picture will be added to your list. You can change this text by clicking on the item once it’s in your list. This is great for making your lists super customized for your kids, and it’s also great for being able to write in any language. I’ve worked hard to make sure I have full language support for as many languages as I possibly can. I have successfully translated my lists into Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Malay, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, and Ukrainian. You can see samples of these here.
If you run into any problems making a list in your own language, please email me and let me know, and I will do the work to add support for a new language if I possibly can!
To Do / Done Board
If you buy any one of these lists, you will automatically get access to customize and print your own To Do / Done Board. You can print your To Do / Done Board on regular paper, on magnet paper, or laminate it. The Trip Clip Website lets you choose colors for your To Do / Done Board, change the title at the top to anything you want (in any language), change the headings “To Do” and “Done” to anything you want (in any language) and choose a picture for the bottom left corner. You can also print it with and without the circle markers to indicate placement for any picture clips you use with your board.
List Types: Daily, Weekly, Interactive
The Trip Clip lets you make a number of different kinds of lists. The most basic is a daily checklist with a single column of checkboxes. You can also make a weekly list in either vertical or horizontal format depending on what you need and what will work best for your kids. You can also print your checklist as Picture Clips (in big or small format) to make an interactive list with moving parts.
I find it’s important to change each of these settings depending on what kind of list I need. Different lists call for different layouts!
Mobile Lists
All of the lists you make, including daily and weekly lists, can be used from a mobile device like a phone or an iPad. The only exception is the Lunch Box Checklist. If you’re interested in using the Lunch Box Checklist from a mobile device and are disappointed it doesn’t work yet on a phone, email me and let me know and I’ll bump this up in my priorities.
The great thing about this is that you don’t have to do anything extra at all for your lists to work from a mobile device. The Trip Clip is a cloud-based system, so every list you make is automatically saved (no need to click a save button) and will be instantly available from your account on any device. You just need to use the browser from the device to navigate to TheTripClip.com, and sign in to your account to see all of your lists.
Create, Edit, and Save As Many Lists As You Want
Every list you make is saved automatically to the cloud, and you can keep adding new lists while preserving any lists you want to use again. Examples of lists you might want to preserve and use again later are weekly items you get on every trip to the grocery store, a summer and winter packing list, or morning routine lists that are specific to each of your children.
To preserve a list, stop editing it once it’s the way you want to keep it. Then either copy this list, or start a new list. You do this by clicking the list menu (three horizontal lines) in the upper right corner of the list:
FINDING LISTS YOU CREATED
The easiest way to get to your lists is to use the My Lists button, visible from the home page of The Trip Clip website for every logged in user.
You can choose to view your lists chronologically (lists create most recently will be at the top) or alphabetically.You can also access your lists from the dropdown menu at the top of the list preview.
From your phone, go the Home screen, then go the type of list you created (e.g. Morning Routine, After School, etc). At the top of the screen is a dropdown box. Touch that, and a list of all of your lists of that type will appear. Touch the name of the list you want to access.
From your computer, click the LISTS menu item at the top of the page. On the left of the screen, click the type of list you created (e.g. Morning Routine, After School, etc). You’ll see a list preview on the right. At the top of the preview is a dropdown box. Click it to show all of your lists of that type. Select the list you want to access.
Multiple Kids/Users
I’ve set it up so that there is a current default list saved per device, so if you create a list for each of your kids, and they navigate to their personalized list, that list will be the one that shows up on their device again the next time they go to The Trip Clip.
This will also work well for teachers in a classroom setting. You can use a single account for all the students in your class. Each student can access their own list from their device. A teacher working with special needs kids used this feature to have each student in his class create their own personalized picture grocery list.
Display Options
Many people simply print out their lists on paper and use them with a regular pen or pencil. There are lots of other options, though. You can use them with a Trip Clip Clipboard and 4-color pen, you can laminate your list or put it in a plastic picture frame and use it with a dry erase marker, or you can turn it into an interactive magnetic or hook and loop checklist. Learn more about all of these choices here.
Print Options
I’ve tried hard to keep the layout of The Trip Clip lists simple so that using them is straightforward. There are a few things you can tweak at print time, though, to help format your lists for your individual needs. By default, the lists will print on a half sheet of paper in landscape format. If you want, you can change this to vertical (portrait) format. You can also change the size of the text to make it a little bigger or smaller to get your list to fit well on the page. You can also choose to print in color or in black and white, and for non-US customers, you can specify that you want to print on A4 paper and the layout will be adjusted accordingly.
For anyone who wants to print in color but doesn’t have a color printer, all of The Trip Clip lists are generated as PDFs that can be saved and then emailed or carried on a removable drive to a print shop that can print your PDF in color for you.
If you’re having trouble printing, I wrote down some troubleshooting steps to help you figure out what might be going wrong. You can see those here.
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