Don't forget the plant pots!

Staying at home is fine - you have all the equipment that you need and things are organised to work as easily as possible. Not so with hotels!

We use hotels quite often, both for business and pleasure but the list of things that we have to take with us to make a hotel stay possible is unbelievable - let's start with the plant pots!

Yes, I really do mean plant pots! To be completely accurate, they are plastic plant trays about 30 cm long and 10 cm deep. You can get them in any garden centre. We take six.

The plant trays are used to raise the type of divan bed used in most hotels ( no space underneath) so that we can use a portable hoist. It's really irritating and unnecessary. All it requires is for hotels either to have beds with sufficient space underneath, or at least to provide bed raisers. But most don't...

But the plant pots work well. They are lighter than bed raisers, they can be stacked inside each other so they take up less space and you can use them either way up. This is particularly useful when you are trying to raise a double bed that is in two parts with castors in the middle. That needs a tray the right way up with the castors inside!

Simple. Doesn't everyone have to do this when they go to a hotel?!