🧺 Homecoming Prep: Love, Laundry, and Lice

Campers are coming home shortly. Almost two months of missing them ends in one giant hug - and then it's just you, your camper, and a duffel bag that has been living in a bunk with over a dozen other kids all summer.

Be prepared. This is not a drill - lice and bedbugs can be real issues - and trust me, you do not want to find out why.

Luckily, I have a game plan that you can follow that has been refined over many summers - it involves a garbage bag and a garage, and my house has never once needed fumigating. Here it is - so you can have it all set up before that bus pulls in.

Step 1: DEFENSE AGAINST THE DUFFEL

Fair warning - be prepared for the smell that hits you as soon as you open that duffel! And, here is the reason why - towels that have been damp since July, socks that no longer bend, and water bottles that have not been rinsed since before camp.

You will discover that you have inherited clothes that are not your child's - somebody else's shorts, a mystery sweatshirt, underwear with another kid's name label staring up at you. Meanwhile half of what YOU labeled is living in someone else's duffel in New Jersey. This is not a packing failure, it's a law of nature. Set the strangers' clothes aside, wash them, and deal with the clothing exchange later - the bunk moms will find each other.

But the real problem: potential lice and bedbugs, the two souvenirs nobody wants, and both love to ride home in duffel bags and on the clothes your kid is wearing right off the bus.

That's why the clothes come off before anything enters the house. When my daughter was little, I met her with a hug, a kiss, and a garbage bag - and she stripped down in the back of the truck before we even left the parking lot. As she got older we compromised: she made it home (she sat on a towel in the back seat), but she did not get past the garage. Everything she was wearing went right into a plastic bag, and she went straight into the shower.

Overkill? Maybe. But WAY better safe than sorry!

Step 2: HOLDING PATTERN IN THE GARAGE

• ✔The clothes on their back: into a plastic bag and park the bag on the garage floor.
• ✔The duffel, all clothing, towels, and bedding: they too stay in the garage and go straight out to the laundry service. If you don't send them to the laundry I would wait a week before washing them in your machine. Then, wash hot, dry hot. Heat is what actually kills anything living in there.
• ✔Everything else (shoes, sports equipment, the lanyard collection): stays in the garage about a week before it's allowed inside. A week in the garage may be excessive. I've made my peace with that.
• ✔The camper: directly into the shower, do not pass go

Step 3: PLAN AHEAD: Book the lice check now - even if their head looks fine

Do not skip this one, and do not rely on a quick look under the kitchen light. Camp is a lice convention: shared bunks, shared brushes, shared everything. Half the time there are no symptoms at all in the first weeks, which is exactly how it spreads to the whole family right before school starts.

A professional head check takes a few minutes and buys you the one thing you actually want: certainty. And here's the game-plan part: the week after buses come home, every lice place in town is slammed. Call and book the appointment now, for a day or two after arrival.

Step 4: RELAXATION REQUIRED: Lock the door - no visitors for a couple of days

Grandma wants to see them. The cousins want to see them. Their school friends are circling. Warn everyone now: not the first day or two.

Your camper just left their entire summer world - best friends, counselors, a schedule, a whole life - on the other side of that bus door. They are exhausted in a way that sleep doesn't immediately fix, and a driveway full of relatives on night one is a lot for a kid who is quietly grieving camp (yes, grieving - more on that in my post-camp blues article).

Give them a quiet first night or two at home. The grandparents will survive. Tell them you're protecting them from the duffel bag.

Read: the post-camp blues are real →

Step 5: POSTPONE THE INQUISITION

This is the hardest one, and it's for us, not them. You have ten weeks of questions saved up. Who was in the bunk? What did you do on the overnight trip? What happened with that friend from the letters? Do not rapid fire them off at the kid in the back seat.

Let them sit a day or two. Campers come home full - of stories, of feelings, of a whole summer - and they unpack it the same way they unpack the duffel: slowly, in their own time, usually at weird moments. The good stuff comes out at 10pm over a snack, in the car three days later, mid-shower through the door. Your job is to be around when it does, not to conduct an interrogation on day one.

Hug them, feed them, and wait. It all comes out. It always comes out.

Step 6: FAVORITE FOODS: Stock the fridge with comfort

Do this before pickup day. After a summer of camp food, the thing they missed most (besides you) is real food from home - the exact bagel order, the specific mac and cheese, the good snacks you normally ration.

First meal home, make the thing they've been talking about in letters all summer. It's the fastest way to say "you're home" without making a whole speech about it. And expect them to eat like they've never seen food before - appetite comes home on the bus too.

Step 7: SLEEP, GLORIOUS SLEEP: Let them sleep. And sleep. And sleep.

The first few days home, your camper may sleep until noon like a teenager on spring break, even if they're nine. Let them. Camp runs kids from reveille to lights-out for weeks straight, and lights-out in a bunk of 12 is a suggestion, not a bedtime. The sleep deprivation is real. Keep the calendar empty for the first few days - no dentist, no back-to-school shopping, no schedule. They'll resurface.

The bottom line

That's the game plan: garbage bag ready, lice check booked, fridge stocked, visitors warned off, questions on hold. Get it set up this week, and when that bus pulls in you get to do the only part that matters - hug them hard - and know that everything else is under control.