Every con is different, but it's all relatively the same. You have your panels, guest meets, vendors hall, and all the amazing cosplays. But you have to remember that you're human, not a machine. You have to eat, sleep, and bathe. Hopefully, I will have listed everything necessary to survive your weekend.
First off, you need to eat. At least 3 meals a day and plenty of water.
*3-5 breakfast foods (protein bars, or something with grains and maybe peanut butter (as long as you aren't allergic)
*3-5 Lunch foods. Sometimes having a couple of afternoon meals that are smaller help maintain some energy burn.
*Honestly, for dinner, you should have a warm, full, sit down meal that may have a higher calorie count that can keep you going into the later evening hours. This is normally when my friends and I will get together and I'll eat probably the most I'll have eaten all day.
*Water. WATER. WATER! Drink plenty of water. I cannot, absolutely cannot stress this enough. You can literally got to Walmart or Aldi's and get a case of 35 water bottles for like, $4. That's enough for you and the 3 other people to have like, 8 waters and a couple left over.
*Sometimes having some extra snacks like protein bars or fresh fruit and vegetables to snack on.
*If you can't afford to eat at the con, don't go. Don't risk your life and health for a convention.
You can buy almost an entire weekend's worth of food for about $25 (Not counting the sit down meals.) If you eat, you keep con-funk away.
*Speaking of Con-funk, you can avoid this by showering daily. At least once a day. I sometimes shower a second time if I have a lot of makeup or body paint, or the con is particularly hot.
*Keeping a small thing of hand sanitizer on your person is great. Others still go to cons sick, and then touch 8 million things. You then touch the same 8 million things.
*Eating the aforementioned fruit and vegetables also keep con-funk away.
*I think this goes without saying, but washing your hands after going to the bathroom is great.
Of course, washing your hands isn't the only way to keep clean. Keeping your cosplay clean and fresh is very important.
*Febreeze disinfects if you can't wash your cosplay. If you only have one cosplay, this is a necessity, especially with summer or really warm conventions.
*After the con, if you can wash your cosplay, wash that bad boy. No one likes to be the stinky kid at cons.
A physical kit is super important. It's perfect to have a little travel cleaning kit, including these items:
_Shampoo
_Conditioner
_Body wash
_Deodorant
_Body spray (Axe only needs a .1 second spray)
_Toothbrush
_Toothpaste
_Febreeze
_Hand sanitizer
_Water
_Food
_Phone charger and extra external battery
_Medications (advil, prescription meds, etc)
Now we're going to go into the Cosplay aspect of it. We're going to touch on making sure that we don't forget anything.
*Make a list of the cosplays you're bringing.
*Don't overflow your lineup. 3 cosplays should be plenty, but you shouldn't have more than one change per day. I did two in one day and by the end of it, I hated myself. Don't do this to yourself.
List for your cosplays:
_Wig
_Contacts
_Contact solution
_Shoes
_Pants/Skirt/Shorts
_Shirt/dress/tunic/top
_Arm accessories (arm warmers, sleeves, gloves, rings, etc)
_Regular Accessories (Socks, bracelets, necklaces, hair clips, etc)
_Big accessories (I.e. wings, tails, armor)
_Props
After packing all your cosplays (or if you're like me, they are in the plastic containers), make sure you double check, and make sure you triple check before the con. It's also a good rule of thumb to bring a change of pajamas and a change of street clothes so that you can easily move through stores like normal. You also don't want to run the risk of a prop or piece getting destroyed by a civilian.
That being said, you can bring a small repair kit in order to save those last minute breaks. Not every con is going to have a repair person running around, and there's no guarantee that you'll be able to find them anyway. So keeping a small kit on your person will make sure it's not the end of the world.
_Needle and thread
_Buttons
_Elastic
_Hot glue (and gun)
_Small box cutter
_Seam Ripper
_Scissors
_Safety pins
_Double sided tape
_Duct tape
_Sharpies
_Pens
_Advil
_Small first aid kit (You can buy these at Target or Walmart in the travel section, usually come with band aids, gloves, tweezers, neosporin, and sometimes acetaminophen)
I believe this is everything you need in order to survive a con and make it out alive and without con funk. You can also use Emergen-C or something with high vitamin C afterwards in order to try to fight away the Funk. If you have anything to add, please message me or comment below! I really hope it'll help you and can help you remain a little more organized.
(Not my list, but definitely helpful)