It’s that time of year – when New Englanders start fleeing the cold, dreary bleakness in search of sunshine, and everyone else starts making plans for their summer vacations. It’s a hopeful time, and one filled with a lot of stress and anxiety as we begin to start thinking of how in the world we will pack for all the little humans in our care. Luggage math is not something they offered at any of the colleges I ever attended. Oh, you too?!
The first trip we ever took as a family was only the second real trip I had taken with my husband. We hadn’t really figured out our traveling style beyond my husband racing through the airport and me carrying All. The. Things. while trying to keep up with his furious pace. What a mess. To make things messier, I insisted on packing cloth diapers because I was so concerned my daughter’s skin would react to a change of that magnitude. Do you know how much space cloth diapers take up in a suitcase?! Fast forward six years, and we’ve added two humans and have taken enough trips that we have, in fact, gotten our shit together. And, no, my husband doesn’t leave me in the dust anymore.
When I make a mistake, I try not to repeat it. Cloth diapers on vacation? Pass. Rental cars? A disaster we try to avoid if we can help it. And carrying eight suitcases? I’ve got my system down to such a science, that I can stuff five people into a single suitcase for an entire week. And today, I’m going to tell you how. Use these tips and you can kiss your days of hauling multiple suitcases and a gaggle of children through the airport goodbye.
So, here goes nothin’.
Book accommodations with a washer & dryer.
This is the first step to keeping your packing to a minimum when traveling with kids. They will get ketchup on their shirt, and if they’re little enough, they will pee in their pants and they will likely puke somewhere. (It will probably be in an airplane or right outside a restaurant – you’ve been warned) All of which smell terribly offensive after about three seconds of dry time. Booking accommodations with a washer & dryer is smart for so many reasons. In addition to being able to launder dirty clothes, it almost always guarantees you’ll have extra space in your rental. I don’t know about you, but my kids often get overstimulated on trips and need time to decompress in the room. Being in a small room with three small children makes me feel overstimulated, so extra space is great all around.
For anyone who says “boo” to doing laundry on vacation, let’s chat about that. The way I see it is you have two options:
Option A: pack a ton of crap and do a mountain of laundry when you come home
–ooooooorrrrrr–
Option B: pack next to nothing, do The Smallest Loads Ever throughout the stay and come home with Z-E-R-O laundry
Laundry is my kryptonite. I’m terrible at getting it washed, folded and put away. And after a vacation? If there’s dirty laundry to be washed, it’ll sit in that suitcase until our next trip. I’m just being honest. Option B is like gifting myself a vacation after a vacation.
To keep things moving on vacation, I wash the evening wear while we’re out during the day and the daytime clothes while we’re out in the evening. I don’t like to run the dryer while we’re exploring due to an episode of Rescue 9-1-1 I saw as a kid, so I run it while we are showering or napping or whatever.
Pick “uniforms” for the kids
I’ve gotten a lot of comments about this over the years ranging from the annoyed “do you always dress them alike” (insert snarky face) to the complimentary “oh, how cute.” Listen: I don’t dress my kids alike to be cute – I do it for their safety and my sanity. Kids that are clearly dressed alike are a lot less likely to get lost. I’m really not kidding. On our trip to Disney last year I was absolutely amazed at how many people noticed our children were all together and gave us the ROOM required to stay that way. At Disney. Where adults are getting into fist fights because they can’t get a grip on reality and single people are using family restrooms to take a dump. Can I get an applause?
But you know what else? Let’s say they do get lost. You can remember exactly what they’re wearing because you’ve seen it a few other times and/or you have a replica standing right in front of you.
But the benefits to this approach don’t stop there: it’s also insanely practical. Packing uniforms is so. much. easier. Both directions. I can tell my husband “go find this” and when we’re leaving the place, I can make sure we have 1-2-3 of each item. I no longer have to give him the exact GPS coordinates or explain in painstaking detail what we’re looking for. Which brings me to my next point…
Lay everything out in a grid.
Laying everything out in a nice grid cuts down on the mental chaos. When you’re packing uniforms, this is so much easier because you can clearly see each kiddo has what they need, and you can go find what they’re missing. It takes a lot of mental load and stress out of getting ready for a trip with kids, and that is something worth celebrating. Less stress heading into vacation? I want some of that.
When I pack for my kids, I follow this general checklist:
- (2) daytime outfits
- (2) evening outfits
- (1) pair of jammies
- Swim gear
- (3) Undergarments
- (3) Pairs of Socks
- Hats
- Sunglasses
For adults, I follow the same guide, but I usually only take two daytime outfits, one evening outfit, something for lounging in the room that doubles as jammies, and less undergarments. This is simply because I expect the adults will not pee in their pants, but may get peed on. A change of touring clothes is an all around good idea for everyone.
Invest in a large suitcase
Let’s be reasonable here – you aren’t packing for a family of 4 or more for a week in a carry-on. Samsonite doesn’t make the luggage that I own, because I’m old and bought it at least twelve years ago. This is about the size you want to shoot for.
And pack it efficiently.
There is an art to packing a suitcase, especially when traveling with kids. Marie Kondo may have given up on staying tidy after the birth of her third child, but there’s a generation of women that were utterly scarred by her work and have adopted a lot of her strategies – for better or worse. One such strategy I adopted was folding clothes. “Let them breathe” she says. Prior to this, I rolled clothes, which was… fine. Now, I fold them using the Kondo method. I can see everything at quick glance, and it gives me an incredible amount of space to work with. This is clearly one of the better pieces of advice I adopted.
But also intentionally.
Packing efficiently is only half the battle. You also need to pack intentionally. What does this mean? It means considering how you will use things and in what order. That starts with considering the first things you do when you arrive to your destination.
My family typically travels with my parents when we vacation. My parents like to arrive, unpack, and then do what they do. They want everything in order before they start enjoying their vacation. Realistically, this means they do not start vacationing until day two. On the other hand, I like to spend my daytime hours exploring and enjoying the pool. When I arrive at my destination, I have a general idea of the first things I’ll need (usually a swimsuit) and pack those in an easily accessible location in the bag. I do not want to be rifling through luggage after a day of traveling with the kids, nor do I want to come back to a hotel room with clothes strewn about.
Packing both intentionally and efficiently makes living out of a suitcase easier, or just getting to the pool with hyperkinetic kids faster. Both are a win in my book.
But what about winter?!
Winter travel is a special beast and one that I have limited experience with. Typically, we do not go anywhere in the winter, and certainly nowhere that isn’t warmer than where we currently live (which is basically Canada). That being said, when we travel to my home state of Virginia each fall, we have to plan for all the seasons. If you plan for a football game in late October, you can absolutely expect to experience winter at night and summer during the day.
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