Packing for Vacation
With summer vacation coming up, many of us will be traveling. If you’re lucky, you may have a long trip coming up this summer. People are more comfortable traveling. If you’re like us, we have a couple of week-long trips planned where we will just be parenting elsewhere, but at least we’ll have a change of scenery and some grandparents to help!
Whether you’re packing for just yourself or a whole family (I don’t know about you, but packing for everyone still falls on me!), you will want to be organized to make sure you don’t forget anything.
Before we even get started, my biggest piece of advice is to have duplicates for travel. The last thing you want is to forget your phone charger or worse, the sound machine (parents of young kids, you understand!).
Start with a Packing List
Whether you’re going on a short weekend trip or a three week long trek through Europe, you’ll want to make a packing list. As you create your list, think about what activities you’ll be doing, how long you’ll be there and whether you’ll have access to a washer and dryer.
My general rule of thumb is to have two outfits for each day, one for daytime activities and one for the evening. This is a good way to have enough clothing, but not overpack. Depending on your evenings, you may be able to rewear items.
When I have access to a washer and dryer, I pack for half the time and do laundry once (or twice) rather than pack more clothing. Sometimes, I even try to do a load right before we leave so I have clean clothes that can just go back into our drawers rather than loads of laundry to do when we get home.
Keep a Ready to Go Toiletries Bag for Travel
I always have a toiletries bag ready to go with a weeks worth of products inside. This way, I don’t have to think too much when it comes to packing toiletries and I don’t forget anything.
How do I keep it ready to go? When I get home from a trip, I check out everything inside and repack it for the next trip. I wear contacts, so I always make sure I have at least a weeks worth in my bag. If it’s a longer trip, I already know how many I have in there and can just add to them.
Packing Cubes for Travel
A few years ago, I discovered packing cubes and I love them. They keep everything together and make it easier to unpack when you get to your destination. I like to keep outfits and types of clothing together. That way, I know where my daytime clothes are and where my evening clothes are. I keep all my underwear together with my socks and always know where everything is.
With packing cubes, come shoe bags. I typically only bring two to three pairs of shoes per trip and just rewear. For the summer, that’s usually tennis shoes and sandals. Each pair gets a shoe bag so they don’t dirty up anything else in my bag.
But my favorite way to use packing cubes are with children. When we go on a road trip, I can pack in each of their small bags and just have one to two cubes in each with clothing and pajamas (our oldest are boys so packing and clothing is super easy!). However, when we go on a trip we need to fly on, I pack all the kids in one bag. They are not old enough or big enough to carry their own bags through the airport so the adults have to do it. Plus wrangling everyone and pushing a stroller. The less bags we can pack in, the better! Then, when we get to our destination, it’s easy to unpack because everyone has their own color of packing cube. I know which cube goes with each kid!
Packing Jewelry for Vacation
I have two different ways I pack jewelry depending on the situation. The first is just jewelry in general, I pack in a pill container. If you have a lot, a 7 day container works well, if you just have a little bit, there are smaller 1 day containers that work well. I am not a big jewelry person so I normally just have maybe an extra necklace and earrings to pack.
If you are someone who has jewelry to match an outfit, I suggest using small ziplock bags packed in the cube with the outfit. That way, you have everything together that you need and you don’t have to go searching for the specific jewelry for your outfit.
Electronics
After plenty of travel, both on my own and with family, electronics are the hardest for me to remember. This year, I will be implementing some new organization to help me remember everything I need (especially now that there are so many plugs that go with different devices!).
At the end of the school year, I took out all our devices that we would need for travel. I made sure each device had a cord to go with it. For some, I just made sure we had one for multiple devices. This way, you don’t have extra cords (we are able to have one cord for both the kids’ fire tablets, they don’t need to charge at the same time). And my husband and I can share cords as well. I just wanted to make sure we had a cord for every device and didn’t forget one.
I also like to bring a usb charging station. This way, you know you have enough usb plugs to plug your chargers into. Depending on where you’re staying, there may not be enough plugs to charge all your devices. This ensures you have all your devices charging in the same area and you won’t forget a device or a charger!
Pack a Laundry Bag for Travel
As the laundress in our house, I hate doing extra laundry that is already “clean.” However, when we get home from vacation and everything smells, it all has to be washed, even if no one wore it. Now, I pack a laundry bag. Anything dirty ends up in the laundry bag and can go straight into the washer when we get home. All the clean clothes can go back into the drawers. This way, I am not washing extra clothing and folding extra clothing and putting away extra clothing that didn’t need to be washed in the first place!
Last Minute Items for Travel
Another hard thing to remember are those items you can’t pack ahead of time. These are items you use daily and don’t want to forget! Make a list of these items, either on paper or one your phone, however you best remember things. I like to use my phone and I set a reminder for it about 10 minutes before we need to leave. That way, I can double check I packed the sound machine and the lovey that needs to come with us!
Packing can seem overwhelming, whether you’re an early packer (like me) or a last minute packer (like my husband). Either way, make a list and you can get your packing done quickly so you don’t forget anything and enjoy your vacation!
