We took the whole family to Yellowstone before dropping my oldest off at BYU-I. We were gone for four days. I love going on trips with my family! Packing for those trips however is a nightmare. Seriously, everyone with their own suitcase or bag (usually we end up with 10), where the clothes gets all jumbled by the end of the trip – the clean with the dirty, and everyone’s stuff ends up being scattered around, and then there’s the problem of squeezing all the luggage into whatever vehicle we are taking.
Not something to look forward to.
This time around I approached the packing completely differently thanks to suggestions from some friends on facebook. Instead of everyone having their own suitcase I bought plastic tote containers and packed our clothes according to days. Each outfit was put in its own ziploc bag with the air squeezed out, labeled with the person’s name, and then put in the tote for the day they wanted to wear it. We had totes for three days, one for pjs, and one for undies.
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This trip we traveled in a motorhome and had room in the storage compartments below it to stack the totes. I specifically bought the totes so they would also fit under our van seats for any road trips we take in the van. We only had one tote that we pulled out in the mornings instead of 10 suitcases. It was awesome! At night we pulled out the pj and undie totes and packed the dirty clothes back into the day tote but not in the ziploc bags. I did pack multiple outfits for the littler kids (Ganache is just messy and Junior Mint is in the drooling stage) for each day. I grabbed the extra outfits from the tote, shoved them in the diaper bag and we were set for that day’s adventures.
It was so nice in the morning not to have to repack all the suitcases we normally would have and then try to fit them back into the storage spaces. Taking the amount of suitcases from the typical 10 down to 1 was sooooo nice! Even in the evening when we had three totes out (the day tote for the dirty clothes, the pj tote and the undie tote) it just worked so much better.
Packing this way for longer trips would also be great. For a two week road trip we’d have 5-7 totes but still only get out one a day instead of 10 pieces of luggage. Then we just wash clothes and repack the totes. I will definitely be packing for trips like this from now on!
This is part of the Establish a House series that posts every Tuesday.
With the longer trip you wouldn’t necessarily need 14 totes. I would cap it at 5-7 and do laundry somewhere. That is one way we keep our luggage under control.
Even better! Great idea to cap it and do laundry. Thanks!
Very smart! I had never thought about the logistics of packing for so many.
That is awesome, no matter how many kids you have! 😉
This is ingeneous! I’m going to have to remember it!
On our last trip I did put socks and undies in labeled ziplocs per kid–that definitely helped. This takes it a step further and I think it will definitely be useful in my future!
Wow. And I like Angela’s idea…unless you’re travelling to a nearby Laundromat, in which case you’d spend half your day in there and not on your vacay (personal experience.) Totes: great idea!
That’s a good idea! And stopping at a laundromat to quickly wash everything is a great idea too. I usually have all the stuff for 3 kids in one suitcase and it becomes a nightmare with everything mixed together. I’m not sure if I could fit the totes in our car though. The great thing about 15 passenger vans is how much room they have under the seats. Our minivan has room in the back, but once that’s filled up there’s no room under the seats because of the way they fold down into the floor or tumble.
Brilliant! I love it when other people figure things out so I don’t have to!
Thank you! We don’t do a whole lot of traveling, but these ideas are excellent. If/when we do go on a trip, I will most definitely keep this in mind.
I learned this the hard way…five weeks of hotels and seven different states, seven people. It works for those in a car too who are traveling more than one day and only have to get out one bag instead of unloading the whole car after a day of travel. We now have nine, almost ten, people and we pack even more sparingly now. Two hours at a laundromat to clean clothes is so much nicer than managing sixty three outfits plus extras for the littles for a week long trip. Yikes!
great idea! even with four kids anytime we go somewhere we almost need a trailer to take behind us . We just went camping and this would have worked great. I am envious of this trailer. My parents have a mobile home which we would love to borrow but in Australia its illegal to travel without seatbelts and my parents mobile home doesn’t have 6 seatbelts (it has four) is there sitting for 12 in your mobile home??
I did this same thing when we traveled earlier in the summer! I had one tote for all toiletry bags and one for clothing at hotel stops on the way to my in-laws’ home. At the hotel, only the two bins would enter the hotel. Dirty clothes were placed at the bottom of the clothing bin, with the next days’ clothes up at the top.
When we reached my in-laws’ and later my own parents’, I used the hotel bin as our dirty clothes basket. This kept all of our clothes separate from our host’s laundry and I was able to quickly do a load or two at each home. We wore the same five outfits for about two weeks – just washing them along the way.
We roll clean outfits with undies in the roll, one roll per person each day in a backpack, one backpack with pj’s and toiletries and one bag for swim stuff for when we stop where there is a pool. It’s not bad doing laundry at a hotel or campground halfway through the trip when they have more than one machine so you can do multiple loads at once. We also pack one space saver bag with long pants and sweatshirts in case it gets cold. If you need to open the bag, you can stop at a car wash to vacuum the air back out.
Such a great idea!! Thanks for sharing. Packing and unpacking is the worst part of traveling. This makes so much sense!