Traveling with kids is a fun and interesting experience for the whole family, but I figured there were a few things I could do to try and make it easier for us. For example, most of the excursions on the boat requires us to meet our tour guide at the pier early in the morning so I thought that instead of rushing around every morning trying to find something for the kids to wear before rushing them off to breakfast, maybe I can adopt one of my summer travel strategies to make life easier.
So for our cruise this year, I organized all their outfits in ziplock packages, two for each day for each kid. For my little girl, a morning bag would contain shorts, shirt, hair stuff and accessories. An evening bag would contain a dress, cardigan, hair clips/headband, necklace and bracelet. For my son, his daytime bag would contain simply a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, whereas his evening bag would contain a dress shirt, tie, dinner jacket and a pair of shorts/pants. The great thing about this system is that if the clothes get wet or stained, I can simply put them back into the ziplock bag where they won’t dirty any of the other outfits, and transport them back home to clean properly. The other great thing is, you bring less stuff with you on the plane because you know exactly what you need before you go. It’s a great system that I wish I had thought of before but am so happy that I’m able to utilize now. Oh, and the bags that I use for the cruise will stay in their suitcase and be reused for camping this summer and hopefully next year too.
In the past when I’d pack my kids clothes for camp, I tended to pack way too much stuff and by the third day (for the life of me) I couldn’t make heads or tails of what they’d already worn from what was still clean. It took me a while, but I finally realized that planning ahead made life so much easier. So last year I started making checklists for our excursions and putting their outfits in ziplock bags, and low and behold it made our holidays run much more smoothly.
To take some guess work out of planning your next travel adventure, click here to download my free ‘Cruising with kids’ checklist.
