Today is the last official day of our road trip, not counting the travel day tomorrow. Who knows when I’ll be able to get this posted, as the stars must align for me to find free wi–fi, have the computer with me, feel justified in taking up family-time for mama to get a post copy-pasted into blogger, etc. etc. etc.
For the moment, everyone is sleeping, so I thought I’d write the post that has been jostling around in my mind since we started our trip . . . almost two weeks ago.
My biggest organizational success for the trip was in packing for the kids. I have a hard enough time packing for myself, and keeping my own suitcase from becoming an abyss on a short trip. For the kids, especially the boys, there’s really no hope of them remembering what should be worn together or keeping dirty clothes separate from clean ones. For example, last Christmas, when we were staying with family, the boys ended up switching clothes on the second day . . . meaning, they wore each other’s dirty clothes from the day before. Even though the 8yo’s sleeves and jeans were too short, and the 6yo’s were too long. And after we pointed out what they had done? The next day . . . they switched back.
So almost two weeks of them having a bag of random clothing to dig through wasn’t even an option. I decided to bring one mega-suitcase for the three kids, and one large bag for hubby and I.
Are you ready for my great idea? I packed one two-and-a-half gallon Hefty zipper bag for each day of the trip. Each bag contained one day’s complete outfits for all three kids, including socks and undies. My mom used to do this for me when I went to Girl-Scout Camp, and I remember loving being able to pull out a bag with everything I needed. But with the 2 1/2 gallon bags, I could fit the clothes for all three kids in one bag! Grab a bag, and you’re done! No need to search for multiple bags. No need to worry that you’re going to mix up the boys’ bags. It worked perfectly!
(I know what a difference it made because since we’ve been gone so long, we did have to do laundry, and the disaster that exists now that we’re not using the bag trick anymore . . . proves how great it worked for the first 9 days of the trip.)
Come back tomorrow (hopefully, if I can get the post up) and I’ll share other tricks for taking road trips with kids.
