Packing for Little Ones

I love to pack.  Not because I'm going somewhere or because we're going to be doing something fun, simply because I like to pack.  When I was thirteen I packed all my favorite clothes and books and keepsakes up in my cedar-lined truck just to see if I could get it all in.  I did.

Fast forward almost twenty (!!!) years.

My entire family recently took a trip to Alberta.  We were gone for five days, and I planned the entire thing.  The budget, the itinerary, the restaurants, the hotel.  Everything.  I was incredibly excited!  So it was no surprise that I began to pack on the Thursday before we left (which was Monday).  In my defence, I had a wedding to attend on Saturday and knew I wouldn't be the sharpest pencil in the drawer on Sunday - from lack of sleep of course.  What were you thinking?!  :-D

I was planning on putting all of Silas and Oliver's clothing together in one suitcase to make hauling them around a little easier, as neither of them would be doing it themselves.  Additionally, having Scott, Tawny, Tawny's friend and the two little ones in one hotel room was giving me some anxiety.  The boys are early risers.  Very early.  Five is not an unheard of number, five thirty is downright common, and six is practically luxury.  Combine that with an unfamiliar hotel room and I'm sure you can see why I thought it might be best if we made a quick exit in the morning so the others could get some sleep!  So then I was stressing over the picture of me fumbling around in a dim light, or under the counter in our hotel bathroom looking for shirts to match bottoms, finding underwear and diapers and socks and the entire time, in the bag ground, Oliver would be crying for breakfast and Silas would be arguing that he wanted to wear the "shark shorts, mama!".  And then once more for the diaper bag!  So I came up with a plan.

What did I do?  I filled my suitcase with ziploc bags!  I was so pleased to make this discovery - and I may be using an old idea here, but it was new to me!  I put an outfit for each of the boys, including a top and a bottom for each of them, underwear for Silas and a diaper for Oliver (see below for a sample)in a ziploc bag.  I also packed a second ziploc for each day to go into the diaper bag.  Each bag was then labeled "Tuesday" and "Tuesday - Bag" with a sharpie.  All I had to do was grab the bags, stuff one ziploc in the diaper bag, stuff the kids into the clothing of the other and hightail it out of there so the kids could eat (a priority to them!) and the others could sleep.  The bags kept the clothing organized, contained, and compact, never mind easy to grab!

 

So the row of ziplocs in the back on the left are the clothing the boys wore each day.  The middle row are all the ziplocs for the diaper bag.  The two big ziplocs on the right are full of warm clothes in case the weather took a turn for the worse on the day or two we'd be spending out side.  In the front, from left to right are swim suits, swim diapers and sun hats, sweaters and jackets, rain gear and diapers (which I packed into the diaper bag on an as needed basis each night).  The inside pocket on the lid of the suitcase contained everything for bedtime including soothers, teddy bears and blankies, pyjamas, bedtime stories and Oliver's blankets (we used one of the hotel's playpens).  

It worked wonderfully!  Anyone could easily dress the boys on our trip, and having all the diaper bag clothes together in a ziploc kept them compact and easy to find as we all know how much STUFF you need to take when spending the day out with a toddler and a preschooler (wipes, snacks, emergency toys, wipes, baby sling, diapers, soothers, did I say wipes?) If I needed to switch clothing for some reason it was easy to find what I was looking for as the bags are transparent and labeled - grocery bag may not work as well here.  And when I got home it was an easy matter to put away unused clothing and dump the dirty clothes into the hamper for washing.  

So, what do you do when you pack your kids?  How did it work?  Any tips or tricks you'd like to share?

This post is part of Steady Mom's 30 minute blog challenge!