I was not born a naturally organized person. Diagnosed with ADD at 10 and I’ve struggled my who life to stay focused and organized. I use a lot of tools and processes to help. It’s just what works for me. I’ve been taking summer trips with our girls since they were infants so I’m no stranger to family travel packing. However, this time around we will be going ten days before hitting up a laundromat in Sturgeon Bay, WI.

Tip 1:

Make a list of each day/night you have planned and what type of activities you will have. My list for our Summer 2018 trip looks like the ramblings of a lunatic but it worked for us.

To explain what you are seeing; I broke down our trip to days where we are primarily in the car and days we are in different cities. For the car days everyone tends to hang out in the same type of clothes we sleep in; shirt and yoga pants/gym shorts. We are all for the most part evening shower people so if it cuts down on clothes, I personally have no issue with spending the day in the car in the same pants and shirt I slept in (with clean underwear of course). I counted the number of days we would be following this sleep/car pattern and tallied it on the right side of the paper.

We have several days of hiking where we are still wearing the same type of clothing, so I added those to the right side tallies.

I stopped putting down tallies after asking the girls to bring me 24 pairs of underwear and 24 sets of socks. (morning, night and a few extra to be safe)

Dresses and bike shorts are packed for city walking days and two extra rompers the girls like and wanted to bring just in case.

Our extras that are not listed are rain jackets, sweatshirts, swimsuits, foam sandals, casual sandals, city walking shoes, and hiking shoes.

Once I came up with this list I made sure the girls had all of their laundry clean and folded in their drawers. I then would tell them to bring me X number of whatever items were calculated on my list. This was far faster and more organized than our usual vacation packing struggle where I was convinced my oldest needed an hoarding intervention.

Tip 2:

For the days we are in New Orleans and Texas it is supposed to feel over 100 degrees and possibly rain. Hot, yes, but we are Floridians that live hot and humid. Lightweight summer dresses and bike shorts are packed for these three days. Our favorite dresses for this type of weather are our CowCow dresses from Amazon. They fold up tiny, don’t wrinkle, fit pretty much any size/shape person, come in tons of colors and patterns, don’t fade or pill, and dry insanely fast. That last part is key when traveling in hot, humid, rainy places.

This is definitely my most interesting patterned Cow Cow dress, mushrooms. Pardon my glistening redness. It’s sunscreen that didn’t work too well that day. FYI for sizing Maddy is 4’8″ and wears and XS, Char is 5’4″ and wears a S or M, I’m 5’11” chunky and wear an L or XL. We always wear bike shorts underneath. The girls because they are kids and like to run around and jump without flashing their underwear and me because chub rub is awful.

Tip 3:

The girls have control over most of the bunkhouse. However, I refuse to let them make a mess of things. To help them stay organized we are opting away from packing a duffel bag or suitcase and instead bought each girl a set of plastic storage drawers we found on sale at Target but can also be found here.

I had them fold and pack their clothes into the drawers so that they would be more aware of what they were bringing and they could see that there was not going to be enough room for the extra clothes they wanted to bring but really had no use for. I also added tall cut to size drawer dividers to the sock/bra/underwear drawers to help separate things.

Tip 4:

Char and I occasionally wear makeup and this cinch case has been a favorite for several years now. I’ve never had anything spill inside but powder from my brushes has gotten on it. A quick toss in the washer makes it look like new again.

Tip 5:

Josh and I use two cupboards over our bed to store our clothing and rely on packing cubes for organization. We use them for all types of travel.

Tip 6:

Fold dirty laundry! It takes up so much less space. I do this on every trip no matter what form of travel. The longer the trip the bigger the impact it makes.