Packing for holidays with children.
Packing for your holiday doesn’t have to be stressful, even if you are having lots of help from the youngest members of your household!
I am in charge of all of our packing, and the children love to help. I encourage them to help, even if it is just packing their favourite books as I think it helps take the stress out of the holiday – i.e they like knowing they will have some familiar things! Each of the children have a Trunki, and we get them out about a week before we’re travelling so they can get used to the idea that Trunki will be coming on holiday with them full of their things.
I have a packing system, basically anything we made need while travelling gets put in one pile, whilst everything else gets packed into bags we won’t touch until we arrive at our destination. I then pack things we *might* need on the journey (spare clothes, nappies, wet wipes, drinks, calpol etc) into an overnight bag which I’m in charge of! The children each have a favourite soft toy, book and toy which they choose to pack, and we like using paddlepaks for this as they’re brightly coloured and lightweight. I do add the following advice.. set limits.. no noisy toys – I usually use the excuse “what if it runs out of batteries?”.
Other things to consider when you’re packing, are things you may need but struggle to find while abroad, things like calpol (widely available but having to go out in the middle of the night to find a chemist is NOT fun..yes we did have to do this once!) or even reins! We discovered on our #familymoon in August that the shopping trolleys in France rarely have straps to contain small children, our Trunki reins came in really helpful as we used them to secure Yo into her seat safely. So while she didn’t need them to be safe while she ran around (she was only crawling not toddling at that point..!) they were super handy to keep her safe while we were shopping.
Even using lists and carefully planned packing, we do forget things, the after sun and my jumpers were left behind this summer! I’m not to proud to admit that when we arrive at our holiday destination my packing into outfits was wasted as the boys emptied their luggage out everywhere, but atleast it had all arrived – and what’s a few creases to a child! The important thing with packing is – make sure you pack the essentials, then any extras are a bonus! My sons loved taking charge of their own toys and books for the journey, which meant one less thing for me to worry about and packing into a paddlepak meant I could easily spot if they were forgetting their bag!
We are about to start packing for our next family adventure, a spooky half term break in Europe, are you heading away for half term or perhaps Christmas?
