When my second daughter was born, we had to adjust to life as a family of four: Peeper, my older daughter, didn’t get Mom’s 100% undivided attention. I had to re-learn how to balance breastfeeding, working and mom-ing. And packing for a family vacation—even a weekend trip to the grandparents’ house—was so freaking hard. Then I discovered this easy trick to make packing for a family vacation a breeze.
It’s super-high tech. It’s super high-end.
It’s a bag of gallon Ziplock bags.
Mic drop.
Hear me out! We’ve been using this cheap, easy hack packing for a family vacation for the last two years, and I will never go back. It makes planning what to pack, keeping track of multiple kids’ clothes and remembering what is dirty and what’s clean a breeze.
Vacation is meant to be relaxing, not stressful, so the next time you’re packing for a family trip, try this travel trick. You’ll wish you started ages ago.
The best hack for packing kids’ clothes for vacation
Packing like a pro is straightforward. Here’s how:
- Pack one outfit per bag. Include everything you need for a complete outfit—including underwear, socks, headbands, the whole shebang.
- Include at least one outfit per day. My kids count how many days we’ll be gone and we pack that many bags—plus extras. ‘Cause I don’t know about your kids, but mine find ways to get waaaaaaaay messy (mac n cheese! sand! glitter!), no matter what, so we pack extras.
- Involve the kids. Each of my girls, even the toddler, pack their own clothes in the Ziplock bag—and they love it! In fact, recently I was trying to be efficient and packed the bags myself and both girls lost their minds. I had to take everything out and let them redo it. Bonus: Picking out their own outfits makes them excited to get dressed once we reach our destination, so it’s not a fight to get them out of their PJs.
- Label—if you want. Feel free to label each bag with the day of the week of your family vacation. This step is overkill for our family, and the girls like the flexibility of picking whatever outfit strikes their fancy, but it might work for you.
No-stress packing for family vacation
Here’s why I love this family travel hack:
It takes the guesswork out of packing. I know exactly what clothes to pack for my kids and how much of everything I need. And once I’m packed, I’m confident I have enough of everything. No running to the store to buy extra underwear!
It separates clean and dirty clothes. Clean clothes are in Ziplocks, dirty clothes are in their own bag, and never the two shall meet.
It makes coordinating outfits easy. When you have a mess of pants, tops and dresses jumbled in a suitcase, it’s mayhem trying to find a matching outfit. Organizing outfits in Ziplock bags means less stress on vacation.
Extra travel tips to be a pro packer
Want to make packing for a family vacation packing even easier? Try out these other organization hacks the next time your family plans a trip.
- Color coordinate your Ziplock bags. Ziplock makes colored bags around the holidays (green and red at Christmas, etc.). Buy a few extras when you see them at the store and assign a color to each kid. Then it’s easy to see whose clothes are whose—at a glance.
- Don’t go generic. We’ve used gallon plastic bags from the Dollar Store before, and they just don’t hold up. Now I buy brand name bags, and we reuse them for all our family trips.
- Bring a dirty clothes bag. As soon as clothes come off, they go straight into a dirty clothes bag. That way they’re all together (no cross-contamination!), and I just dump it straight into the washer when we get home.
YES! I totally did the same when my kid were little! We use bigger, reusable packing cubes now that they are older and organize them the same way, but it helped us so much to have those daily outfits packed away in individual ziplock bags when we traveled! Kids loved it too! 🙂
I’ve been thinking about getting some packing cubes for myself for an upcoming trip. I keep hearing people talk about them and how much they help packing organization.
Ziploc bags are one of my favorite organizing tools! Love that they are cheap. see through and that you can fit so much in them!
They’re basically the best organizing tool out there!
I do this exact thing only I use large plastic bags and do one for each day. So I will put the complete outfit for each kid (place a post it with their name on it) place multiple outfits in the same bag for a day. When I unpack, I just place the entire bag in the drawer and on a Monday I just open the Monday bag and give each kid their outfit. So easy!
That is so smart! I hadn’t thought of doing it that way. I also like the idea of unpacking everything into drawers but keeping it all organized in there. Thanks for the idea!
ziplock bags are so great for travel. I love that they are so cheap, come in multiple sizes and you can see through. Such a great hack!
True, ziplocks are so helpful for travel. In addition to the outfit ones I usually pack a few extras because they always come in handy when we’re on a family vacation.
We do this same system, it’s such life saver! Although, I usually pack each of the kids’ outfits for a day into one bag, so I can just pull out the bag for that day. But as they’re getting bigger it’s starting not to fit as well.
Ah, I hadn’t considered combining the kids’ outfits. I think they might revolt, haha—or the younger one might try to wear the older one’s clothes!
I do this too!! I started when my daughter was 4 months on our first trip, and It has been a life saver, especially with kids! And they are reuseable too!
Yes! It makes packing (and unpacking) so much easier.
I’ve heard this hack before but we haven’t done any traveling with our kids recently so we haven’t done it yet! But it’s definitely in the back of my mind for our next trip..
Sometimes we moms read tips and store them in our heads, ready to use them when we need them!