Author: Cheryl

I love that the French word for remember is “souvenir.” That’s exactly how I feel about the things we’ve bought in our travels.

After a lot of junk purchases, I’ve discovered a couple of basic ideas for buying souvenirs while we’re gone. That apron I’m wearing in that picture is one of my favorite purchases, and I think of Windsor Castle every time I put it on. Plus, it is super-useful and just a great apron.

After bringing home, and then tossing out, more junk than I’d like to admit, here’s what I think about souvenirs.

• Create a collection. For many years, if we were somewhere where I could buy handmade pottery, I would buy a pitcher. Honestly, I had to stop because I just don’t need that many pitchers! Having too many things just sitting around is annoying to me. My husband insists–INSISTS–on a coffee cup from every single place we go. I finally had to get him to move his collection to his office at work. He is now legendary for this huge collection. I’m just glad I don’t have to use cabinet space for it!
• Buy big. In Belize, I bought a beautiful wooden tray, small enough to fit in my carry-on bag. That’s the problem with it–it’s too small! On the other hand, on our last visit to Vermont I bought a large maple bread bowl. It was gorgeous but required my repacking our entire suitcase. It was so worthwhile! I love that bread bowl, look at it almost every day and have great memories of four summer vacations in a wonderful place.
• Ship home. In Tuscany this summer we found a lovely pottery place that would ship home for a reasonable fee. Yes, I bought a pitcher–how could I resist? And several other pieces, including an olive oil bottle that I use for dish soap. Every time I reach for the soap I have a tiny bit of Greve-in-Chianti. We’ve also shipped some items home from Montana when we decided to create a little bit of the West in our basement.
• Don’t forget edible. We’ve brought home wine, olive oil, cheese, maple syrup, corn meal…the hardest part is deciding to go ahead and enjoy it and not to save it too long.
• Buy cheesy but useful. All these other items are great, but my very favorite thing to buy–dishcloths!! You can find them everywhere, and who doesn’t need a new one, or three? Every time I reach into my drawer for a clean towel, I hope for one of my vacation towels. It seems like a lot of these towels are maps, from the Paris Metro to Chianti to West London. It never fails to make me happy to use one of these. And my kids notice, too. Best of all, they are pretty easy to find, and cheap. I also buy other kitchen items, but kitchen towels are just the best. Treat yourself next time, and see if I’m not right!

And for the kids, it is easy to drop a lot of money on junk before you even realize it. This is the kind of thing that makes me crazy! But here are just a couple of my thoughts about this:

• Buy good shirts, rather than the cheapest. My kids wear sweatshirts for years. I started buying the good ones when we traveled, rather than buying a cheap one on vacation and then another Land’s End or L.L. Bean jacket. Same with good t-shirts–buy the cute one that will look good with an outfit.
• Help your child start a collection. This might be a fun way to  cultivate an interest. My girls have silver charms from most of our destinations that they put on a charm bracelet. It is fun to decide on each trip what the best symbol from that destination might be.
• Buy a little junk. Set a budget, but go ahead and let them get the craziest, ugliest, most ridiculous souvenirs they can find. And then be prepared for the agony when it breaks after you get home.

Souvenirs are one little way to keep some of your vacation joy present in your life. Don’t miss out on a fun way to remember your vacation in the midst of your daily routine. Have fun!

 

Even on vacation, life happens. We’ve had bickering, exhaustion, stitches, broken bones, and IVs while away from home. How do you keep the bad things from taking over your vacation?

Plan, but don’t cast those plans in stone.

The name of my blog is “Holding Butterflies” because that is how I feel raising my kids–I hold them, but not so tight that I damage them, and not so loose that they don’t know I’ve got them. Hold your plans the same way. How many times have you had to cancel a playdate because of a cold or just not feeling good? Life happens on vacation, too.

Make sure you’ve planned adequate down time.

I don’t know about your kids, but mine don’t get along perfectly 24/7. Somehow, though, I always feel like they should get along extra-great while we’re out of town. Quiet or alone times probably happen at home while you aren’t really paying attention. On the road we have to be a lot more intentional about building that time into our days. There is a huge–enormous–temptation to use every single second while we are gone. Take it from me:  don’t do that. Even injuries seem to happen more when everyone is tired. Consider this the vacation equivalent of a vaccine.

Get adequate insurance before you go.

If you’re traveling domestically, this is not a huge issue. But if you leave the U.S., check with your credit card to see if you have coverage while you are gone. One coverage you likely won’t have concerns transportation, should you get injured, from your destination back home. This comes to mind because we have a dear friend who was severely injured in a traffic accident out of the country. He did not have this protection, and merely getting him home to undergo several operations was harrowing. You WON’T need this, but if you do…

Adjust as needed.

On our cruise, I got severely ill. I suspect now it was an e. Coli infection, and I spent one entire day in the ship infirmary hooked up to an IV. (To be clear, I got sick while we were in port, not from ship food.) When we docked, I was released on the condition I head to the hospital. I got better quickly but was still incredibly weak. We could have let that day color the rest of our vacation, as we were set to spend a few days around Seattle and Mt. St. Helens. Instead, Bill took the kids out while I rested one day at the hotel. The next day was an easy day, mostly in the car, so I was able to pick back up and hang out. I didn’t hike around the volcano as much as I wanted, but I was there taking pictures and getting lots of rest in the car.

Look on the bright side.

A couple of years ago, we were taking our first pass down a green slope at Big Sky, just getting warmed up for the week. It was an easy slope, deceptively easy. Jack caught the edge of his board on the slope, flipping heels over head and tumbling down the slope. He left a bloody trail (sorry), and the fall even took his helmet off. Ski Patrol was called, and he got a free trip down the mountain. That was the end of his board day, but a quick check from the doctors told us that he just needed a bit of rest. He and I headed back home and settled into the couch for an afternoon of hot chocolate and Spiderman. I honestly can’t think of another day before or since that just the two of us had an afternoon to hang out together. I wouldn’t have chosen it (him neither) but since he wasn’t hurt, it really was a special day.

I hope you never, ever have to deal with any of these things while you’re on vacation. But we’ve had a much easier time learning to roll with the bad things so they don’t take over our vacations. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever had to deal with on vacation?

The Louvre. The British Museum. The Smithsonian. Huge names. Huge museums.

Sometimes, they really are too much. And it’s easy for them to dominate your attention. But today I want to encourage you to look for the little museums in your travels.

When I pay to go somewhere, it’s easy for me to feel like I’ve obligated us to look at Every. Last. Thing. And then, before we’ve realized it, we are spending all our time in dimly lit halls, peering at who-knows-what.

I’ve learned to look for the small museums for get our “fix” for the vacation. As a bonus, it’s far easier to get my crew to agree to an hour or two in a museum rather than a very daunting “Let’s spend the day!” On the way, we’ve learned that the out-of-the-way museums can offer experiences that the big guys can’t compete with.

Off-beat topics: One favorite is the Sandwich Glass Museum in Sandwich, Massachusetts. We almost drove right past it, and what a loss that would have been. The kids got to blow glass themselves, and we got an up-close look at the whaling industry and life on Cape Cod through a nearly-extinct industry. The size of the museum meant it only took about an hour, maybe slightly more, but the docents were so enthusiastic about their subject you couldn’t help but get interested.

Odd locations: How about under the streets of Paris? We explored the catacombs of Paris with the kids, complete with ossuaries and chapels. A larger museum couldn’t have accommodated the creep factor we had in that place!

Singular focus: While the kids haven’t been to this one, Bill and I love the Picasso museum in Barcelona. The emphasis is on Picasso’s training and painting process, and you can tackle the whole thing in about 90 minutes. It’s a great introduction to his art. The Rodin museum in Paris is similar in its narrow focus and small size. Most of these small museums have to limit their collection to only one or two big ideas, which makes their exhibits easy to grasp and remember.

A regional approach: My favorite aquarium is lovely Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, which we prefer even over the local, and world-famous, Georgia Aquarium. Chattanooga’s offers a real focus on the waters of the Southeast in a way that you can cover in a couple of hours. It’s thoughtfully arranged to guide you through their various exhibits. It doesn’t try to impress you by being the biggest or the showiest. It just presents what it knows and loves, and does it very well, giving us tons of local flavor. (ha, not fish flavor!)

Star treatment: Small museums typically have just a couple of super-star items, where a huge museum might have stack after stack of mummies or Monets. The Michael C. Carlos Museum has a wonderful antiquities collection and is one of my local favorites. They have about eight or so mummies, and each one is treated like a star. In larger museums these remains of less-famous people might rate barely a glance, but here they get top billing. And we get a chance to see these antiquities without huge lines, up close and personal.

Another way to break a bigger museum down is to just take a look at one or two special exhibits. The girls and I did this at the Victoria and Albert in London. The V&A specializes in the decorative arts (my favorite) but we decided to only attend the special wedding dress exhibit they had going on. It was really beyond wonderful, and even my non-fashionistas loved it. We had decided up front that we really weren’t going to look at anything else that day, and we ended up creating our very own small museum inside the quite large V&A. I’m not sure I would have had the heart to do this at the Louvre, but this would be a great approach to take at the Smithsonian!

There are so many more museums I could list, but I’d love to hear about your favorite small museum.

I know, it sounds crazy, over-the-top extravagant. But let me tell you about our experiences hiring a private guide.

In 2014 we took a trip to London during the summer high season. We expected crowded sites to be overwhelming, so to help us plan our trip we hired the completely delightful Henrietta Ferguson for a few days in the city. The first morning she met us at our house. I loved her immediately when she asked if she could just “pop in” and take a look at our Victorian townhome. She had our day’s itinerary worked out to introduce us to London on the first day, and then to see the major sites in a way that would hopefully be efficient on the rest of the days.

We began our day at the Churchill War Rooms and continued to Westminster. As we were making our way to another museum, the insanely huge London Gay Pride parade and a lot of rain got in our way. Henrietta had seen in Westminster that we had a basic but incomplete knowledge of English history. So she changed up the plans and ducked into the National Portrait Gallery. The gallery is arranged in historical order, so Henrietta was able to give us an history of England by going from face to face. It was an amazing way to get our historical bearings for the rest of the trip. Brilliant.

The next day Henrietta met us very early. We were going to the Tower of London and needed to beat the big groups. As we neared the Tower we could see groups massing on its flank. She tossed a “Let’s run for it!” over her shoulder and broke into a sprint. We trailed behind her, passing group after large group, and managed to get to the group entry point before the most massive groups. By using a tour guide, we could bypass the “individual” ticket line, and by using a private guide she was able to maneuver us around the big groups. We were able to walk right in to see the Tower Jewels–no line! By the time we got out the line wrapped completely around the turnstiles. Brilliant!

Henrietta was already booked for another portion of our trip, so a colleague of hers took us to Bath and Cambridge. David introduced us to the most charming town we have ever been to. Paige talks about it even today as the place she would most like to live. (I hesitate to name it because it is so cute!) We enjoyed a perfect pub lunch that day under a lovely blue sky. While David wasn’t responsible for the sky, he gets full marks for the pub. We have had incredible results eating with our private guides–not the only reason to hire them, but a definite bonus.

London was our first experience with private guides. We also hired guides this summer in Rome and Florence, and would still highly recommend the experience.  As a matter of fact, we “worked our network” and used recommendations from Henrietta to find our amazing Roman guide Giancarlo. He may have been our kids’ favorite guide ever.

Most of our guides were very successful for us because they were good matches for our family. Here’s what I think you should consider when hiring one:

• What are you most interested in? A particular site? Or just getting the overall flavor of the place? Maybe you are very interested in art, or have absolutely no interest in history. Make sure you tell your guide up front.
• Ask for references. Some people are wonderful guides, but you want guides who have experience with children. Especially on a hot day, a patient guide needs to understand the need for frequent gelato (or bathroom) stops.
• How much can you realistically fit into your tour? Here, you need to trust your guide. Be up front about how much or little you like museums. Henrietta saw right away that we like to linger in museums, so quickly into our tour she explained how she was changing our itinerary and why. We ended up see fewer things in London with her, but I don’t think any of us would change our experience.

Do you have a favorite guide story? Or does hiring a guide make you nervous? Share your thoughts!

 

We’ve stayed in hotels, houses, apartments…even a houseboat! I think that the kind of place you stay really effects how you feel about the vacation.

Hotels

I think this is the default vacation lodging choice. There are six of us and my husband does NOT like to be packed in, so fairly quickly we started getting at least two rooms when we travel. And yes, we put all the kids in one room while we stayed in the other. When they were especially small we went with suites or hotels like a Residence Inn. The kitchen there was a lot less important than having room for my early bird sleepers to go to sleep while my husband and I enjoyed staying up, watching a little television (we’ve never had a TV in the bedroom so this is a treat for us!), even enjoying room service.

We like hotels when we know we are going to be out a lot during the day, spending time together virtually all day long. I’m pretty realistic about all of our need to be alone at times on the vacation. Staying realistic about these needs is one of the ideas that keeps us from melting down over too much together time!

A close cousin to hotels are small inns and B&Bs. We didn’t try these until the kids were older, and I’m glad. It seems like noise travels a little easier in places like this, especially older buildings, and it is really hard to for me to relax when I was worried that my kids were bothering other people.

Apartments

While we haven’t tried AirBnB yet, we have rented apartments. The advantage over hotels is that you have a living room–together time! We love apartments in cities. One of my favorite memories is renting a lovely apartment in Paris when we were there for Bill’s work. Having a kitchen allowed us to take advantage of the markets and eat at home, on our own schedule. We also had laundry facilities and separate bedrooms. I’ve always loved having a table to gather around, and I love not having to eat every single meal in a restaurant!

Houses

This is one of our favorite ways to stay now when we are in the country somewhere. A house gives you a yard or garden, sometimes a pool, and tons of room inside and outside to spread out. Kitchens are typically well equipped. We tend to enjoy the isolation of a house compared to a condo, too. In particular, houses are great where there is a lot of “gear,” whether at the beach or ski slope.  Here’s some insight into the way we go:  we usually rent a house when we ski, but last year we got a condo. The difference was remarkable–I think we are messy because it was really hard for us to put all of our gear away in the little hall closet every night. We prefer to just spread it all out and be kind of messy. So we have already reserved a house again for this year.

The other advantage of houses and apartments is that you get a better feeling of being native, even if only for a week. We rented a house in Tuscany this summer, and we all felt like the villa was our “home” in a completely different way than our Roman hotel felt like “home base.” Somehow a house lets the place get into your bones, and that is one of the feelings I’m after when we travel together.

Other ideas

We stayed in a houseboat in Boston Harbor, which has led to lots of discussions about what we don’t like! It was…interesting, but we aren’t going to do that again. We’ve stayed in treehouses in Belize, too, which were amazing, but so far from each other (we had to have two because there were so many of us) that it was hard to get lots of family time there. We hung out on the beach instead. We’ve never stayed in tents and we’ve never rented an RV, which are both very high on my list to try out! I’m hoping we’ll get to stay on a small boat, too, as opposed to a moored houseboat or a cruise ship.

The point is that now I choose that kind of place that we stay in an intentional way. If I have several days and want to feel native, I’m going to look for an apartment or house. If I know we are playing hard at the beach or slope, with lots of gear, we are going to want a place to rest together–again, a house. When we are away for an event or if we know that we are in for lots of sightseeing, I don’t mind using a hotel. That lets us focus on the world outside our hotel, and we aren’t really tempted to just hang out inside.

What’s your favorite place you’ve ever stayed? What’s the strangest KIND of place you’ve ever laid your head?

In all our vacations, we’ve used travel agents rarely. But when we have used them, they’ve been incredibly helpful. I wanted to take one post to highlight the specific circumstances to use them in.

• Cruises: A few years back we decided to go to Alaska and try a cruise. It seems to me that this is where a well-connected travel agent excels. Cruise options are vast and our agent was able to narrow the choices for us much more quickly than we could have on our own. Our agent helped us pick a family-friendly (but not kid-centric) cruise that was within our available dates. We enjoyed this particular cruise even though we decided that cruises are probably not the best thing for our family in most cases. If we decided to cruise again, I would absolutely call an agent!
• A huge group: Well, maybe not huge, but big. Last year I had to plan a fiftieth anniversary trip for my parents, with all thirteen of my family. For various reasons we had a tight deadline and also many constraints on types of lodging. Our agent came through, helping me plan a trip to Costa Rica that was truly a trip to remember with my parents, my family and my sister’s family.
• The agent’s specialized knowledge:  My husband used an island specialist to plan our honeymoon in the Caribbean. We loved out-of-the-way destinations, even then, and he contacted an agent who specialized in the islands. She planned a gorgeous get-away for us on Montserrat, complete with dinner recommendations. Most importantly, she recommended trip cancellation insurance–which we needed!! The island of Montserrat had a volcanic explosion two weeks before our wedding, leaving our private house under six inches of ash. Our agent was able to rebook a new honeymoon on Nevis for us and didn’t even miss a beat. She knew we would be covered by the insurance so our bills were covered. Had Bill not used an agent for that trip, I think we would have honeymooned in Atlanta.

Have you used an agent? What are your thoughts about them? Please share!

Let’s talk about a subject particularly near and dear to my heart right now: jet lag. Depending on where you go, this is either a little issue or a huge one. Here are a few hints for dealing with it:

• Put yourself on the local meal schedule as quickly as possible. Even if you arrive in California from the East Coast at lunch time, and find yourself not hungry, go sit down at a table and have an appetizer. Meals are crucial in resetting your body clock.
• Sleep on the plane with an eye to your arrival schedule. For instance, flights to Europe from the US East Coast are typically overnight. On the return, you leave and arrive mid-day. We’ve found that sleeping on the way over, but staying awake on the way back, is the best way to deal with the initial jet lag. To the West Coast, we usually nap a bit, knowing that the first night is going to feel like a late one no matter what.
• Get as much sunshine as possible on the arrival day and the next. Plan your museum or theater days for later in the vacation. Take a walk, too, as the exercise will really help your head. Pool time, if the weather permits, is awesome for the kids. Otherwise go find a park and let them run around for a while. If you plan for this in your schedule then it won’t seem like you are “wasting” time. As a matter of fact, local parks are great for “going native” and really getting to know your destination.
• Decide ahead of time when naptime will be for your nappers, and do your darnedest to stick to it. Yes, they will nod off. Yes, they will be a little cranky. This is the time to indulge in a special snack or take an extra turn on the swing.
• Know that the second day is the worst. The first day you will be cocky, think you “have this licked.” And then day two will kick your fanny. Plan for it, stick to the meal and nap schedule, and by day three you will be getting back to normal. (I’m currently dealing with day two fog on my return home. It’s awful, but I know a good night tonight will help a lot.)
• Give yourself a couple of extra hours to sleep on that first and second night. Just in case. And when you wake up in the middle of the night, do everything you can not to turn the ipad on! A reading light and book will interfere with your sleep a lot less. Also, set an alarm just in case you sleep through breakfast time. Your goal is to get to local meal time.
• Know your limits. If you absolutely need eight hours every night, then go to bed in plenty of time to get your hours in. Plan ahead for waking up in the middle of the night.
• Don’t stress. Caffeine early in the day is your friend.

Here’s to hoping I sleep really hard tonight! I’d love to hear any tips you’ve found helpful in dealing with this travel menace.

I just returned from four days in Barcelona, Spain, with these lovely people. With virtually no internet connectivity, I missed posting yesterday and the day before. (Sorry!) I still have some things to say about logistics, but this trip is so fresh on my mind that I’m going to share just a little thought tonight.

Background:  this was a work trip for Bill and some of his executives, the European trade show. All the wives but one (happily, eight months pregnant, but also sad because she couldn’t travel) tagged along, and we arrived a couple of days before the show for sight-seeing and fun. Completely unrelated to travel, we couldn’t have planned a better team-building exercise.

Barcelona is an utterly charming city. I’d been there before but had kind of forgotten how completely lovely she is. We were able to have so much more fun by doing this one thing:

We adopted the local customs of rising, meals and bedtime.

We rose late, by American standards, eating breakfast from 9:30-10:30. We would visit a cathedral or take a tour, and not have lunch until 1:30, 2 or even 3 p.m. We might duck in somewhere for a light snack around 6 p.m., but dinner was never before 8:30, and one night our reservations were for 10!  This meant strolling home on crowded streets at midnight or even later.

We didn’t “fight” with the local routines that mean closed restaurants at noon and we enjoyed being part of the lively chatter in restaurants that were open so much later than at home. And by being out late we even hopped into a club on the beach for some dancing–shoulder to shoulder with happy locals. If I had stuck to my usual time for dinner, I would have been in bed long before that dance party had even started. That would have been such a miss!

Of course this was a bunch of adults, but you might be surprised that not everyone, even in our little group, found this to be easy. But we were all glad we had tried it. I’ve had similar experiences with my kids, too, and discovered (among other things) the power of a well-timed granola bar.

I’m still deep into jet lag so I’m going to call it a day on this post. I’d love to hear how you have succeeded when you’ve taken on the native customs–or have you ever resisted it and had it turn out horribly?!

 

Deciding where to go and what to do isn’t a straightforward proposition. We’ll decide what kind of break we’re in need of. Then we start looking for places that fit the bill. Then we might come up with a couple of things to do. Then we’ll circle back and look at our “what” again, to be sure we think it’s still valid. It takes a couple of iterations.

I think there are two phases to thinking through the vacation. I’ll call the first research. It’s kind of broad, which helps you decide on the location. Then we plan, getting specifics on hotels, restaurants, museums and tours.

When we are researching, we look everywhere: books we’ve read, magazines like Garden and Gun or Destinations, and friends. Occasionally I’ll look at TripAdvisor’s “Top Ten” lists, or we’ll see something on a movie. It’s very general and open-ended.

But planning–that requires specifics. And specific resources. Here are my favorites:

My own network: We have had enormous success in finding great restaurants, rentals, and guides, by asking someone we had already worked with. Chances are, you’ve met some great people in your travels, too. Most of them are happy to give referrals! For example, several years ago we rented an apartment in Paris through Paris Made Perfect. We highly recommend them, and when we visited London we tried to rent through their sister company in England. They couldn’t accommodate us but put us in touch with one of their competitors whom they knew well. We had a great stay.

At the end of this post I’ve listed a few of my favorite resources from my own network. This is a short list, and later this month I’ll give a much more exhaustive list. Right now, I’m hoping this will spark your own ideas.

TripAdvisor: I could write a whole post on how to use this great, but huge, site. It’s extremely powerful, but it can also be overwhelming. It is excellent for restaurants and hotels, as long as you know what you are looking for. It is less useful for shopping and vacation rentals. It is invaluable for small museums and tour guides.

Travel Agents: I rarely use a travel agent, but they can be very helpful in certain situations. I’ll post later next week about our specific experiences. Don’t overlook them.

Guidebooks: Seriously old school, but when I haven’t had wifi it’s been a life-saver. The smallest guidebooks are the best, I think. For example, DK Eyewitness Travel’s Top Ten in Florence and Tuscany is only about 100 pages, but it has a map and is loaded with the best of the best. These small books also slide into a pocket or backpack easily. The big exception to this is the Unofficial Disney Guidebook series. These are pretty big but are excellent guidebooks.

Hotel and Credit Card Concierges: There was a time that I never, ever considered using these services. But this is what they do best! Our credit card even has a concierge service associated with it, and from what we understand it is very rarely used. My sister has had great success booking concert tickets through them. We tend to use them for tour and restaurant recommendations. I’ve noticed that, in general, the very best concierges are in hotels with the most bustling lobbies. But don’t even overlook the hotel clerk who checks you in. One of my favorite restaurants of all time was a recommendation from a friendly desk clerk.

Do you have some go-to resources? Please share!

A few from my network:

Paris Made Perfect (and London, too)

Henrietta Ferguson and Luxury Tours of London

Uniglobe McIntosh Travel

TripAdvisor (my profile)

 

Let’s talk about packing.

As the mom, the vast majority of the actual getting-the-clothes-into-the-suitcase falls on me. I have learned a LOT in moving the small army that was four preschoolers cross-country. It makes my four big kids now seem like a breeze. Here are my best tips:

• If you forget it, you can buy it when you get there. If you can’t buy it, you can do without.

When the kids were tiny, this one thing used to stress me out more than anything else. And then I realized that if I didn’t pack enough diapers/socks/shorts/hats, I could buy them. I was probably going to buy a couple of those things anyway as souvenirs! (Well, not the diapers.) That meant that when the kids were little, I only had to worry about the time we were moving between home and our destination. If this isn’t true for an item, pack it first.  Obviously, this doesn’t exactly apply to things like prescription medicine, although I’ve even had that phoned in.

• Everyone does not need their own suitcase.

Oh, we’ve all seen the little cuties in the airport, pulling their own bag. And then we’ve gotten stuck behind them because they are so slow and can’t maneuver their bag. Don’t do this. Save yourself and everyone around you the trouble. I found that the easiest and quickest way to pack was to figure out who was staying in what room, and pack one bag per room. Now that the kids are older, they take this approach quite often, so they don’t have to pull a suitcase all the time.

• But everyone does need a backpack.

Add a clean t-shirt, fresh underwear, a toothbrush and a swimsuit. This will fit in a gallon bag.  Even Mom and Dad should do this one. Backpacks are easy to carry in the airport, stow easily in the car, and get everyone accustomed to being just a bit responsible for their own stuff. As soon as my kids could walk they got their own backpack, age-appropriate, of course.

• Don’t be afraid to pack a big suitcase.

Especially if you have little kids. Save your hands for theirs, not for a suitcase. Yes, it’s $25 (or maybe not, check your credit card). Yes, it’s worth it.

• Unpack when you get there.

If we stay somewhere more than one night, we take our clothes out of the suitcases and move into the closets and dressers. It is just more relaxing not to live directly out of a suitcase, and our clothes look better. My kids are so messy that we even have a far easier time packing back up to go home! Somehow this keeps the t-shirts from sliding under furniture or the socks from going missing.

• Get the kids to pack their clothes as much as possible.

This requires a leap of faith, so start early. We spend the weekends at a lake fairly often in the summer, and have for many years. When the boys were about four, I’d tell them we were going to be at the lake for two nights; please pack accordingly. They’d figure out what they needed, toss it in a duffle and away we went. Sometimes they ended up with some crazy outfits, or no pjs, or sometimes even no shoes. (THAT happened more often than I want to admit.) The nice thing about lake packing was that it was very low risk. After all, we really were just swimming and grilling out all weekend. They might mess up, but they learned.

As they got older, I’d tell them what we expected the weather to be, how “nice”–like one good outfit for going out to dinner, or all camp-type clothes–and how many days. Now they figure out if they want to share suitcases (frequently they do), and they pack their own clothes. I’ll give them a hand but it is a process driven by them. It’s been several years since we’ve had a big item left behind.

I’m sure there are lots of other ideas, but these are the ones that have really served us well over the years, no matter how many or few clothes we need to take, or where we go, or how we get there. What are your favorite packing tips?