Sometimes it feels like the time it takes to pack for a family trip lasts longer than the trip itself. We want to save you some time and, hopefully, some stress. We have tinkered with our packing list over the years, and we have come up with suggestions we would like to share. In part 1 of this series, we shared Travel Fun for Kids on the Road and in the Sky. Now, we are coming back with a complimentary list of other kids’ travel essentials. We are sharing suggestions for helping kids sleep, stay healthy, get clean and organized.
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If you are traveling to Disneyland Resort or other Disney Parks, we also suggest reading Disneyland Travel Essentials: What You Need to Pack. For now, let us move ahead with kids’ travel essentials.
Kids’ Travel Essentials for Good Sleep
It is almost impossible to overstate how important well-rested kids are to a happy family vacation. So, we are starting with kids’ travel essentials for good sleep. To help our kids sleep and to bring them comfort, we try to recreate our home sleep environment (as much as possible) while traveling.
The Feeling of Home
Whenever practical, we bring pillows or small blankets that are part of our kids’ home bedtime routines. If there is a book we read often at bedtime, or if our older kids are in the midst of a book series, we will bring those along. One of our kids has a very important plush animal: he ALWAYS comes along when we travel. You and your kids know what items are an important part of your bedtime routines. If you can make room in your luggage, we suggest bringing those along. This is particularly important for young children or those feeling nervous about traveling.
Our Favorite White Noise Machine
No matter where we are going, we always bring our travel white noise machine. We bring it along for solo business travel and family trips alike. With this small device, we do not have to worry about thin hotel room walls or vacation home roommates staying up late. We have and love THIS ONE. It is rechargeable, small and has excellent sound quality. We have had it for many years at this point and heartily recommend it.
Keeping Clean On the Road with Kids’ Travel Essentials
Like many parents, we carry hand sanitizer while traveling. Our favorite way to bring it on the road is in the form of individual wipes, specifically these ones.
To keep things neat when we travel, we like to bring along an easily packable laundry bag. We swear by the laundry bag we got in this three pack, and we use the other two items to keep our luggage organized. In particular, we put the clean/dirty cube in our diaper bag with a change of clothes for the kids. (This looks like the same laundry bag without the two extra bags.)
We wrote about doing laundry on trips in We Do Laundry At Disneyland, Here’s How We Make it Easy, but we bring the laundry bag even if we do not plan on doing laundry. In that article we also included our favorite hand wash laundry soap: we like to have this on hand for surprise spills.
When we travel, we always carry a handful of plastic or reusable silicone bags in various sizes. We use them for storing food, carrying soiled clothing, organizing items in our bags and other things we only think about once we are on the road.
Food and Drinks
We mentioned silicone place mats in Travel Fun for Kids on the Road and in the Sky, Travel Essentials as a grippy setting for travel games. We also like them because they provide a nice covering and barrier on public surfaces like airplane tray tables or rest stop picnic tables. The little lip on the edge is especially nice for corralling errant crumbs. These are the mats we have.
No matter where we go, we bring water bottle with us. We like the FreeSip feature on Owala water bottles that lets us sip from the integrated straw or take a big gulp of water. Here is a kid size FreeSip bottle.
And of course, like many parents of young kids, we always have snacks on hand. Here are some we turn to frequently when traveling:
- single serving milk boxes that are shelf-stable
- sandwiches
- apples
- oranges
- carrots
- jerky or salami
- string cheese or cheese sticks
- nuts
- trail mix or other snack mix
- protein or breakfast bars
Entertainment for Kids on Trips
When we travel, each of our kids fills a backpack with snacks, a water bottle and entertainment. We have covered water bottle and snacks here, but for entertainment, take a look at the article we dedicated to just that topic: Travel Fun for Kids on the Road and in the Sky.
Beach and Pool Supplies for Traveling Kids
Like many kids, our little ones love hotel pools and any chance to go swimming. We always bring swimwear for our kids, and we bring their goggles as well. We are still trying to find our favored kids’ goggles, so we will not suggest any particular ones here. However, we think these goggle strap covers are fantastic: other parents frequently ask where we got them. We like those covers for preventing hair snags and other discomfort and heartily reocmmend them. If we have room, we might also bring some small dive toys for the hotel pool, like these mermaid ones.
Special Items for the Beach
Many hotels provide towels for use at their pools, so we usually do not pack our own towels if we will just be swimming at a hotel. However, we do like to have our own towels when visiting public beaches. Fluffy terry-cloth towels can take-up quite a lot of room, so we have these thin micro-fiber ones to use on vacation. We know other people like this style of thin towel.
We also think a “big weird sock” full of cornstarch (as described here by Wirecutter) is a fantastic accessory for the beach. Just be sure to double-bag yours to keep the cornstarch from getting all over your luggage. We like and use the DIY sock version, but you could also go with this one if you prefer to buy yours.
Kids’ Health & Safety Travel Essentials
We bring a small first aid and medicine kit when we travel plus some other items we consider important for our kids’ health and safety.
Medicine Bag
We carry regular medications plus fever reducers (like children’s ibuprofen) just in case. We also pack band-aids, blister pads, a thermometer and allergy medicine. All of these things go in a locking medicine bag to prevent our children from ingesting something they should not.
Travel Car Seats
On our article, 5 Tips for Flying on Airplanes with Kids, we wrote about bringing car seats with us whether we are driving or flying. If we are driving, we use our regular car seats. If we are flying, we bring lighter seats without some of the extra convenience features. We use an older (but not expired) seat similar to this one from Cosco (not Costco). Here is a light backless booster option from Cosco for older kids. Note that a booster is only for car travel: it cannot be used on an airplane. We also have one of the these for using in cars while on vacation (again, not on the airplane).
Kids’ Sun Safety
Speaking of safety, we also make sure to bring sunscreen and sunglasses for our children and ourselves. If the trip is a longer one, we pack just a couple days worth of sunscreen and then purchase more at our destination. Here are some kids sunglasses we have used and like, starting with these pink sparkly sunglasses. And, here is a set of sunglasses for toddler-sized heads and here is another pair of tough youth sunglasses our adventurous kids have used and liked.
Thank you for reading this article on kids’ travel essentials.
We hope you have found this article useful. Do not forget to take a look at Travel Fun for Kids on the Road and in the Sky. If you are taking a Disney vacation, we also recommend Disneyland Travel Essentials: What You Need to Pack, which is part of our Step-by-Step Disneyland Prep. Finally, please consider subscribing to our free newsletter below to get our latest posts in your inbox. Thanks again for reading.