I love road trips with the family.  I love to get in the car and drive to a new place every day or two.  It is great.  What I don’t like is the luggage!  More than once I have felt tired just looking at all the luggage we needed to haul into the hotel and then discouraged to think that after a night’s rest we would be hauling it right back out.

After I found this method (I don’t remember where) it was so much easier! With summer upon us, I thought I would share and save others the pack-mule syndrome too.

To pack, we use approximately the same number of bags we would normally take, but instead of everyone getting a bag, we do the following:

Bag 1: We fill with toiletries, extra shoes, and anything that we will use every day (sometimes that includes swimsuits).

Bags 2-5:  We pack a day or two worth of clothes for each person in each bag. We make bundles of a day’s worth of clothes including socks and underwear in plastic gallon baggies (with names written on them) or rolled up together, next we put one of those bundles in the suitcase for each person (or two for each person if the bag is big enough).  Then when we arrive at a new hotel, we just take a new bag in and everyone has new clean clothes to wear without the luggage.

When we get to the hotel, instead of looking or feeling like we are moving in for a year, we grab two bags, the toiletries and a clothes bag, and any pillows we want to bring in.  Then we are done – Lickety split!

What are your favorite ways to travel for a road trip?