Travelling with little kids in Very Deep Thots

It’s not as hard as you’d think.

I suppose, I used to think my parents were bonkers because they tried to travel with small children. After I became a parent myself, I couldn’t imagine actually living that way until I went ahead and did it. Small children are intense! They are a lot of work! They require so much equipment and consistency!

So I guess the thing is, you develop a lot of systems for when you travel a lot. You still maintain consistent routines and a consistent lifestyle, but the consistency you have on the road is just different to the consistency you have at home. Keeping a consistent routine no matter where in the world you are is super, super important even for adults but even moreso for kids!!

Some things that have helped:

• My husband and I are able to systematically and methodically set up an entire hotel room in a homelike fashion in under 10 minutes. The first thing we do on arriving in any new hotel room is to spend 10 minutes “setting up.” Most hotel rooms all have the same basic features, and we have items that always go in the top of the wardrobe, and items that always go in the nightstand, and items that always go in the lavatory.

• One of the biggest concerns is leaving something important behind, particularly with toys (my four-year-old has a small plush Marshall from Paw Patrol who gets lost/abandoned constantly but it’s such a huge catastrophe when Marshall goes missing that we’ve airtagged him and the “Marshall check” before leaving a hotel is now routine.) So before leaving any hotel room, I always do a once-over check around the beds, under the furniture, I shake out the bedlinens and we verify toys haven’t been left behind before we officially leave.

• We don’t really unpack. It’s literally “living out of a suitcase.” My father used to be so extremely proud of how he didn’t ever need to unpack anything, and he could find his toothbrush or underwear or anything else without ever “unpacking” the suitcase and this really is key, because if you unpack it, it all eventually needs to be re-packed. The ticket here is keeping the suitcase well-organised. Everyone gets a small bag with their daily clothes in it, and our big suitcase also has a “toiletry bag” with important items like contact-lense cleaner and toothbrushes. Also, be minimal - hotels always have shampoo and soap, so there’s no need to waste valuable suitcase space with those things. Along the edges of the big suitcase, we’ve got pockets for plastic cutlery and napkins, and various first-aid emergency supplies (wound care, medication, etc.) It’s important to be highly organised here!

• I homeschooled so everything for that always went in the top of the wardrobe. We have a special bag for school items.

• Food/snacks also went in the top of the wardrobe due to people throwing it and being generally messy.

• Toys generally go in the drawers, but these are the most important items to check for before leaving the hotel.

• When I was a child, I loved My Little Ponies because they were easy to fit in a carry-on bag and my parents had discovered that My Little Ponies were an easy way to keep me subdued. For my children, it’s those little Hotwheels and Matchbox cars, but they’re relatively easy to lose in hotels (thus, the importance of the once-over.) The absolute worst hotel toys are Legos, but we still bring Legos to hotels anyway.

• Hotel-trashing is real, and we often leave “I’m-Sorry” money for the housekeepers because we feel so bad about someone needing to come in and tidy up after the children. My mother used to do this when I was a child!! Maybe it’s part of travelling with children. However, these sorts of things still happen when we’re at home. My husband is a neatnik with a low tolerance for chaos and disorder and it’s easier for him when the children make a mess of hotel rooms because they aren’t making a mess in his actual home and he doesn’t need to personally deal with the consequences of crumbs and messes (ants, for instance)

• Plane rides are the reason why we have ipads. My kids are good about that and luckily they’re old enough to avoid having tantrums. Travel itself is probably the most tedious part of all of this, and it’s where it’s hardest for kids to be patient. It’s hard for children to enjoy the tedium of airports and travel, so this is where I, as a parent, need to be creative and keep them occupied and engaged.

• Food is never consistent. Sometimes you get to eat in nice restaurants, and other times you’re microwaving frozen pizzas. Sometimes, fresh fruits and vegetables can be hard to come by – it’s sort of a bit like long-distance hiking journeys, where you’re eating a lot of nonperishable foods that can easily be packed up and carried. For the sake of health, it’s important to have a stockpile of your own food, and consistency in food/meal times is very VERY important for children. Adults can cope with it if lunch is an hour late, children cannot. I remember this being a huge point of contention when I was a child – the adults could manage if lunch wasn’t happening until 2pm, some of them didn’t mind skipping lunch altogether, and it’d be like “Why is she melting down??” My mother always carried packets of raisins and granola bars for this reason.

• My children are obsessed with hotel breakfasts and room service though. At home they’ll say “I want room service instead of this wholesome meal you’re cooking.” You know those hotel breakfast buffets? It can be super, super stressful to manage those alone with a bunch of children. My children tend to go crazy and take far more food than they’re actually able to eat, and then they wind up building/creating construction sites with the food they’re wasting. I hate wasting food.

• Travelling is something you just grow accustomed to. I think humans are very adaptable.

• It’s just as hard to adapt to being home again. The first few weeks after coming home, something feels amiss and it’s hard to get back into the routine of staying in one place. Eventually you adjust.

• Living at home is like being in a cosy dark room. Going on the road is like stepping into bright, overwhelming sunlight – and at first you’re like “Oh my god!! Make it stop!! Make it stop!! This is overwhelming!! I want to go home!!” but then, after a week or two you adjust to it, you put your sunnies on, and it all starts feeling normal. Then, you go home again and it’s like going back into that cosy dark room – too dark, too confined, you can’t see anything!! Get me out of here!! Everything looks weird, and dark, and slightly green!! It’s too claustrophobic!! But then after a couple of weeks, you adjust and it all starts feeling normal. So going on the road, or coming off the road is always hard, and it always feel strange like you’re a fish-out-of-water, but once you’re accustomed to the environment, it feels fine.

• Have you ever watched that film “Up In The Air” with George Clooney? It deeply captures something about the disconnect you feel from the rest of the world when you’re living in a state of constant travel. Other people live there, and you’re just sort of passing through. It’s interesting to think that other people base their entire lives in all of these random different places.

• In a lot of places, hotels are near tourist places so you can just go out walking and exploring all day. In the US, it seems like the entire country is built around highways and the hotels are often in these sad industrial complexes with not much to do nearby. However, if you can get a hotel that’s within reasonable walking distance of a Home Depot, then that’s amazing because my children love big-box DIY stores. America is so car-focused that a lot of those streets are scary to cross because there are so many cars and they come so fast, with such volume.

One time, I was walking up a busy road towards a Wal-Mart with a shopping trolley full of children and I suppose some nice lady thought I was homeless, and she pulled her car over to give me money. Haha!! Another time, my brother and I were hiking in one of those suburban industrial/mega-retail areas and someone pulled up and asked “What do you need?” - trying to sell us drugs, we guessed? We still try to get out of hotels and explore on foot, even in the US, but it’s much harder and scarier (I don’t want to be run over by cars!)