Traveling With Kids Made Easier: Packing Tips From Real Parents Who’ve Done It All

Getting anywhere with a child can test even the most seasoned traveler. Still, the effort is always worth it — yes, even if they won’t remember the trip when they’re older (but that’s a story for another time). When my daughter turned two, she had been on more than 20 flights, visited six countries, even more states, and had taken a few week-long road trips.

My wife and I got into a routine of quickly gathering what we’d need before a trip: food, snacks, water or milk, plus guesstimates for the right number of diapers, toys, and clothes. Add to that any emergency needs, wipes, travel documents and extras of, well, pretty much everything.

I’ve found a few tips that have made travel easier: mapping out road trip routes that include stops at kid-friendly outdoor spaces, saving new toys until the flight, and wrapping toys like a present to extend their entertainment value. There are even a few “travel hacks” that I’ve tested and found aren’t completely designed for viral attention.

All of the advice in the world does no good, however, if you don’t have the right kid-friendly travel bag to fit everything in an organized way. After all, the spare blowout outfit is useless if you have to dig through everything to find it while trying to minimize the mess. Following all of the international travel, road trips, and weekend getaways with my first-born, my wife and I got a good idea of what doesn’t work. Then we got our hands on the the Getaway Bag from No Reception Club.

Infographic: Matador Network

No Reception Club was founded by Gemma and Daniel Ng — two frequent travelers who are also parents of young children — in 2020. After their first baby, they realized there wasn’t a bag that offered the functionality they needed while avoiding that typical “diaper bag” look. After 14 months of development, input from more than 100 parents, five bag iterations, and design help from an industry expert with experience at big-name brands like North Face, they launched the Getaway Bag backpack and Sidekick hippack, followed by the The Hideaway Carry-on Duffel and Dopp Kit. The name evokes an era when it was easier to completely unplug, before great phone service and standard free Wi-Fi just about everywhere you would want to take a child.

Real parent needs are at the heart of each design choice — and not just the needs that the Ng family saw. They gathered input from more than 100 parents in the design process, and today the brand also has The Clubhouse Community: a group of more than 10,000 parents who share knowledge on the best way to travel with young kids of all ages covering everything from strollers to packing hacks and other product recommendations.

And as a member organization of 1% for the Planet, No Reception Club donates at least 1 percent of annual sales to the non-profit Baby2Baby, which provides diapers, clothing, and necessities to children living in poverty. (To put that 1 percent into perspective: each Getaway Bag sale helps Baby2Baby distribute 20 diapers, and each Hideaway Duffel, 25 diapers.)

Needless to say, the Ngs have put more thought into optimizing travel with a little one than most. And with my second kid on the way, I tapped the founder couple to see how to make future travels even smoother with two kids in tow.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Photo: No Reception Club

Matador Network: What’s the most space-efficient method: folding or rolling clothes?

Gemma and Daniel Ng: This feels like the million-dollar question when it comes to packing clothes! When we need to pack a lot of clothes for our kids, say for a trip that is a week or longer, our preference is to fold everything into stacks, which then fit neatly into the divided sections of our Hideaway Carry-On Duffel. That way, we’re able to see every item in the stack of clothing easily and remove items as needed throughout the trip.

We’ve learned that with folding, we’re able to fit a ton of children’s clothing into a small space and still visually know exactly what kind of item has been packed — for example, a sweatshirt vs. pants and so on. Additionally, because folding makes it easy to visually spot items, we’ve found this method also makes it possible for our kids to be able to access their clothes on their own, which makes it fun and interactive for them to get dressed each morning, beginning at roughly age 2.5 onward.

Whenever we pack a smaller amount of clothing, say, just for immediate needs during a flight, we prefer rolling outfits together so you can easily grab and access everything we might need in one swoop from our Getaway travel diaper bag. We always pack clothes for both of our kids to bring on board, so having them rolled together but separate from one another helps to simplify grabbing the right kid’s clothes in a hurry.

What packing techniques help reduce the overall volume of children’s clothing?

Everything we pack for our kids generally has to mix and match easily to make more combinations with less clothing. Unless we are going to attend a special occasion, like a wedding, we don’t typically pack any clothing that feels too “special,” as it may take up extra space and not get used as often on a trip.

Another thing that’s easy to overdo is packing too many heavy layers. We try to avoid packing multiple bulky layers such as fleece and thick sweatpants as they can take up huge amounts of space. When the weather requires it, we will bring a couple of warmer options per kid, but generally try to focus on layering pieces that can be worn underneath for more versatility.

While it’s not a packing technique, considering places where you can do laundry while on the road is a great way to minimize overpacking. We often prioritize accommodations that have a laundry machine accessible, and when this isn’t possible, we handwash and hang dry clothes as early into the trip as we can so we can re-wear the same clothing later in the trip.

Photo: No Reception Club

What’s the ideal way to layer items in a suitcase or backpack for a long trip? Outfits by day, or organizing by type of clothing?

We definitely prefer to organize our children’s clothing by category to provide better flexibility when it comes time to get dressed for the day. It can be hard to plan for the weather each day when you’re packing in advance, so having your kids’ clothing laid out in a similar organization as they are at home makes it easier to pick and choose an outfit each day.

The way our Hideaway Carry-On Duffel is laid out makes it really easy to visually spot each type of clothing at a quick glance — we personally designate each section in the packing Cubby for a different type of clothing. Additionally, when you pack items by category, they fit more snugly into each section, almost like a puzzle, so you’re able to optimize the space. And finally, our kids are old enough to want to choose their outfits on their own, and every parent knows, there’s no predicting what your kid will want to wear until the morning of!

When we’re packing just enough clothing for a day adventure in a new place, or for a quick trip, we simply roll up a couple of outfits and pack them in our Getaway travel backpack. With a backpack, this method makes it much more accessible and easy to stay organized. For a quick trip, we are bringing such a limited amount of clothing (two outfits per kid = four outfits total) compared to what we’d bring in a larger piece of luggage, that we don’t benefit from organizing things by category.

Laundry for the little ones during travel — should people consider it?

We completely believe that doing laundry during travel is a great idea. When we’re booking our accommodations, we try to ensure that there is a way to do laundry while we’re there. This alleviates such a burden while traveling with your kids and ensures you aren’t over-packing.

Also, there is a pretty high likelihood that you will need to do laundry for various mishaps that happen with little ones throughout the journey, and you’ll never regret having it. For us, when we are on any trip longer than 4 days, we plan to do laundry. If the trip is more like a long weekend (2-4 days), we generally don’t bother.

Are there specific fabrics or clothing items that are easier to wash and dry quickly while traveling?

Fabrics are a very personal choice whether it’s for your kids or yourself, but generally speaking, we only pack clothes that are easy to throw in the washer and dryer to make laundry an easy task. For the most part, we stick to cotton or other natural fibers for our kids because they’re versatile and easy to wear, and drying quickly isn’t a top priority as we always have some backup clothing readily available.

Photo: No Reception Club

How can I distinguish between necessary items and potential “nice to have” extras? Any things that are better purchased at the destination to save packing space?

I think the distinction between essentials vs. “nice to haves” comes down to what items you can easily buy when you arrive at a reasonable price. When packing ahead of any trip, we consider clothing and other comforts of home as necessary items, whereas items that we’d call “supplies” — like diapers, wipes, food, and certain toiletries — we tend to buy at our destinations. We’ll usually only bring enough consumables to last us through the entire travel day, plus half a day extra as you can’t always plan for travel delays.

What are the best strategies for organizing and accessing items during travel?

When you’re packing for a travel day, we recommend organizing your travel diaper bag according to the activities you will most likely engage in with your little one while in transit. We consider the main activities to be: (1) feeding them; (2) playing with and entertaining them; (3) changing their clothes if needed; (4) changing their diaper; and finally, (5) helping them fall asleep.

If you divide your backpack up according to these activities, you’ll find it very easy to quickly know where to go in your bag to grab what you need. The last thing you want during those sometimes chaotic travel moments is to feel like you are digging through a bottomless pit, unsure of where an extra pair of pants or the portable sound machine is located!

One other thought we’d be remiss to mention is easy access to your own personal items such as your phone, keys, wallet, passport, headphones, or laptop. Consolidating the items that you personally need into a couple of sections of your bag is also the optimal way to ensure your essentials are always at your fingertips.

Do you have any tips on balancing weight in a bag for a family trip?

The items that we find that tend to weigh down a bag are usually non-clothing items like laptops, adult shoes, breast pumps, and so on. We do our best to spread these out as much as possible between all of the backpacks and carry-on bags we travel with to distribute the weight for easier carrying.

How should I organize items differently for carry-on versus checked luggage?

While we are solidly a #teamcarryon family, we of course do also have trips that involve checked luggage too! If we are bringing carry-on instead of checked luggage, or if we are bringing checked luggage instead of carry-on, the way we organize the items inside really doesn’t differ. In both cases, we are organizing items by category within our luggage.

However, if we are bringing both carry-on and checked luggage, the way we split items is by putting children’s items into our carry-on, and adult items into checked luggage. At the end of the day, we feel that as parents we can adapt more easily if the entire checked luggage goes missing. It’s much easier for us — though not ideal — to buy some clothing at a local store and still get through a trip pretty easily if our entire trip wardrobe is lost on the way. If our little ones’ things are lost, it is certainly not as straightforward to reproduce their favorite stuffed toy that gets them to sleep every night or other sentimental items that make any destination feel more like home.