Packing for our Two Week Northern California Road Trip with Kids

Here’s what and how I packed for our two week northern California road trip with two kids ages 6 and 9. 🚙 🧳 ☀️

In November our family had the amazing opportunity to travel to California for a two-week-long road trip! We’ve grown to love traveling with one backpack each and the freedom and ease that it brings, but decided to mix things up this trip. Our plan was to fly into San Francisco and spend the next two weeks exploring California. Unsure exactly where we would end up in this jumbo size state with a range of climates, we needed to pack for cooler and warmer weather. We also needed to pack a few homeschool supplies.

Taking all of that into consideration our packing strategy was to use one personal item size back pack per family member and one additional carry-on size suitcase for the whole family to share.

What I packed 🧳

This is what I packed for my kids and I. My husband does his own thing. He packs pretty minimally but also needed to bring a sleep apnea machine that took up some space in the carry-on.

Kids 👧🏻👦🏼

7 days worth of outfits with the plan to do laundry at one of our hotels half way through the trip.

2 pairs of pajamas ( we shower before bed, put these on and then change first thing in the morning)

7 pairs of socks 

7 pairs of underwear

7 pants

7 long sleeve shirts. I went with long sleeve lightweight shirts because the kids are content with these for the majority of weather. They layer on their jacket when cold and push up their sleeves when they warm up. I figured if we went somewhere hot we could grab them a couple of T-shirt’s for minimal cost. We didn’t end up needing to do this and the long sleeve shirts worked perfectly.

Bathing suit

Swim googles

Sandals

Each child wore sneakers and a light weight Kids ThermoPlume Packable Hooded Jacket from Lands End on the plane. These jackets are game changing for travel and life in general. They pack down super tiny and always seem to provide just the right amount of warmth. I get them on sale (as I’m writing this they are on sale for 30.00) for a reasonable cost and buy a neutral color so Anika can hand hers down to Jake when she’s done with them.

For me 👩🏻

7 days worth of outfits with the plan to do laundry at one of our hotels half way through the trip.

For sleep ( 2 tank tops, one pair of pajama bottoms, one pair of shorts and a lightweight zip up sweatshirt)

2 pairs of jeans ( I pack the lightest, thinnest jeans I own)

1 pair of leggings 

Shirts for 7 days ( combo of a couple of T-shirts, a couple of cardigans and a couple of long sleeve shirts and one sweater) I figured with this combination I could add and take away layers as needed. 

7 pairs underwear 

2 bras

7 pairs socks 

Bathing suit

Sandals

I wore fleece lined leggings, a sweatshirt, my lightweight down jacket (that smooshes down real small) and sneakers on the plane. 

Toiletries 🪥

We made sure to only bring TSA approved size containers for liquids and these were packed in our clear toiletry kit.

Face wash

Small contact lens solution bottle

Contact Lens Case

Toothpaste

Toothbrushes

Sunscreen

Floss

Travel razor

Shaving cream

Hairbrush

Hair Elastics

Small spray bottle of leave in conditioner.

Small Cross Body Purse

I brought a very small cross body purse that fit my phone, credit card, ID, money, insurance card and chapstick. This went inside of my backpack when traveling.

Misc other items packed:

Kids tablets

Stickers books for plane and hotel room down time entertainment

Headphones 

4 Travel journals, pencils and colored pencils

Gum

Bag of granola bars

Books

Misc homeschool supplies

Lonely Planet California Book

Vomit bags (so glad we brought these, fantastic for plane and car motion sickness)

Sunglasses

Stuffed animal

Booster Seat

We also brought a booster seat for each child. Our kids have thankfully graduated from carseat days, which makes traveling so much easier. We gate checked the boosters. Super easy to do, just let the people at the desk know you want to gate check it, they give you a tag, you drop it off right before you go through the doors of the airplane and it’s waiting for you when you get off in the same spot.

How I packed 🧳

Packing Cubes

I used our Eagle Creek packing cubes to contain and organize our clothing. I’ve used these on multiple trips and 100 percent recommend them. They are compression cubes, that actually compress.

The zipper broke on one after our last trip (probably my fault for over filling it). I filled out the form on their website, mailed it back to them and within days they sent me a brand new one, no questions asked. I’ve had no problems since. I buy directly from their website when they have a sale. They also have a coupon code for first time purchases.

When it comes to packing our cubes I’ve found the Kon Mari method worked best for this trip. We were moving from hotel room to hotel room (mostly only staying one night in each place) and this enable us to use our packing cube like a drawer. I just pulled it out, could easily see what clothing it had, selected what I needed and zipped it right back up. I’ve also done what my daughter calls, “The outfit ball” method, where I do the KonMari fold but inside of the pants include a shirt and underwear making it a ready to go outfit. This works really well for the kids stuff.

Back Packs

We have the same backpacks we used for our South Carolina trip…nothing fancy yet. I’m sure we will eventually upgrade, especially when the kids get a little bigger.

Each of us had a medium size Eagle Creek packing cube in our backpack. The kids also had their tablet, headphones, travel journal, color pencils, sticker book, book and water bottle in theirs. My daughter also had her stuffed cat.

I had a medium size Eagle Creek packing cube, a small Eagle Creek packing cube, Lonely Planet Travel Guide, travel journal, purse, bag of snacks and puke bags (so happy I had them).

Carry-on Suitcase

The carry-on held school supplies, my husbands sleep apnea machine, the kids small Eagle Creek packing cubes (these hold their socks and underwear), our toiletries, sandals, couple of pieces of my husbands and my bulkier clothing and an Eagle Creek laundry bag (a new purchase for this trip that was amazing).

Having the one carry-on this trip worked well because once we got settled in our first hotel room I was able to take all of the packing cubes out of the kids and my backpack and fit them in the suitcase upright, like books on the shelf. I wish I had taken a picture of it. We all have a different color packing cube so this allowed me to easily grab what I needed and put it back. I also put our toiletries in this carry-on. This made it so our backpacks, especially the kids pack packs where super lightweight and they had zero complaints carrying them in and out of hotel rooms. The carry-on was easy to pull and allowed us to easily go from hotel to hotel when we also needed to bring in food and water that we had purchased for the trip.

I moved homeschool stuff and books to my back pack which made it easy to grab when needed and my husband either carried his sleep apena machine in the case separately or fit it in his back pack as he wore clothing out of it and added them to our Eagle Creek laundry bag.

Eagle Creek Laundry Bag 🧺

We put dirty laundry in the Eagle Creek laundry bag and carried that separately from hotel to hotel. It was super tough fabric and cinched up well at the top with straps making it easy to carry. It folds down to a small square when not in use. It held about six days worth of laundry for the four of us. We stayed in 10 different hotel rooms this trip and had zero issues packing up every day to switch hotels. We packed lightly, and had an efficient system that allowed us to pack and unpack.

I learned a couple of things on this trip, one being that I LOVE doing laundry on vacation. Seriously, no sarcasm here. This is going to sound insane but the evening I did our laundry was one of my favorite memories of the trip. The kids were so excited to watch a new holiday movie on Disney and we happened to make it back to the hotel to watch the premiere showing. My husband helped me carry the laundry back and forth to the laundry room and I happily folded it while watching the movie with the kids. It was just a cozy, sweet evening.

Doing laundry on a trip, even a shorter trip is definitely going to be a new part of our packing plan. We tend to like to just chill in our hotel room at night anyway and we found it pretty easy to find hotels with laundry rooms. Doing this will allow us to pack even far fewer clothes.

Thinking of packing lighter? Start here.

For anyone who is contemplating packing lighter for their next trip these are the four things I started with:

Plan out outfits as best as possible.

Instead of shoving a bunch of clothing in a bag think about what you are going to wear each day and what clothing can mix and match together. Actually lay the clothing out in front of you.

Decide to do with less.

Cut back where you can. Things like not having a fresh pair of pajamas every night, shower before bed and change first thing in the morning. Pack fewer pants, they tend to be the clothing item that takes up the most space and can easily be worn more then one day without washing. Consider substituting a pair of leggings for jeans as another way to save on space.

Limit the number of shoes you bring.

Shoes take up a ton of space. When I’m on vacation I remember my priority is to enjoy the time I have exploring the new space I’m in. It’s ok if I don’t look as cute as I possibly could while I do it. We don’t eat in fancy restaurants, and sneakers work for pretty much any activity I need. I also always bring a pair of lightweight, but still comfy flip flops or sandals. They take up minimal space but are great if the weather is warm, we end up at a beach or we are going to go to a hotel pool. That’s all I bring for footwear and it saves a ton of space in my bag.

Limit Just in Case Items.

The Minimalists have this “Just in Case” 20/ 20 rule that I try to remember when uncertain whether or not to bring something on a trip. The rule says as long as it could be replace for 20 dollars in less than 20 minutes from your current location you can let it go, or in the case of traveling choose not to bring it. I had a couple of examples of this come up for me this trip.

One was shampoo and conditioner. In the past I’ve just used what the hotel offered. We stayed in some budget hotels this trip and they often only offered an all in one shampoo and conditioner combo. My daughter and I have long, very easy to get knotted hair, and this doesn’t cut it for us. I ended up purchasing a travel size shampoo and conditioner from a CVS that we walked by for a couple bucks each and that lasted us for the length of the trip. No big deal

The other thing I wished I had was a lightweight backpack. Since a lot of our stuff was in our back packs we didn’t want to have to deal with unloading them to use them when we went on little day hikes and outings. I definitely didn’t need it for this trip, more of a nice to have thing and we made due without an issue. A lightweight backpack, that easily folds down small is on my list for our next trip. I’m considering this one from Amazon, but I was fine to go without it. No big deal.

Final thoughts…

The way we packed for this trip worked well for us. Nothing compares to the freedom of only have a backpack but having the additional carry-on added value to the style of this particular trip.