What We Never Travel Without

Traveling, day tripping, sight seeing, and adventuring are huge in the Hundt house! As we prioritize how we spend our time and money, seeing the world is at the tippy tippy top.

Because my family is quite like a circus, we have to be really thoughtful and intentional about how we prepare for trips so we can have bring the least amount of things that still get us what we need and also what would make our traveling life easier.

I thought I'd share a few things we never leave home without...

1.) Packing Cubes: I am a recent convert to packing cubes over the last year and I don't think I will ever go back. At first, I used packing cubes to consolidate clothes into our suitcases- it really did save space to have things squished into the cubes and it also saved my sanity because things were more organized and I wasn't just throwing pieces of clothing all around trying to find what I was looking for.

We have these cubes in several colors in several sizes. Find them here.

Now, it's morphed a bit so that we ONLY pack cubes. No luggage. This works for us as all of our recent travel has been by car- why lug around the bulky and heavy suitcases if you don't have to?! We stack our packing cubes on top of each other or sometimes place them into one of those large cooler shoulder bags you can get at Costco. We also sometimes place them in our roof rack. This has saved us a ton of space when we have very little to work with.

Sidebar- I also have a competition with myself to see if I can pack all our things up using less cubes LEAVING a travel destination than when I originally packed us ;)

2.) Sound Machines: SLEEP IS SO IMPORTANT. One of my biggest travel fears is about how people will sleep especially when staying in apartments or hotels when you don't know how much noise you're going to hear from other people. We use sound machines in our house (we all love falling asleep to ocean waves... who doesn't?!) and thankfully, we intentionally found sound machines that were small so they could travel with us.

This little guy fits in the palm of my hand! Find it here.

I originally bought this because it had multiple fan noises, but every person in my house actually loves the ONE ocean waves choice they have. It is tiny and travels so easily! It also doubles as a bluetooth speaker which has come in handy many times to have dance parties while away from home. 

I will say these don't last forever (we've had to replace a couple over the last several years), but for the size, there just isn't anything else that compares. 

3.) Headphones: The Hundts do a lot of overnight driving. As we continue to get better and better at this, we keep learning more tricks. One thing we've started doing recently that is a game changer is for the driver to have some headphones. 

At 3:00am, you are doing whatever it takes to keep you awake and alert and it can be hard to blast your favorite early 2000s rap that makes you want to dance when you've got four young children and a Josh trying to sleep. I felt like I had to keep the music calm and quiet, which did not help me... at all. These last couple of trips we've had on our ocean waves for everyone else in the car and headphones on the driver so they could turn up and not wake everyone else up. That has done WONDERS for me. Josh will open his eyes and see me doing all kinds of jamming, lip syncing, and dancing or laughing as I listen to the Podcast version of Watch What Happens Live! with Andy Cohen. 

I've always been a great night driver, but now I am unstoppable ;)

4.) A Sleep Mask: Speaking of over night driving, another trick we've picked up lately is to bring a sleep mask in the car. I noticed when it was my turn to sleep, I was waking up a lot as we'd drive by more lit up areas- the streetlights or city lights would stir me awake. Now I put on a sleep mask and with the ocean waves going and the pitch black darkness, I can really get some decent sleep. We purchased this two pack and they work great! 

5.) A "Go" Bag For Each Boy: When you have four very active boys, sitting in the car for 18 hours isn't a walk in the park. Before each trip, I pack a little bag for #hundtboysx4 with some things to pass the time and keep them busy. I pack math facts practice, mazes, coloring books, notebooks to doodle and write, bingo, etc. I'm still learning what things are the biggest hit and don't make our car a total mess, but boys really look forward to seeing what's in there. 

Speaking of keeping busy, we don't pack any electronics for them to play with individually. For us, being present is most important when we are altogether like that. We do have a car DVD player that we use very, very sparingly. Listening to them laugh while watching the Little Mermaid or get SO excited when they got to watch Toy Story 4 is adorable. 

6.) BOOKS- OH SO MANY BOOKS: I'm so grateful each of my boys loves to read and loves to be read to. We don't go anywhere, not even for one night without a nice stash of books. Reading together before bed is critical and crucial to our nighttime routine and it's a great way to pass the time while driving. 

I remember driving to Disney World when I was younger and I would read for hours and hours. I get car sick, now, doing that and I miss it deeply. 

7.) Airbnb: I don't know what we did before Airbnb was commonly used. My family is big and many hotels aren't accommodating to that large a family if you want to be together and stay together. Hotels are also often pricey especially if you need to purchase more than one room. 

Airbnb has really made traveling affordable for us and also honestly possible for us. We've worked with some wonderful hosts and have felt like it's allowed us to immerse ourselves in where we are very differently than hotels do.

This was our view from an Airbnb apartment where we stayed while in Toronto- it was $79 a night! 

We (especially Josh) plays around on the website or app frequently seeing and dreaming of what could be for our next adventure. We have lists saved to SO many different places that are on our travel bucket list. I just looked today and was shocked to see that Josh has 86 different lists with saved places to stay. 

Airbnbs have often lessened our packing as well. When you learn there is onsite laundry, beach towels, or a Pack N' Play, for example, those are HUGE space savers. 

8.) A Tripod: I am obsessed with preserving memories with photography that's why I don't travel ANYWHERE without my tripod. For whatever reason, my boys seem to do a lot better, smiling for a camera timer than they would for someone else taking the picture. It doesn't always get used a lot, which may make it seem unnecessary, but when it does get used, it produces my favorite pictures of all time. That makes it all worth it for me. 

I have this one. It also has an adapter for a cell phone- I didn't even know that until I looked it back up again!
I need to find that piece!

Tripod magic from New York City!

Traveling with small children is really challenging, I can't say that enough. 

I always want to turn around and leave when we first arrive, I can't say that enough. 

But I always weep openly when we're leaving out of gratitude and beauty and love, I can't say that enough either.