Packing for a trip is the exciting part! Unpacking is the tricky part. Most of our family trips involved changing locations often. In fact, most people would say we changed locations too much and too soon—but that’s the way my husband preferred. He liked us to be in a different place almost daily. There were times that we’d be in different countries within 24 hours, even! The way to cope with this (as a mom) is to pack the kids’ bags in a way that they can get to the clothing and items they need without totally disrupting the “tidiness” of their suitcase (or backpack in our case, often).  My solution for the latter (on a few trips), was to:

• pack their clothes inside compression bags. The reason for the latter is because they could pull out the compression bag without pulling out the other items, like toiletries.
• I’d pull out the compression bag and store it on the bottom of a hotel armoire.
• I’d leave the backpacks or suitcases aside and when they needed something, they had easy access to it without having to really unpack their suitcase or backpack. Storing the suitcases aside kept them out of our path (and we didn’t have to trip over things!)
• It was easy to toss the compression bag back into their suitcase when it was time to uproot again.

Another tip I do when packing, for me mostly, is to

• hang my outfits on hangers,
• fold them over and pack them into my carryon suitcase on the hangers.
• When I arrive to the hotel, I directly hang them up into the hotel room (or villa) closet. Voila! everything is fast and ready to go and wrinkle free for the most part.
• I even hang corresponding jewelry onto the outfit so I don’t have to spend time sorting that out of jewelry cases.