Episode 4: 16 Road Trip Tips
Hello and welcome back. Okay, so my family and I were just watching the Eras tour on, like, video and it is so much fun. And I'm probably the last person on earth that has seen it. But we, the kids, were just dancing around, loving every minute. The girls got into their, like, gymnastics gymnastics like their body suits, like Taylor Swift, and and was, like, kissing his arm, like Taylor Swift, and it was so fun. Anyway, if you haven't seen it, it's now, you can now rent it for Taylor's birthday. Happy birthday, Taylor. So yeah, lots of fun.
Okay, so today I am going to share some road trip tips. I have road tripped a lot throughout my life growing up. I also, throughout my married life with Garen, we've road tripped a lot. We've lived by, or lived far from family for most of our marriage. And so we've done lots of road trips as a family.
And this past year, we made a challenge to ourselves to go on a road trip every month, once a month, at least. And that has been so fun, and I'm definitely going to talk more about that in the future. But it's also helped us to really, like, hone in our road tripping skills, and also kind of pinpoint things that have, like, that really help, and things that maybe aren't necessary, or things that maybe we worry about and shouldn't.
But we've also come up with lots of great tips that have helped us a lot that I would love to share. So, with this episode, I'm going to share 16 of them. But if you go to my website, you can, and you can subscribe to my email list. I will send you my list of 33 road trip tips. So if you like what you hear, and you want to hear more, go download that free list. There are 33 tips in there, and there's some pretty good ones.
So, we're going to start with the first 16 today. Okay, and a lot of these tips I've also shared on Instagram already. You might have seen them, but this is just more like a compilation of them together. So, and this is in no particular order.
So the first one I'm going to share is bring a big basket. We have this kind of just like laundry basket. We use like a tall one that we have. We have a mini van, so our cart has more space, and we take out one of the middle seats as well. So the basket fits in there fine. I have had friends say, hey, what if I don't have much room? Then I would suggest a smaller basket, but anyway, just have a place. We use a basket to put everything you need to grab in a hurry. For example, your shoes, any jackets, diapers, wipes, etc. So when you stop at a gas station or a restaurant, you and your kids, they know exactly where everything is. You all can get ready, look at these split, instead of every time you stop looking around, you you where are your shoes? Where's your jacket? Where's the diapers? Where are the wipes? Everything is just in that one place that you absolutely need. So it's easy to find when you stop. So that's my first tip, I should say.
Second tip, if you are old school like us and have a DVD player in our mini van, in our car, go to the library and borrow free DVDs that are new and fun that you don't have. Also, the library is amazing for books on tape, as well as books. If you're able to read in the car, if your kids are able to read in the car, it's free, it's fun, and it's like getting new things for a road trip.
Third tip, blowpops. Blowpops are fun because, I mean, we love to get fun snacks that we normally wouldn't get that make a road trip just more special. But blowpops are awesome because they take a long time to eat, and they have gum at the end, which takes extra time to eat. So it's just a really enjoyable, long treat that the kids can have for a while. And you know on long road trips, you just need things to sometimes take some time. And those take a good amount of time, unless you're like my 3-year-old who bites everything and he just bites it off in like 2 seconds. But if your kids are like my 5-year-old that takes hours to lick one lollipop, it's amazing. It's a miracle. That's the tip number 3.
Tip Tip 4, make and use a reusable packing must. So So with our challenge of going on a road trip every month this year, we have noticed that like each road trip, you you the same things, right? You might need a different amount, but you need the same things. Like you always need clothes, you you need underwear, you always need pajamas, you always need a toothbrush, you always need shoes. Sometimes you need a swimsuit. So if you create a packing list, and I just put like empty squares by each item, and then I laminated it. And so we can reuse it every time. So in the little squares, I can put however much we need for that road trip. So So to the shirts square, I can put 5 shirts. And next to the swimsuit square, I can put 1 swimsuit. And I can fill it out, hand this list to my kids. And now that they're like more used to going on road trips more often, they know what it is, they know what to do, they like packing their own bag. And they know exactly like what to grab. Okay, I'll grab 5 shirts. So that's amazing. We laminated it to use like a dry erase marker, and then you can erase it. You don't have to if you don't need, if you don't want to. That's what we do.
Tip number 5. Everyone gets their own color duffel bag. So we got this, we learned this from Walker Family Goods, which they sell amazing duffel bags. We have their bags. It makes it so easy for the kids to pack. They They which bag is theirs. They know like all the zippers and pockets and where everything is. And also like during their road trip, they can grab it. They know where to put their dirty clothes. They know where all their stuff is in there. It's awesome. We love it so much.
Okay, tip number 6. Clean your car while you are filling up with gas. So So a road trip, you always have to stop for gas, right? It's just something you have to do. You're going to do, right? And you know how you just like stand there waiting for the gas to fill up and blah, blah, blah. While you're waiting for the gas to fill up, why not grab a garbage bag? We take a bunch of grocery bags, grab one of those bags, and use those like 5 minutes to just rush around your car, put in as much trash as you can, and trash piles up on a road trip, right? Like Like were eating food, snacks, you know everything. So there's always trash. Just grab it up. Even if you don't get all of the trash in that one go, it makes such a big difference just to get rid of as much as you can.
Alright, tip number 7. Okay, this kind of goes with tip number 6. Always have plastic grocery bags in the car or any other bag that you want. We use grocery bags because we always have a ton. I'm not very good at remembering to bring like reusable bags to the grocery store. So we always have these plastic grocery bags, but we always bring them in the car because they have so many uses. You can use them as garbage bags. You can use them to wrap up dirty diapers that you need to throw away, especially if you don't have like a garbage by you, right? And you like just change the stinky diaper. You can tie it up in a garbage bag and it helps keep the stink down. We've also used them for throw up, which is great. You can just throw it away. You can use it for wet clothes. That has been a lifesaver like swimming in a river or lake or ocean or whatever and you get in the car and your kids are just soaking wet. Maybe you didn't have some suits on or whatever. You can put the wet clothes in a grocery bag. The list goes on and on for how awesome and how many uses you can use those bags for.
Alright, tip number 8. Pack food from home. I think a lot of people do this because usually you think like, oh, like it saves money. Let's pack some food and it totally does save money and that's awesome. But the thing I love most about packing your own food from home is it saves you time, especially on a long road trip when you are traveling for hours and hours and even just like 20 or 30 minutes makes a huge difference in that time. When you can eat in the car and not have to stop somewhere, even drive-thru, drive-thru can take a while. It saves you so much time when you don't have to stop somewhere. So that's tip number 8.
Tip number 9. Stop at Costco or Sam's Club for gas, food and bathrooms. We all know their prices are amazing. You'll save a lot of money buying gas there. You also save a lot of money buying food there because their food is super inexpensive and their bathrooms are always great. I know that's kind of a tough one because they're not always going to be on the way or in a good spot. It just depends on where you're going and how close they are. So I totally get that that's not like going to happen all the time. But if you do think about it ahead of time and you see a Costco or a Sam's Club that's coming up in whatever, half an hour and you can make it, get gas there, get food there, it makes a big difference.
Okay. Tip number 10. Have a good attitude. Okay, so you might roll your eyes at this one, but I have really noticed that my attitude really, really affects how our kids act during the trip. Same with Gary and my husband's. Like if we have a bad attitude about going on a trip, guess what? So will our kids. If something crazy happens and we are like just having the worst attitude, it'll spill over to our kids as well. So what I try to do, I know, so we enjoy lots of aspects of road trips and there are also many aspects that are really hard, especially when you're driving across the country. Like we live in Ohio and a lot of our family live in Utah and that is a 24 hour drive from where we are. It is a very, very long drive and there are some tough moments and tough times during those 24 hours plus, right? Because you're stopping and you have to sleep and all that. So I know that that can be really hard.
But I've noticed that when I say, guess what? We get to visit family or we get to visit friends or we get to go to this cool place. Like let's go, let's go in the car and we're so excited. That just makes the biggest difference to have that perspective of, you know what? Like we are doing this because we get to do this awesome thing and because we want to see these people we love, we want to see this awesome place. So that's tip number 10.
Tip number 11, be prepared for throw up. The worst part about road trips, I would say, is throw up. And unfortunately it happens, you know, especially with little kids and adults, right? Like sometimes you just eat something that doesn't sit well or you're going through mountains and you're, you know, swerving and you just get sick.
So here are my tips on being prepared for throw up is having a cleaning spray that works well, but that also smells good because sometimes you clean and it just like the whole car is going to smell like that cleaning spray. I mean, it's better than throw up, but sometimes the cleaning sprays just don't smell great and then it maybe even might make people feel even more sick. So get a cleaning spray that cleans well, but also smells good. We also bring, okay. And I should say we have these things in our trunk so that they're just always there. We know we have them. You never want to forget these.
Okay, so the second thing is we have our magic erasers. We are super lucky we have these nice leather seats and like plastic on the side. So it's super easy, a magic eraser to use on the leather seats and then the plastic like sides cleans up so well, so nicely and it also helps with the odor.
And then of course we have our lovely grocery bags. You can also bring garbage bags. Some friends mentioned to me that they buy like from Amazon. There's like these special throw up bags you can buy. Those sounded great, but again we have so many grocery bags that I can just use those so we have those if they can throw up in there first without you having to clean anything else up, that's ideal. But if that doesn't happen, you have a grocery bag to put all the gross stuff away.
And then of course wipes. I know I have young kids and so I have wipes all the time. But I say if you don't have young kids, I would still have wipes in the car. Wipes are amazing. We use them all the time to clean up stuff. If mud gets in the carpet, if obviously diapers throw up, it's great to have wipes to clean up. Any like food that spills like oh my gosh the list could go on and on. So bring wipes.
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-Back to the Episode-
Tip number 12. Did you know that you can download movies and or shows onto your preferred device for free? Of course with your subscription I should say. From Disney Plus and Netflix. Super easy if you just prepare a little bit the night before to download a couple of movies that your kids really like to have on your iPad or whatever. It's super super easy to download from Disney Plus and Netflix. It does take some time so I would suggest doing that the night before or the day before if you can remember. Okay.
Tip number 13. I just posted this on Instagram so you might have recently seen it. Take the toll roads. So normally in my day to day life I never take toll roads because to me it's just not worth paying. I don't sit in traffic very much and I don't travel during like the busiest times of the day so for me it's not a big deal. So I just always like skip the toll roads on my Google Maps app.
However if you are on a long road trip many times if you say like include toll roads on your app you can find toll roads that will save you so much time. And for me I will pay money to save time on a long road trip and usually it's not that much. So like for example we drove to North Carolina to visit family and we took a toll road. It saved us 45 minutes and we paid those four ways or four dollars there and then four dollars back to eight dollars. Totally totally worth it in my opinion. Especially when you're on a long road trip just any time you can shave off makes the biggest difference. So make sure you look at the toll roads.
Tip number 14. We have a foldable little toddler travel potty in our car. I cannot tell you how many times it has come in clutch for us. We have used this thing so many times. So we have it's like the Oxo OXO 2-in-1 Go Potty from Amazon and we have gotten like the bags that come with it. But honestly you could, I have also done this. I have just used our trusty grocery bags and I've put like a pad in the bag to kind of like help soak up the pee because that's what the bags from Amazon have is kind of like a kind of like a pad type thing to help soak it up so it helps like with throwing it away and stuff.
So this has saved our bacon so many times with little kids. We have like been in the middle of nowhere before and like not had a rest stop close to us for like a half an hour but our kids are like busting. They're going to pee their pants. They have to go so bad and we would have gone to the side of the highway and just had them go pee in that little potty. And this is girls right? Boys are a different story.
But so that has helped us on even at restroom stops when the bathrooms are really gross. Maybe we just have them use the potty in the car or if we're trying to just like speed through it's sometimes faster to not even bring the kids inside to just have them go quickly in the little toilet in the car and then we just throw it away and they're on our way. Also it's helped us not on road trips like at parks or places where sometimes they don't have bathrooms. We've used it then as well. This thing is worth its weight in gold. I highly recommend getting one. And I will include a link to that for you guys to help you find one.
Alright tip number 15. Okay so this one's kind of a funny one. We have like one of those like I don't know how to describe it a Reacher Grabber Tool. You know like the ones that old people buy when they don't want to like get up to like get something. It's like the long rod that like you pull the little thing I don't know triggers the right word in the back and then it has like a claw at the front that grabs whatever you need. This thing is awesome because we have kids and we have a minivan so I can't like reach back to the very back of whoever's sitting in the back to get them stuff. So we use this like Reacher Grabber Tool thing to hand back snacks, water, napkins, books. I mean you name it, crayons, whatever they need and it is awesome. Our kids have named it Micah. I don't know why but that's what we call it. We call it Micah. That's our little Reacher Grabber Tool. That we also got off Amazon and that is awesome. It just helps so much. You don't have to like throw things and like make more of a mess and stuff. I really recommend that.
Alright, last tip for today. During your gas stops slash eating stops slash whatever you stop for during your road trip, split up the jobs with your partner efficiently. I think because we have had so much practice. I feel like Garen and I have got this down pat. I feel like we are pretty darn efficient when we stop. So for example, Garen will usually get out and fill up the car with gas while he does that. I will take my two girls inside to go to the bathroom. So we all go to the bathroom.
Meanwhile, our three year old boy is unbuckled and can like play inside the car, get his wiggles out, kind of move around the car. Usually it helps him to move around to like go potty. So that helps a lot as well. So he is playing around while me and the girls are going to the bathroom and Garen is filling up the gas. When we come back, usually the gas is done and then we will switch. So I will stay at the car with the kids while my husband will take our dog. If we bring him on the trip, if we have our dog with us, my husband will take him, take the dog for like a little, not really a walk, but just you know, to wherever he is, grasses to help him go to the bathroom. He will also pull out the water and the food to see if he needs any.
While my husband is doing that, I will be changing my toddler's diaper because usually him moving around, gets things going and will have a dirty diaper. So usually by the time I am done with changing the diaper, my husband is done taking care of the dog. We are ready to seat everyone in and go.
Usually we can do this pretty quickly because we have had so much practice. And you will find your dive, right? Like you will find what works for you, but that is what we do is we just kind of nail down this thing with what we need to do, what we need to get done and everyone's happy, bathroom breaks, it's all good.
So that is our, those are our 16 tips, road trip tips. And again, I have a list of 33 road trip tips. If you go to my website, lovealwayselizabeth.com and I'll put a link for you. You can sign up for my email and you can get this automatic download, free download of the 33 road trip tips to help you.
But yeah, I hope these help. Some of them are kind of funny, but a lot of them help a lot. And of course, most importantly, I just hope that you enjoy your road trips, you know, get out there, make some memories. And especially with the holiday season coming up, I know lots of people are traveling to visit family, which is so great. Just make sure you're safe and hopefully these tips can help you have an easier time of it and a more fun time as well. So good luck traveling and hope you have a wonderful holiday season. And I'll have another episode next week, but until then, love always, Elizabeth.
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