How to pack for a year on the road with kids?

Some people think I am obsessed with this question (mainly Helen). I don’t think that’s true – she is much more obsessed with Made In Chelsea than I am about packing. But a professional life that has involved more than twenty years of business travel (including a number of years where I have been away almost as much as I have been home, both short and long haul) has taught me that the right gear can make all the difference between good times and pain or frustration. Will the same choices made for business travel apply equally well to the family odyssey?

First – what are we trying to achieve, and how might that affect the packing strategy and gear we take?

• Immerse ourselves in different peoples, cultures, and activities
• Education on the road – books, paper etc can be heavy, so how do we deal with that?
• Enjoying the destinations and the journeys – travel will make up a good portion of our time away, and we want that time to be healthy, happy and valuable too:
  • Healthy – if we can possibly avoid buying and eating too much fast food and confectionery then it should be healthier and cheaper
  • Happy – if we minimise opportunities to lose things or have things stolen, then travel will be a whole lot happier and stress free. And if everyone is comfortable, rested and not hungry we will all be happier
  • Valuable – making the most of the time on the move, we need to pack things that can be worked on and used in transit, as well as learning about and capturing the travel experience itself

So what does all that mean for packing approach?:

• Adaptability – whatever we take with us will need to work well in many different and often contradictory situations
  • Travelling from one place to another – perhaps with a bag in an overhead bin, under a bus or otherwise out of reach. While keeping stuff needed during the journey and valuables close by
  • Day trips away from the home base – where a lot of the stuff won’t be needed
  • Domestic tasks when settled at a base – like shopping
• Flexibility – the ability to easily take advantage of unexpected opportunities for new adventures, without planning, and without worrying that we have the wrong gear with us
• Lightweight – to protect our backs when carrying, improve our chances of flying with carry-on only (cheaper, quicker, less risk of loss), ensure more of our stuff is close by and safe on planes and buses, and so the kids can carry good amounts of stuff
• Fewer – there are few things more stressful when travelling than worrying ‘have we still got all the bags’, particularly when the kids are carrying some of them. Leaving behind a bag when we are away for a year could be a serious problem. The fewer bags we have between us to worry about the better

Taking all that into account, I think we are looking at one backpack per person, together with one packable daypack / tote per person. The main backpack needs to be midsized say 35/40l for us adults (not too onerous to carry, or obvious when in towns). On ‘moving days’ the daypack needs to fit inside the main pack and be loaded with the valuables and stuff we need at our seats while in transport. That way, we can choose to put our main packs in the overhead or under the bus, and grab our ‘grab bags’ for the journey. When exploring from our home base in say Muscat, we can simply take the day bags with us.

So that’s eight bags. But really that’s four bags with a quickly removable grab bag stashed inside each. Assuming Helen and I each take 35l of capacity, Rafe takes 20l and Dessa 15l, that makes a total of 105 litres between us for a year on the road.

For this to work we will need to pack fairly light and small, and much will depend on the load that the kids can comfortably carry themselves at ages 9 and 6 by the time we leave. In my experience the critical things will be:

• Books – taking sufficient for education and entertainment, but too many will kill us in size and weight
• Shoes – always a packspace killer. We need to think hard about how many pairs each of us really needs. Can some double up on uses, and can we find any that pack flat and light?
• Clothing – packing things with multiple uses, robust enough yet light, while remaining warm, comfortable and ready for adventure. And the realisation that we only really need to pack for a maximum of three days between clothes washing opportunities – we can stay fresh perpetually on that basis
• Bags – selecting the right bags for the carry and the carry-er will be key
• Discipline – no, we don’t need that thing ‘just in case’, and yes, we can probably buy it on the road if we really need it

Can it be done? I think so. We will test run it as much as we can on short breaks before the big trip. But we will only know for sure when we hit the road for real.