Chance and I truly enjoy traveling! We’re the type of people that give up concerts, dining out as frequently, and other expensive entertainment in order to be able to travel more frequently. We love the airport, flying and experiencing new places! It’s something we’ve continued since having children, and we hope that they love to travel as much as we do. So far, we’re on a pretty good track and Hunter asks frequently to “get on the airplane at the airport and go to the hotel.” Thankfully, they’re also pretty good travelers!! We’ve put together a separate post about our favorite travel items for little kids which you can find here, but we also wanted to put together a list of the travel accessories that are tried and true for us. Even more so than ever since having kids, we’ve worked hard to pare our packing down to the necessities because we don’t have room for any extras or anything that isn’t really used.
So we’ve rounded up our favorite accessories that we use for travel (hint: most of them are Amazon – hello Prime!), and honestly, sometimes they just get used on the regular at home too. But the primary reason for getting them was to make travel better/easier.
We really love this portable charger for traveling. Before we discovered it, we had this organized case of cords that we used to bring with us in our luggage, but man did that take up a lot of space. And what if you forgot a cord? It was a great solution at the time (circa 2013) but really became cumbersome as we had kids and they came with a ton of other stuff to pack! This has been so easy because it has all of the essential cords we need, and even better, you can charge the charger while charging your devices. This is a huge help in hotel rooms when you always seem to be short on outlets. I’ve actually been using it at home some recently, too! It charges very quickly compared to other battery packs, it charges an iPhone super fast, and can charge an iPhone 3-4 times before needing to be recharged itself. It’s super affordable on Amazon!
I’ve tried a few jewelry cases over the years, and this one has been my favorite by far. Not only does it separate the jewelry well, it also packs very efficiently in luggage because it lays flat. I had this square jewelry case with a cute monogram that I got for Christmas one year. I was so excited about it, but it turned out to be terrible for travel because the square shape just did not pack well at all. I also cannot stand when necklaces get all tangled up, and I always get nervous about losing small earrings. This jewelry case totally takes care of that! It has designated places for everything. I’m able to safely store short necklaces, long necklaces, rings, earrings, my apple watch bands, and a few other things. And you’re not just throwing the jewelry into different compartments. There’s an actual ring holder, earring holes, etc. They thought of it all in my opinion. It doesn’t hurt that you can easily order off of amazon and the design options are super cute 🙂
I’ve always been a light sleeper and that doesn’t change when I’m on vacation unfortunately. I actually used to wear an eye mask and ear plugs at home, but since having kids, I’ve given that up as I want to make sure I’m completely attuned to them during the night. When we do travel now, though, I do sometimes still wear this eye mask and ear plugs. Usually we’re all in one room, so I can more easily hear the boys if they cry, but I don’t want to hear them moving around in their beds all night. I’m just such a light sleeper that literally them shifting positions will wake me up. It’s totally ridiculous and ruins the next day because I’ve been up all night. Once I wake up, my brain usually gets going and I can’t shut it off. That’s a whole different problem entirely, but putting these little measures in place helps me to not wake up as frequently!
This collapsible water bottle is actually one of Chance’s favorites! I found it for him years ago. We both drink a ton of water, but he drinks an incredible amount simply because he needs more than I do! We couldn’t afford to purchase countless bottles of water at the airport (not to mention the wasted plastic) especially when we were first together and trying to travel frugally. It was at this same time that more and more airports were installing the water refill stations (really showing our age here!). This water bottle is great because it’s completely flat and rolled up through security. Once we are past security, we find a refill station to fill it up. There are different volume sizes to choose from, and it even has a hook that you can clip it onto your backpack once full. We’ve had our two for well over 5 years now, and they are still going strong! We just make sure to give them a thorough cleaning and allow them to air out completely as soon as we’re back home.
The eBags Mother Lode Jr was an awesome find for us! I think I saw an ad on Facebook or something for eBags, and I was a bit skeptical at first. Then I saw someone ask about the brand in one of my travel groups and people had good things to say about it overall. We gave it a try and grabbed the Mother Lode Junior on sale one weekend. We haven’t used it quite as much as I anticipated, since we tend to check bags more now. We just don’t have the arm capacity to carry on our clothing with two toddlers right now. We most frequently use it when we are going to a cold weather destination and want to bring our heavy jackets on the plane with us. It holds a ton and is compartmentalized very efficiently. It easily fits in an overhead compartment and is comfortable to wear on your back (according to Chance 😉).
This travel sized steamer has been awesome! I actually didn’t buy it originally with the intent of travel. I wanted a steamer for a few clothing items that couldn’t be ironed and wanted something small and inexpensive, since I didn’t think I’d be using it very much! Well, the joke was on me. Turns out, I much prefer steaming clothes over ironing them and I find the results are better. Since the steamer is so compact, comes with a bag, and is meant for traveling, I decided to try it out on a business trip. This was such a great idea! No matter how effectively and carefully you fold (roll) and pack your clothing, some things just need to be freshened up on the other end. Since that trip, I have never not taken this steamer on vacation with us!
I’ll talk about these Vacuum seal bags in another post and how I use them to pack, but it’s another top travel accessories that I wanted to make sure made this travel list. It’s not really marketed as a travel item and wouldn’t typically be how you first think to use it, but I’m here to tell you it’s clutch!
I’ll talk about our different types of packing cubes and packing process in another post, but here is a quick link to them! I honestly never knew how awesome packing cubes are and how much I would appreciate them until we had kids, and I started packing for an entire family.
We frequently use this luggage scale … I’m excellent at getting our luggage packed right at 47-48 pounds. I always leave just a few pounds in case the airport scale is calibrated differently from ours. It’s so easy and compact that we actually pack it with us now so that I can ensure the same weights for our return flights. I always try to remember exactly how I packed everything going, but it just never goes back in the same 😉 This scale is easy to use, easy to see, lightweight, and a good price!
I think there’s some debate out there over whether or not to lock your luggage. We use these luggage locks to keep our bags safe. I love that they do not require any sort of key that we might lose, and the dials are easy to turn. The instructions are also super easy for setting or changing your personal combination. They are TSA compliant and we’ve had them opened a time or two (our luggage had the inspection notification in it). It just makes us feel better to know that, other than a TSA agent, no one can get into our luggage. It was especially great when I had a work conference in Chicago, and we had to check out of our rooms prior to trainings ending that day. They provided a luggage room at the conference center, but there were hundreds of other people doing the same thing. It made me feel so much more confident to know that my belongings were secure.
I know many travelers out there are using their phones to take pictures these days. While phones have seriously come a long way and most of them take great photos, I think there is still something to be said for an actual camera photo. Not only does the picture itself tend to be better quality, you can do more with the photo on the backend (such as edits, prints and whatnot). I also find that if you need to zoom more, a camera is way better for that than a phone. We use both our phones and this camera on vacation. We have a large Canon DSLR that I love (it was my college graduation present and is still going strong), but it’s too big to lug with us now that we have the kids. That added to the fact that I was constantly worried about breaking it, I never took it out on the actual vacation to use. Now that we have the compact DSLR, I find myself throwing it in the diaper back or even my jacket pocket to bring with us. I can get it out and take a photo super fast!
We found these shoe bags many, many years ago. I actually first started using them when I was taking MARTA (basically the “subway”) to work while living in Atlanta. I wanted to wear comfy shoes while walking but needed to switch into heels upon arriving to work. I’d also sometimes use the building gym, which meant I needed tennis shoes. I’m a little bit of a germ and clean freak in general, but the bottoms of shoes just gross me out! These bags have been great, because they easily hold bulkier shoes, synch up tight, and actually make it easier to find your shoes in your bag in my opinion. What’s great about these bags versus other traditional “shoe bags” I’ve seen is that they are very thin and light. The bags themselves take up no space. They were orange way back when we bought them (they seem to only sell transparent ones now), and ours are still holding up super well after years of use. You get a pack of 3 for $6 which is a heck of a deal!!
We got this medicine bag for free at Target actually. It was a promotion where if you bought something like 3 packs of band-aid products or whatnot, you got to pick a bag. We seem to need an endless supply of Mickey and Paw Patrol band-aids, so that wasn’t a tall order for us. It’s only $5.99 if you can’t catch the promotion, but I notice the promotion comes around at least once per year if not more (usually spring/summer time). I’m not a fan of the current design, but they change it up pretty frequently as well. It’s also something for me that it really doesn’t matter all that much what the colors are. As long as it’s functional and has a high usage rate for us, that’s the most important part. I’ve tried a variety of ways to store medications and other items we need when traveling. Our list of items grew exponentially after having kids. Nowadays with the kids, we’re not traveling anywhere super remote where we wouldn’t have access to basic medications. Our goal with our travel medicine bag is to get us through the travel day and a night or so until we can purchase whatever we need (or if it’s something we are unable to purchase). It was funny timing when I happened to see this on the end aisle at Target. I had actually just purchased a bunch of different bags to try out for this exact purpose. None of them seemed to work for us. Some were too small, some were too bulky in our bags, some didn’t have good zipper compartments. This bag is the perfect size to hold what our family of four needs and it’s structured in a way that holds our stuff perfectly. Ours looks nowhere near as neat as the pictures you’ll see on the target website; but I promise it’s super functional, easy to find what we need, and holds it all! LOL
We also bought a pack of refillable travel pill bottles (these are different than the ones we own – ours just have snap-off tops, but if we had to buy again we’d get the child-proof caps). Chance just threw a label on them. Just want to make a mention that this is something that goes in our carry on 🙂
I was never quite this organized with our medicines/medical items before kids. I used to just throw some band-aids, benadryl and tylenol in a pocket of a makeup bag. I never want to be without something the kids might need in an emergency situation, though. Here’s what’s in our bag in case you were wondering: bands aids (adult and kids), alcohol wipes, gauze, tape, medical scissors, chapstick, tylenol, ibuprofen, aleve, benadryl, zantac, sleep aids, throat lozenges, cough drops, … As you can see, it holds a lot, but it doesn’t take us but a second to find something in this bag!
We have two tripods that we use for travel. Chance and I bought these before our anniversary trip to Arizona. We were going to be doing a lot of hiking and wanted to be able to capture pictures of us together with the beautiful scenery (and not just a close up selfie with a stick in the picture). This one is very small and easy to pack – even fits in a regular sized purse. It’s designed for a smartphone (not a regular camera), but it’s meant for those times when you just quickly want to snap a nice picture and not have the whole professional setup lol. It can either stand up or hang from something. There was a time or two we hung it upside down from a strong tree branch to get a picture.
We also have this tripod that is very compact as far as tripods go. You could technically fit it in a large carry-on sized bag, but we typically check it if bringing on our travels. It’s incredibly stable for how small it folds up and is very reasonably priced. It has attachments for both an iPhone and a large DSLR camera or even a video camera (which many are actually smaller than DSLRs these days).
These iPhone charging cords are especially great for traveling, but honestly they have gotten used so often now! Anyone who owns an iPhone (or any other smartphone) would agree that the charging cords they come with are just always too short – you can’t even keep your phone plugged in if you want to use it while laying in bed. It’s even worse when traveling; sometimes the outlets in your hotel room aren’t even close to the bed! If only the cord had a couple more feet of length… Well guess what, you are in luck! With these iPhone chargers, you can get a pack of three in either 6-foot or 10-foot lengths (for reference, the cord that comes with your iPhone is only 3 feet long). If you’re someone who, when traveling, has ever had to plug in their phone so far away from the bed that you have to physically get out of bed to check it (and seriously, who wants to do that?), then this accessory is definitely worth a look.
Chance found this International adapter before our European trip many years ago. It’s technically an adapter and a power converter. In most other countries, the electrical power coming from the wall outlets has a different voltage and/or frequency compared to that in the U.S. (We’ll spare you the technical jargon – just know that the electricity is different!). A power converter takes the electrical power coming from the wall in your overseas location and outputs a voltage/frequency similar to an American wall outlet. For most items we use every day (smartphones, tablets, laptops, ect.), the charging cords already have a built-in converter (that cube-shaped piece that plugs into the wall). So a converter isn’t completely necessary for those items (just an adapter for the different shaped plug). But depending on what types of electrical devices you intend on using, it might be worth having a converter just in case. This particular model has 3 outlet plugs and 4 USB ports, allowing you to plug in up to 7 devices at once! The only quip we have about it is that it is kind of loud, especially if you’re in a small hotel room and trying to sleep. But if that doesn’t bother you (heck, maybe you’ll even like it), then it definitely gets the job done.
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