Travel Tips and Tricks (ft. COVID-19)
Traveling with kids can be overwhelming and always exciting 🙂 You gotta be on top of your game and prepared for every eventuality. Add CORONA to the mix and it gets quite interesting. A lot of my prep for our recent trip was the same as always, so this post will be useful and practical for all travel, during, and post, Covid-19.
I think it’s important to address the decision I made to actually travel during COVID-19. It’s safe to say that I am not the only one who feels very confused and uncertain during these times. I feel like there is lots of conflicting information and too much judgementalism. In general, I’m not a big fan of “judging” or pushing my opinion down the throats of others. One of the most valuable things I have learned in my almost 36 years 🙂 is that we never know what’s going on behind the scenes in someone else’s life; we just don’t, period. I’m hoping we can move through this time with a little more compassion, empathy and understanding. Having shared that, Chaim and I felt strongly that for our family, this trip was very important, so we needed to figure out how to do it in the safest, and most responsible, way.
As I was trying to figure out how to travel myself with 4 kids (and I don’t know about you, but my kids literally touch everything) without losing my mind, I came across a post by @TheFlexibleChef about her international travels with her kids during Covid-19 and her use of electric scooters and my mind started brewing. Thinking along those “out of the box” lines, I asked myself “what if we used manual scooters to travel through the airports?” It seemed like a great way to minimize the kids touching random surfaces on the moving sidewalks and throughout the airports. IT WORKED! I am so happy I did it, they were thrilled scootin’ through the airport which kept their hands occupied 🙂 and there was a bonus benefit, we now have the scooters at my parent’s house which we use every day to get to and from camp.
On the plane, we were required to wear a mask. I was pleasantly surprised how well the kids cooperated. I was probably a worse sport about it than they were. I also decided that we’d use plastic shields as well, which again the kids wore without fussing; it was just another layer of separation between them and the infinite germs and made me feel a little more comfortable.
https://www.pushcases.com (for the marker bag)
I packed sanitizing wipes and each of their backpacks was packed with hand sanitizer. My favorite is doTERRA’S on-guard spray. It’s Super effective, safe and smells delicious. Here’s a link…
The most exciting thing for my kids is to pack their backpacks before a trip. It’s really quite annoying and I would totally rather do it myself, but they love it so much, it makes the trip so exciting, so I get over myself. I make a time for each kid to collect what they want and then we go through it together and make sure everything they are bringing is reasonable and practical. I will share with you some of our top travel toys and provide links for what I can.
https://www.amazon.com/PLUS-Preschool-Pastel-Building-Piece/dp
https://amzn.to/31SHhhA (I don’t have a picture but these are awesome and I got a package for each kid)
https://amzn.to/3ecPFep (shape shifting cube, so great!)
I also got these awesome zip containers that were great for snacks! What’s unique about these containers is that they stand on their own, and that really prevented a lot of spills which I am super grateful for!
Traveling with kids is an art, and you definitely get better at it, the more you do it. We travel quite a bit and every time I learn something new that enhances the experience. Be open to the adventure, manage your parental expectations, and just know nothing will go as planned; this sets you up for success.
Happy trails