Packing

This is what the back of the van looked like when I packed it up for the kids and me to join some friends for three days and two nights of camping.

This is what the back of the van looked like when the Jedi packed it up for an 18 day  family road trip through 15 states and back.

See the difference there?


You know what the difference is? It's that the Jedi is an amazing man. He's such an amazing man, he gets his own adjective. He's "aMANzing".

You may be wondering where all the stuff WENT. Sit back, relax, and I'll take you on the journey of the invisible stuff.

First, the Jedi has been planning and organizing for months. Early on, he had us each get one days worth of clothes. He made a neatly folded stack of our clothes; he measured the stack; and he experimented with plastic organizers to find the smallest practical container to hold the family's clothing for one day. Each night when we stop at a hotel, just the container of the next day's clothes AND one overnight bag with pjs, toothbrushes, and hairbrushes needs to come in. He also measured the space between the two front seats and bought a small cooler/refrigerator which plugs into the van for power.

This weekend, he took every last thing out of the van. Everything came out from the big storage bins under the seats. Everything came out from the two gloveboxes. Everything came out from the side pockets in the doors. Everything came out. Everything. Every square inch of the van got wiped down, dusted, vacuumed. Only those items crucial to the trip went back in. They went back in a neat and orderly fashion. The underseat storage bins have emergency tools plus the games, movies, and books we are bringing. Each day, we'll pull out a few things and make a neat stack of them on one of the middle seats.

He put the luggage carrier on top, which will hold nine of our clothing storage bins plus has some extra room for other miscellaneous things (picnic supplies, a container of our swim clothes, extra toilettries, and whatnot). We'll do laundry at least once on the trip.

The back of the van holds the kids sleeping bags, the one overnight bag we'll need, the van's pop-in table, the medicine bag, one bag of extra shoes for each person, and one duffel bag of raingear and hoodies. 

The middle of the van might get a little more crowded, partly because we have a stuff addiction, but mostly because the middle of the van reflects my influence rather than the Jedi's system. Each of the kids have a back of the seat organizer. (The pic is a catelogue photo, but you get the idea.)

That will hold some of their things, but then they each also have a tackle box for souvenirs (Toa of Boy wants to collect a rock from every state), a trip scrapbook, a DS case, and a backpack of whatever they want to bring on the trip. Sweetling's backpack will probably hold her sketchbook, her pencils, and a ton of library books. Toa's will probably hold a sketchbook and ??? I'd love to find him a cheap bag of action figures or something. I don't want him to take any small toys that could get kicked out of the van and left behind at a rest stop, its absence not to be noticed until we're in a different state. Plastic army men are a possibility, but they lack their own individual personalities. Hmmm.....