It is hard to live out of a suitcase.

My little family is used to small space living, but when we’re traveling we often swap our 700-square-foot apartment for something even smaller. When all 4 of us are sharing a bedroom, it can quickly feel crowded and cluttered.

In our home, everything has a place. When we’re living out of bags, it can suddenly become difficult to find basic items. Items such as hairbrushes, keys, sunglasses, and phones are easily lost because they are set down in a new location every time.

This summer we resolved to unpack in a different way.

Here is the process that we used to unpack our bags and settle in to our new space:

1. Assess available storage locations in the room
   • Is closet space available?
   • Is dresser space available?
   • Is there available space under the bed?
   • Are there available flat surfaces on table tops or dresser tops?
   • Are there nightstands or other furniture pieces available?
2. Establish zones within the room for each category
   • Clothing
   • Books
   • Technology
   • Miscellaneous items (keys, glasses, phone, wallet)
3. Unpack suitcases by placing items into the zones

 

We did not have closet space available in this room, but we found two available drawers in the bedroom dresser. We chose to designate one drawer for Emily and one for me. We found that our packing cubes fit perfectly inside, so we were able to pull them out from the suitcases and place them directly inside the drawers!

We established a spot for our extra shoes, right next to the dresser with our clothes.

We found space available under both of the toddler beds, so we pulled Mabel and Matilda’s packing cubes out of the suitcase and slid them under each bed. We also used this location to store extra diapers, and a pair of their shoes.

The top of the dresser was cleared off and available for us to use. When traveling, I have a reputation for frequently misplacing my keys and glasses. We repurposed a plate from the kitchen to hold these items, as part of my strategy to always remember where they are! There is also room on the dresser to charge our phones, which have special phone cases that double as our wallets when we travel.

We utilized a wall hook to hang an extra pillowcase as a laundry bag. This lets us easily keep clean and dirty clothes separate, which was always a challenge when we tried to keep all of our clothes stored in a suitcase.

We brought a bag of books, a bag to store computers/ipads, and a small bag of chargers, including our external charger. We found a space next to our bed to store these bags, and then we were officially unpacked!

Yes, it can be hard to live out of a suitcase. We now use our favorite suitcases as a way to transport our items from our home to our travel location. We’ve learned that it doesn’t work for us to keep everything packed away inside our suitcases after we arrive.

By taking the time to quickly assess our travel room, we are able to think about how we can use the available furniture and floor space to set up zones to store and quickly locate the items we need.

We may be on vacation, but our tidy lifestyle is not!

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