On the Pain of Packing

I made a comment on facebook that packing for a road trip was worse than labor, and got some vigorous disagreement--and some agreement. Perhaps it depends what pain is freshest in your mind. Nonetheless, as I was sitting on our friend's floor, surrounded with eight different receptacles and fifteen different piles, gasping for air, while people brought me water and encouragement but could offer no tangible assistance, it did feel oddly similar. Unfortunately, all the information as to what had to be packed where existed only in my own brain, a place where it was never really at home and kept trying to leave.

I read some wise advice that one should pack in outfits for each person per day. Thus, the advice said, you would only have to take in a bag of pajamas and toiletries and another bag with tomorrow's clothes. This made a lot of sense. So I packed that way. So now, at any given spot, we only have to haul in the bag with tomorrow's clothes, and the bag of kids' pajamas, and the bag with grownup pajamas, and the bag of dirty laundry, and the bag with toiletries and DOB's swim gear, and the cooler, and the box of food/kitchen items, and two beds for the babies, and two booster seats for the babies.

But, you know, there's a small bin of clothes at the bottom that we don't have to haul in every night. It helps.

I hope the beds for the babies survive the trip, as we could find nowhere to put them but down the aisles of the van--which doesn't get in the way of the kids' legs, but I'm not sure what my weight climbing on them a dozen times a day is going to do to them. We put the babies in the very back, in hopes that they would sleep more readily that way, and also because they have a handier shelf for accumulating toys to throw on the floor. This makes for quite an ordeal getting them in and out, however. They do sleep a lot in the car, which means they do not sleep once we arrive at a hotel, instead spending a couple of hours popping up out of their beds like prairie dogs. But the tradeoff is worth it at this point and we will rediscover a Sensible Baby Schedule once we have arrived.