I knew that when we started traveling as a family, I’d have to leave my minimalist ways behind — or did I? Dan and I traveled the world as a young pre-baby couple, with just one large backpack and one small backpack each, for 10 months.

So when we had our first child, we knew that packing and our luggage situation would look different.

In this article, we’ll detail the best tips for packing light that we learned after our first trip, and our next one and our next one, to international destinations around the world, while traveling WITH our baby (and then a toddler).

Have you tried all the tips in the list below? Pick and choose the ones that’ll help lighten your entire family luggage load when vacation begins.

(Photo below: everything we took to fly to Nova Scotia with an 8-month-old baby)

Compress with packing cubes

Where would we be without our packing cubes? This was a packing hack that I learned from Dan in the early days, as I had previously been using Ziploc bags to flatten and compress my clothes in my bags.

Now, with years of trying packing cubes from various travel brands, we’ve developed the best packing cubes for travel, including ones that can help compress all your baby’s clothes, onesies, baby socks, pants, pajamas and layers.

Zipping all of this up into a single packing cube for our daughter when we went to Mexico was a big breath of fresh air, when I unzipped the packing cube at our Airbnb and ALL her clothes were there, neatly pressed and condensed.

If you haven’t invested in packing cubes yet for the family, our best suggestions are the Bagsmart packing cubes, which come in various colors and sizes.

Ditch the car seat

Okay, this one has to be taken with a grain of salt: I am NOT suggesting that you eliminate one of your child’s most important safety and security items for car travel just for the sake of packing light.

It’s quite the opposite. What I am saying is that you can leave your car seat at home if any or all of the following are part of your travel plan:

  • If you can rent a car seat included with your rental car upon arrival.
  • If you will be picked up from the airport by a friend/family member who has a car seat in their car, and then you won’t be using a car during your trip (city trips).
  • If you’ll be taking mass transit (trains, buses, metro) in a city at your destination and your ride to the airport from home can be with your own car, for example, driven by a friend who can drive it back to your house.

These are all examples of ways you could eliminate traveling with the bulk of your car seat for the duration of your trip! It’s one big step toward packing light, and we did this when we went to Mexico City with our toddler. Our small toddler also flew as a lap infant on the flights, so we didn’t need our car seat on the plane.

(Photo: all our luggage before departing to Mexico City. No car seat!)

Book accommodations with baby gear

Having a travel crib, baby bath and high chair booked and available at our accommodations has changed everything for us. Our best experience so far was actually abroad in Medellin, Colombia, staying at a family-friendly hotel-style apartment rental, where the host company provided these items upon request.

Doing that type of travel, versus when we stayed at an Airbnb in upstate NY and had to bring our own travel crib in the trunk, was a stark difference.

Especially when we fly, and need to pack light, knowing that there is a travel crib waiting for us at our accommodation makes my toddler packing list for international travel that much shorter, and a LOT lighter.

While a lot of hotels may only provide travel cribs, you may luck out with Airbnbs, which have more available family products to search for, from travel cribs and children’s toys to high chairs and baby bath tubs. Our Colombian accommodation even had toddler spoons, forks and bowls! We didn’t have to pack those.

Rent what you can upon arrival

Rent, rent, rent, instead of flying with all your baby equipment! Sites like BabyQuip are marketplaces for renting baby or toddler gear mostly within the US for domestic trips, BUT also have presences around the world. Friends of mine have done this for family trips to Florida, as well as many other places from San Francisco to NYC.

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The great news is that BabyQuip continues to grow, so you can now rent baby gear in Australia, Canada, the Bahamas, St. Martin, St. Thomas, Costa Rica, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, London, Madrid, Venice, Dublin, Mexico and New Zealand. It’s great news for families with small children who want to travel farther and pack even lighter!

Bring a super compact baby carrier

When we got our first baby carrier, I thought hm, this doesn’t compress very well. And I was not sure if I could travel with it.

For the most part, even the best travel baby carriers for travel might be clunky because they are so supportive and strong. But then came my best discovery as a parent, and turned out to be one of the best baby travel accessories ever. It’s my hyper-compact travel baby carrier.

I haven’t seen many like it, and it’s the secret for packing light during a family trip if you’re into baby-wearing. And for months 1 through nearly 18, I certainly was!

At my Baby Tula Travel Carrier Lite review, learn why this baby carrier is the secret for any parent who wants to pack light and not have to leave the baby carrier at home.

Employ a minimalist diaper bag

I didn’t even know that diaper bags could be minimalist items, and then I found out about the ones that I now use on trips with our toddler, like the Kibou diaper bag fanny pack and the Sidekick diaper sling bag from the No Reception Club travel diaper bag backpack.

Using a “pack-light” diaper bag helps with how to change a diaper on a plane. And sometimes these products can even be packed into your larger diaper bag.

Pack clothes for 5 days and wash the rest

If laundry will be available at your accommodation, either via in-unit laundry, a nearby laundromat or an in-house laundry service, you really only need 5 days of clothes for each person in the family!

Here’s my tip: just remember to do laundry at the end of day 3, even if it seems silly, so that if your laundry (when being sent out to a service, or if it has to hang-dry on a laundry line in your rental) takes all of day 4 to dry, then you are set on day 5 to have clean clothes. The rookie mistake would be to wait until day 5 to do wash, and then have no clean clothes at all!

This tip has helped us travel for longer, with less in our packs.

Only bring 1-2 days worth of diapers

If you’ll be arriving in a city, or a familiar destination where you’ll have access to your own transport and getting to a store or pharmacy, then take only the diapers you’ll need for days 1 and 2. Either on the day you arrive, or the next day, buy a brand new package of diapers for your little one. Then, ta-da: you avoided bringing an entire sleeve of diapers in your suitcase!

A mistake we did in Mexico was to travel with a whole bunch of diapers, just out of convenience and thinking we had the space for them, and then running short of only 5 by the second-to-last day of the trip. Oops: the smallest package of diapers we could find was a pack of 40, and we didn’t want to leave those in Mexico! So, we brought them back home with us and our suitcase was almost exploding. Don’t do this!

Use a packing list and check your boxes

Making packing lists like my baby road trip packing list has helped replicate my packing again and again, and continually work on minimizing.

Without a packing list, you can get carried away! And with a packing list, the number of items that you’ll be taking stay neat, thought-out and well-planned. This helps to pack light, stay focused and only pack what you need, eliminating more “what-if’s” that could be purchased at the destination, if needed.

Take along only compact or flat toys

“Flat toys” has been on my essential packing list from the start. Yes, it’s true: the way to pack light is to have your toys (and books) be compact and flat, but to pack a big punch. For me, this has meant lightweight books (none of the thick and heavy board books), and flat-style busy books or soft activity books.

We haven’t found ways to bring along other toys that are round, cube-like or random shapes: these wouldn’t fit smartly in our bags, and a lot of the toys we’ve taken along have been to survive flying with a baby or stay sane when flying with a toddler.

Some great books to bring have been the very flat and also impossible-to-break indestructible books or a soft and colorful busy book that packs pretty flat.

Make your own blackout curtains (with painter’s tape)

We’ve used travel-friendly blackout curtains like the SleepOut curtains, and the fact is that they fold up small, but there’s a hack for packing even lighter.

“Use black trash bags as blackout curtains instead of bringing a SlumberPod,” says my friend Daniela, who has packed hyper-light countless times. “Pack painter’s tape though,” she adds, and this is to hang up the curtains on windows and NOT destroy the paint on the walls at the vacation rental or hotel.

We promise: a few black trash bags can fold up really small in your bags, or can be bought when you land at your vacation spot.

Use a shower to clean your baby or toddler

We were so excited to land on the Munchkin Travel Duck Baby Bathtub as our travel tub for our toddler when we found out that our Airbnb in Mexico couldn’t rent one for us. But, there’s a way to travel without the bulk of an item like this, and save space in the family’s luggage.

My expert traveler friend Daniela suggests using showers to clean babies (or take them in the shower with you) if no baby bath tub is available. My sister did this also, on a trip out west to national parks! Some babies may not care for the shower, but some may find it interesting or funny. It depends on your child’s personality. You can do a baby shower quickly!

You can also try a sponge bath in the hotel sink, for younger babies! The last way to eliminate bath bulk is just to skip the bath completely, which was what we did on our four-day Canada trip.

Make your own travel booster seat

For older toddlers who are eating meals, they’ll need a booster seat at the table for mealtime. But, there’s a way to ditch the PandaEar travel booster seat we chose to bring to Mexico in our checked suitcase, and instead do what my friend Daniela suggests.

Daniela says, “Use pillows covered by a towel, as a high chair.” This is a brilliant way to nix the bulk of a fold-up travel booster seat in your luggage if you have a kid who’s into food and will sit still for a few minutes on a DIY getup like this one in your Airbnb or vacation rental.

Check your car seats and put stuff in the car seat bag

If bringing car seats is mandatory for your trip in order to keep your baby(ies) safe, the least you can do is to save space in your suitcases by stuffing your car seat travel bags full of soft things you need upon arrival. It means feeling like you packed light as you walk through the airport to your gate, or while on a layover.

We’ve done the “diapers in the car seat bag” trick, and my friend Daniela has even had luck fitting an entire SlumberPod in her car seat bags. Check out the photo below.

Bring a single set of pump supplies, or a travel pump

When we traveled to Canada and our child was 8 months old, I was still pumping sometimes. With all the worries about how to feed a baby during travel, having enough milk was one of them.

I had an entire backpack devoted to my pump, its accessories, chargers and spare equipment, and during our four-day journey, I wound up not using any of it. Unfortunately, this bag of bulk went un-used and came home just as I’d packed it.

I think a way to solve this in the future and to pack lighter as a pumping mom is to:

  • Bring only one set of pump flanges, and bring a washing kit to wash it in between uses or
  • Pack only a hand pump, or two (I considered this, but decided against it)
  • Take only a travel pump (I owned one, but had yet to test it out, because I kept procrastinating)

If you prepare in advance, there are indeed ways to pack light when pumping is still part of your baby’s feeding regimen.

Bring laundry supplies for DIY family laundry

If not everything in your baby’s (or your) clothing supply is getting dirty, do some hand-washing in the hotel sink. It is nothing to be ashamed of. My friend Daniela’s expert suggestion is to bring a drain stopper, so that you can turn the hotel sink (which was hopefully sanitized) into a laundry wash basin!

Something as simple as this super cheap universal drain stopper is flat for packing and goes right over a hotel sink (or bath tub) drain so that you can get some washing done.

And hang dry washed clothes with a travel laundry line!

Figuring out how to dry the things from your packing cubes that you just hand washed, while you packed light for the family trip? (Or, you might be abroad in Europe, Latin America or Asia where there are no dryers!)

Try a travel laundry line. This retractable laundry line folds up so small in your suitcase and has clips for hanging items like undies, socks or small onesies. It’s another essential for a travel laundry for traveling light with a baby.