Our Luggage Rules are simple: One suitcase per person. And each adult gets an additional carry-on.
Before each trip, someone is appointed (or appoints themselves) "The Luggage Regulator." This person decides how much luggage will be allotted per person on the trip. And history shows it's not a lot! As silly as this sounds it does make sense for a group as big as ours.
Every little extra carry-on quickly adds up while available arms are quickly subtracted by the need to hang on to energetic children. Thus, The Luggage Regulator enforces The Luggage Rules.
Kindly, this person takes into account the need for a few exceptions.
Suitcase full of diapers, baby food etc. Such things cost more on the islands than on the west coast USA. By bringing our own we save some money and have an empty bag on the trip home for souvenirs!
Carry-on bag of snacks, games, DVDs for the kids (and some adults) during the flight to Maui. We figure in that case, we're doing everyone on the plane a favor by providing our own entertainment so it's worth the extra bag! For more ideas on what to pack for children, please see our
Traveling with Children
page.
Car seats! Our toddlers (although not required by law) fly much better when restrained in their own familiar car seat. To them, it's like a really long car ride.
Yes, we made our own luggage tags and even found neon colored cable ties and rivets to attach them to our bags. In case you were wondering how crazy we are--this is it. This is how much we love going to Maui.
But we didn't just stop at making a cute tag. Each family's tag was a different background color to make counting all our bags even easier. Think about it, that's a lot of black suitcases floating around! I know, we're quirky but there's a fine line between insane and genius (not sure which side we fall on!)
Some key points to think about when making your own Luggage Rules.
It's important to know before you leave the total number of pieces of luggage you have. That includes check through, carry-on and unique sized (like carseats or strollers).
You should also know the breakdown of numbers for pieces checking through, carry-on and extras like car seats. Luggage check-in can be crazy. Knowing how many and which pieces ahead of time keeps the chaos to a minimum. Also, if you have luggage tagged in advance it saves time at the ticket counter.
We designate someone from each family group to remember the "magic numbers" (total number of bags, number of check-in, number of carry-on, any misc. like car seats) for their own family. This way every child and smart mouth adult doesn't yell out their favorite number just to confuse the situation--although that happens occasionally too. Each airport stop at baggage check-in and claim has us all standing around spouting out numbers to my mom and dad who keep track of the grand total.
