The Walk to the Room

There is a very specific kind of chaos that happens when you arrive at a hotel with two small children.

The drive is over. Everyone wants out. Someone needs a diaper. The stroller is somewhere underneath the luggage. Half the things in the car need to come upstairs and half don't. A valet is standing beside the trunk trying to be helpful while you point at bags and explain which ones belong where.

Meanwhile, two toddlers have absolutely no interest in participating in this process.

We learned this at Ojai.

We had packed everything we needed. That wasn't the problem.

The problem was that we had packed for the trip.

We hadn't packed for the arrival.

The first time, everything was everywhere

Our first big hotel trip with the twins was to Ojai Valley Inn when they were about 14 months old.

Traveling at that age required a lot of stuff.

Two car seats. A stroller. Clothes. Pool gear. Milk. Bottles. Their floor bed. The regular kid bags. All the things that seem reasonable individually and slightly absurd once they're assembled beside a car.

And we had put them wherever they fit.

Some things were in the trunk. Other things were in the front. More things were on the floor around the car seats.

It technically worked.

Until someone other than us needed to unpack it.

When we pulled up at Ojai and handed the car over, the person helping us had no way of knowing what belonged in the room and what was supposed to stay in the car.

So one of us had to stand there directing the whole operation.

Nothing disastrous happened.

It was just harder than it needed to be.

And those are often the lessons that stick.

Now we pack backward

The biggest change we've made is ridiculously simple.

Everything that needs to go into the hotel gets packed together.

Not wherever it fits.

Together.

When we pull up now, we each take one child.

We flag down valet and ask for help unloading.

Everything going upstairs can come out in essentially one sweep and go directly onto the bell cart.

Then we take the twins to check in while the bags make their way upstairs.

Nobody has to ask us whether the bag underneath the stroller stays in the car.

Nobody has to wait while we excavate something from beneath a car seat.

And neither parent has to simultaneously manage two toddlers and an unloading operation.

By our stay at the Westin South Coast Plaza, we'd finally gotten this right.

The difference was almost comical.

Same family.

Still a lot of stuff.

Completely different arrival.

One bag never leaves us

There is one exception.

Our everyday bag stays with us.

It doesn't disappear onto a bell cart because it contains everything we're most likely to need during the awkward stretch between getting out of the car and actually being settled into the room.

The activity book has earned its spot because hotel arrivals involve waiting.

Waiting at check-in.

Waiting for a room.

Waiting at a restaurant later.

Waiting for adults to finish doing something profoundly uninteresting when you're two.

This isn't meant to be a universal packing list. It's simply what has survived enough trips to earn a permanent place in ours.

The lobby matters now

Before kids, we don't remember ever evaluating a hotel lobby for its toddler logistics.

Now we notice immediately.

None of these things would have appeared on our hotel wish list before having children.

Now they can determine whether the first fifteen minutes of a stay feel easy or exhausting.

The irony is that some of the most useful family-friendly features of a hotel aren't children's amenities at all.

They're just places that make it easier to be the parent of a small child.

We always ask about the room before we arrive

There are two questions we ask before basically every hotel stay now:

Can we check in early?

Can we check out late?

Neither is guaranteed.

We know that.

Asking anyway is non-negotiable for us.

Our days still revolve heavily around naps, and the difference between getting into a room around nap time and spending several hours trying to bridge the gap can be enormous.

The Westin was a perfect example.

We called ahead, explained that we were arriving with two-year-old twins and asked whether there was any possibility of getting into the room around their nap.

They were able to accommodate us on that particular stay.

The kids went down.

We got the afternoon back.

We ask about late checkout for essentially the same reason.

The more control we can preserve around sleep and transitions, the less the entire trip feels like we're fighting the children's normal rhythm.

Then the hotel room becomes home base

Getting through the door isn't the end of the arrival.

It's actually the second half.

Before we start exploring, we set up the room.

The kids' suitcase gets unpacked.

Snacks go somewhere they can access them.

Milk goes into the refrigerator.

The floor bed gets made.

Then we look at the room from approximately two feet off the ground.

Anything that looks potentially dangerous gets moved.

A lamp that could be pulled over.

Something breakable sitting within reach.

Anything that suddenly looks much more interesting once you imagine a two-year-old discovering it.

Keys, wallets, hotel key cards and anything else we don't want relocated by tiny hands get put somewhere they can't reach.

We aren't trying to recreate our house.

We're trying to remove enough friction that for the next couple of days, this room works for our family.

And then we show them

This might be our favorite part.

Once everything is settled, we bring the kids into it.

We show them where they're going to sleep.

Where their snacks are.

What's outside the window.

We tell them what we're going to do.

At the Westin, they could see the pool from our room.

So before we'd really finished unpacking, they were already standing at the glass looking down and announcing:

Swim-swim.

We change them into whatever they're going to wear for the first adventure.

And the arrival is over.

The hotel room isn't a strange room anymore.

It's where we're sleeping tonight.

The goal isn't perfect organization

We still bring a lot of stuff.

We still forget things.

Somebody still spills something five minutes after we put clean clothes on them.

And sometimes the room isn't ready.

Sometimes early check-in isn't available.

Sometimes the kids have absolutely no interest in following whatever sequence worked perfectly on the previous trip.

The system doesn't make traveling with twins predictable.

It just removes some of the chaos we were creating ourselves.

That's the part we've gotten better at.

What we do now

Before leaving home, we ask one question:

When somebody else opens this trunk, will it be obvious what needs to come out?

That's it.

Nothing particularly revolutionary.

But traveling with two small children has taught us that the difference between a hard day and an easy one is often not one enormous decision.

It's six small decisions made in the right order.

The thing we'd tell another parent

Don't only think about what you're bringing.

Think about the moment you're going to need it.

The floor bed can be buried because we won't need it until we're in the room.

The stroller can't.

The spare clothes aren't useful underneath three suitcases when someone gets sick.

The activity book isn't helpful on the bell cart when check-in takes fifteen minutes.

And the person unloading your car shouldn't need a diagram.

Packing is only half the problem.

The other half is sequencing.

That's the part we wish we'd understood before our first trip.

From our stays

We first learned this lesson during our stay at Ojai Valley Inn with the twins, when everything we needed was technically in the car but almost none of it was organized for someone else to unload.

By our stay at The Westin South Coast Plaza, we'd changed the system. Everything going upstairs was together, the everyday bag stayed with us, and arrival felt completely different.

Same twins.

Better system.