There was a time when packing for a family holiday meant four suitcases, clothes everywhere and at least one person asking, “Mum, where are my shorts?”
And then we discovered packing cubes.
Not just ordinary packing cubes, but compression packing cubes. They have become one of those things we genuinely don’t travel without anymore. After using them on family trips to places like Japan, Thailand, Lapland and the USA, we honestly don’t know how we used to pack without them.
Because when you’re travelling with four people, packing isn’t just about getting everything into the suitcase. It’s about being able to find everything again once you’re there.
And that’s where our Travelicious packing system comes in.

Everyone gets their own colour

Our first rule is simple: everyone has their own colour.
Mum has a colour. Dad has a colour. And both girls have their own.
It sounds like a small thing, but when you’ve got four people sharing suitcases, it makes a surprisingly big difference.
Instead of opening a suitcase and rummaging through everyone’s clothes, we know immediately which cubes belong to whom. The girls can find their own clothes, we can get ready without emptying the entire suitcase onto the hotel bed, and when it’s time to move on, everything goes back into the right cube.
It has become our little family packing system.
And especially when we’re moving between different hotels, islands or cities, it saves so much time.

The reason we use compression cubes

The organisation is great, but the compression is the real game changer.
Once you’ve filled a cube, you close the first zipper and then use the second zipper to compress everything inside. It squeezes out some of the air and reduces the amount of space your clothes take up.
And yes, that really does make a difference.
For our family, it can mean the difference between taking four suitcases or managing with two large suitcases.
That matters when you’re travelling with kids.
Two suitcases are easier to lift, easier to fit into a taxi, easier to get through an airport and much less annoying when you’re moving from one place to another.
And if you’ve ever tried fitting everyone’s clothes, shoes, swimwear and everything else into a car after buying a few souvenirs, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Our favourite packing trick: the extra cube

There’s one packing cube we always try to keep spare.
It’s not for clothes.
It’s for dirty laundry.
As clothes are worn, they go straight into that cube instead of back into the suitcase with everything that’s still clean.
This is particularly useful after a beach day. Wet or sandy swimwear doesn’t end up mixed in with everyone’s clean clothes, and dirty socks don’t somehow migrate into the clean-clothes pile.
At the end of the trip, we take the laundry cube out of the suitcase and head straight for the washing machine.
Future us is always very grateful.

Why they are especially useful when travelling with kids

Travelling with children often means taking more than you think you’ll need.
There are normal clothes, swimwear, underwear, shoes, something warm for the evening, clothes for unexpected weather… and somehow you still end up packing something that never gets worn.
Packing cubes don’t magically make your children’s clothes disappear, but they make the space you have much easier to manage.
They also mean that we don’t have to completely unpack every suitcase at every destination.
If we’re only staying somewhere for two nights, we can simply take out the cubes we need rather than turning the whole suitcase upside down.
That has become particularly useful on trips where we’re moving around a lot.
And when you’re travelling with kids, anything that reduces suitcase chaos is a win in our book.

We use them on all kinds of trips

This isn’t something we bought for one particular holiday and then forgot about.
We’ve used our packing cubes for all sorts of family adventures:

• Long-haul holidays
• Island hopping
• Road trips
• City breaks
• Disney trips
• Winter holidays
• Beach holidays
• Multi-destination trips

They are particularly useful when we’re moving between destinations because our clothes stay organised even when we’re constantly packing and unpacking.
On a trip like Japan, where you’re moving between different places and hotels, that can make a surprisingly big difference. And on a winter trip like Lapland, where clothes are bulky and take up so much suitcase space, compression is even more useful.

So, are packing cubes really worth it?

For us, absolutely.
But not because they’re some revolutionary travel gadget.
It’s because they solve a very ordinary problem: family suitcases are chaotic.
Our packing cubes give everyone their own space, help us make better use of the suitcase and keep dirty clothes separate from clean ones.
And the biggest proof for us is simple: we now use them on every trip.
We even notice when we don’t have enough.
If you’re travelling as a family, I would especially recommend choosing a different colour for each person. It turns something as boring as packing into a system that everyone can actually understand.
And yes, it means the kids can find their own clothes.
Which, in our house, is reason enough.

Our Travelicious packing system

If we had to sum up the system we’ve developed over all our family travels, it would be this:

One colour per family member.

One cube for the things everyone needs.One spare cube for dirty laundry.
Compress everything you can.
And don’t pack more than you
actually need.

It’s simple, but it works.
And those little cubes have helped us go from the feeling that we needed a suitcase for every person to regularly travelling with two suitcases for the four of us.
That makes airports easier, transfers easier and packing and unpacking much less stressful.
So if you’re about to pack for your next family adventure, this is one travel essential we’d genuinely recommend.

Because once you’ve travelled with compression packing cubes, going back to a suitcase full of loose clothes is surprisingly hard.

Take a look at our Travelicious Compression Packing Cubes →