What To Pack For a Mess-Free, Stress-Free Road Trip with Kids + Giveaway

Hear how during my recent family road trip, I kept my kids happy and my car mess-free by packing some fun supplies and the 14 oz. AUTOSEAL® Gizmo Sip Kids Water Bottle which I received for review. Plus enter to win a set of 4 AUTOSEAL® Gizmo Sip Kids Water Bottle for your family to use on your next adventure.

I love to travel! I love going on road-trips just for the fun of getting in the car, taking a drive and watching the scenery go by. My kids, however are a whole different story. They love the excitement of packing the car and setting off on a trip, but after about an hour and a half of sitting in the car it’s over!

With a 9 hour road trip planned last week, I knew that I would need to get creative to keep my kids from grumbling through the entire ride and to make it a fun and stress-free trip for us all. Because I hate arriving at a destination with my car looking as though I transported a pack of wild animals in my backseat, I also wanted to pack things that would be fairly mess-free.

With a little creativity I came up with some great ideas of things to pack for a stress-free, mess-free road trip with kids! All of these things where road tested by my kiddos, and I have to say I was very pleased with the results!

The kids did great on the trip, and when we arrived at the hotel the backseat didn’t look as though we should have pulled up to the zoo instead.

If you could use some help to keep your little monkeys calm in the car… check what I packed for our stress-free, mess-free road trip:

1. Magic Pen Books-

I hate packing a bunch of crayons and markers for the car! Marker lids get lost, crayons roll under the seats, and someone or something ends up getting all marked up! I found these awesome “magic pen” books that solved all of those problems! Each book comes with 1 magic pen that you use to color in the included book. The pen only works in the book and magically adds a variety of the colors to pictures as you color! I love that you only need to keep track of 1 pen and that there is no way to use it on anything but the book. I found a coloring book version for my 3 year old, and a cool puzzle book for my 8 year old.

2. Window Clings/ Reusable Stickers-

I think this was the crowd favorite! I got each of my kids some window clings that they could use to “decorate” their car windows with. It was so simple and inexpensive but the kids had so much fun arranging and re-arranging their window designs. Because everything stayed stuck to the windows, clean up was really easy also.

3. Magnetic games

I found some of the classic magnetic games that I loved playing as a kid and was excited to pack them a long for the road-trip! I may have gotten more of a kick out of these then the kids did, but I think they secretly enjoyed them also!

4. Look and Find Books

My daughter loves books in the car, but reading makes me car sick pretty fast. For this reason I found her some “Look and find” style books featuring some of her favorite characters.<
TIP: I made myself a little “cheat-sheet” so that I could tell her what to look for. This worked out great, because she felt like I was reading to her, and I didn’t get car sick.

5. Card Games

I found these fun card games that where great for the car. One was a scavenger hunt game that had the kids look out for different things along the way like a tow truck, restaurant and red car. The other, “Kid Talk” had funny questions to get the kids talking such as “if you could fly anywhere where would it be.” My kids LOVED this game and went through the entire deck several times.
TIP: To prevent cards being dropped and scattered all over the car I hole-punched the decks of cards and put them on a metal binder ring to keep them together.

6. Snacks– Snacks are a huge lifesaver on any road-trip with kids, however I hate having crackers and cookies dumped all over the car. On this trip, I came up with a new strategy! Instead of buying big boxes of snacks, I bought bags of snacks in small single-serving packs. This cut down on the mess BIG TIME! By giving the kids just a small bag of snacks each they didn’t have to juggle passing boxes of crackers back and forth (which we all know will get spilled at some point)! It cost a little more money this way, but was worth it to save on the mess!

7. Spill Proof Water Bottles-

Something that I have learned is that when in the car, a good spill-proof water bottle is worth it’s weight in gold! I recently discovered the 14 oz AUTOSEAL® Gizmo Sip Kids Water Bottle which was perfect for mess free road-tripping! Thanks to its AUTOSEAL technology, this water bottle is 100% spill-proof! This BPA-free bottle has a button on the side of the lid that kids press to open a special valve that opens the spout and let’s water come out only when tipped in their mouths.

I loved that this system did a great job of keeping water from spilling in the car and was actually fun for my kids to use! It was great for my 8 year old, who is old enough to not want a “spill-proof” cup. The fun button design made it seem like a really cool water bottle to him, rather than a “little kid sippy cup”. I also loved that this bottle doesn’t need a straw inside to work (I always seem to loose them in the dishwasher) and that it is top-rack dishwasher safe, making cleaning easy!

TIP: Get a Autoseal Gizmo Sip Kid’s Water Bottle or any other great Contigo products using coupon code GIZMO25 to get an exclusive 25% off now through 5/31/15.

If you are heading out on a road-trip soon, or just want a great water bottle for all of your adventures this summer, be sure to enter this giveaway! One lucky CleverHousewife reader will win Four #SpillProofGizmo 14 oz. AUTOSEAL® Gizmo Sip Kids Water Bottles ($39.96 value). Enter to win below!