A week or more · Several bags, several people, one queue
Family With Children
A family trip is not one packing problem scaled up. It is several packing problems that have to be carried simultaneously by fewer people than there are bags, through a building designed for adults with one hand free.
The arithmetic is unforgiving. Four people, three cases, two adults, one of whom is holding a child. Every bag that needs a hand is a bag competing for a hand that is already busy.
The tests change rank accordingly. The bedroom floor barely matters, because there is always another bag. The front door matters enormously. And the hotel room matters most of all, because everything has to open, at once, in a room with one clear patch of floor.
What people take
Drawn from what the categories on this site are actually for, not from a survey.
- A two-piece set, on the reasonable theory that matching cases are easier to keep track of in a queue.
- A large checked case shared between two people, which doubles the weight on one handle.
- A daypack each for the children, which is the one bag in the whole system that carries itself.
- A full organizer set, because with several people packing into one case, dividing it is the only way anything is ever found again.
Categories that fit this trip
- Checked Luggagesurviving a belt and still opening in a hotel room
- Packing Organizersvolume, which is not the same as weight
Where it lets you down
The same bag, the same six tests, in a different order of importance.
- Stage 2The Front Door
Bags outnumber hands. Every empty weight in the group is added together, and not one of the listings here states any of them.
- Stage 6The Hotel Room
Three cases open in a room sized for one is a floor problem, and no listing in the catalog says how much floor its bag needs to be open.
- Stage 4The Overhead Bin
A family boards together and the bins fill in order. Rigid cases arriving late are the ones that will not slide the last few centimeters.
What this trip punishes
Every trip shape has a habit it is unkind to. These are the ones this shape finds.
- Matching sets bought on looks. A set is two empty weights, and neither of them is stated.
- One very large case instead of two smaller ones. The scale limit arrives at the same total either way, and a single heavy case needs a hand nobody has.
- Assuming children carry their own bag the whole way. They carry it as far as the first interesting thing.
- Under-organizing. With several people in one case, a case without cubes is repacked from scratch every evening.
Worth being careful about
- Your carrier publishes its own allowances, and family and child policies differ between carriers. We print no figures.
- TSA publishes guidance for traveling with children under its special procedures. That is the source to read, not us.
- Compression cubes reduce volume and not weight, and with several bags the weight is the constraint.
- We make no claims about carrying, lifting or what is comfortable for anyone at any age.
A stated size is the size of the body. Wheels, feet and an extended telescoping handle are not usually counted inside it, and the frame at a gate counts all of them.
Sources
The short version
Family With Children
With a family the binding constraint is hands, not liters. Count the bags that need a hand, weigh each of them, and remember that the total weight of the group is a number nobody on any listing has ever offered to help you with.