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After our recent Tasmania motorhome holiday, here are our top tips for a successful and fun motorhome holiday with kids! As with any holiday with kids, there are always challenges involved, such as keeping them occupied while on the road or sharing a small-ish space together for several days. These tips will certainly help for your first time hiring and travelling in a motorhome or campervan with kids.
Entertain Me
Dreading the “Are we there yet?” questions before you even hit the road? Thankfully there are a variety of ways to keep the kids entertained while driving, during quiet time, or on rainy days while on your motorhome holiday, and without spending a ton of money. In fact, most items you may pack are probably already in your home already! Here’s what we packed for our 10 days in the motorhome:
Games – UNO and Jenga, these were extremely popular, especially on the couple of rainy afternoons we experienced while on our trip around Tassie!
DVDs – most motorhomes have a TV with an in-built DVD player, so pack a couple of family-favourites to watch.
Colouring-in and activity books with pencils, all in a large pencil case to keep it together while we travelled.
Tablet – the kids have a dedicated tablet to share when we travel, with educational games and apps. We also download several episodes of their favourite series from Netflix to watch offline. Audiobooks are also a favourite, and a great option for them to listen to when they are sick of looking at the passing scenery out the window.
Snack Time
I don’t know about you, but when my kids are on holidays, they seem to eat constantly! I stocked up on lots of fruit and snacks at the supermarket before embarking on our trip, and stored them in an easy-to-reach shelf above the dinette. Having a fridge and kitchenette in the motorhome was an advantage while travelling with the kids, as we could simply pull up anywhere and make a meal, snack and a cuppa whenever needed.
Get Outside
Okay, this one doesn’t just apply to the kids, as even us adults enjoyed pulling up wherever we wanted and exploring the great outdoors! Frequent stops allowed us to stretch our legs while the kids burnt off some energy in the beautiful places we found on our Tasmanian adventure.
Be Flexible
This…this tip was probably the key to us having a successful campervan holiday with kids. We didn’t really plan anything ahead and try to stick to a schedule, apart from deciding where we would go on our first day after picking up the motorhome. While we didn’t want to miss out on anything, travelling with kids means taking things at a slower pace, changing plans at the last minute and factoring in rest time! With only 10 days in the motorhome, we decided on just sticking to the east coast of Tasmania and visiting a few key destinations that were on our Family Bucket List.
Pack Smart
While motorhomes are essentially a house on wheels, you need to be smart about storage space and what you pack when in a motorhome with kids. Forgo the large suitcases for soft duffle bags that, once empty, can be folded down into a small space. We packed two large duffle bags (one for the adults, one for the kids) and stashed them in a small storage compartment under a dinette seat for the trip. All clothing was packed in packing cells, which we transferred into an overhead cupboard for each person. The packing cells helped with keeping everything neat and tidy and prevented clothing from spilling out whenever we opened a cupboard! Dirty laundry was stored in a pop-up laundry hamper (the one we use in our own caravan) and stored in the shower recess when we travelled. I also highly recommend the Dreamably 6 in 1 Laundry Washing Sheets instead of laundry powder or liquid to cut down on weight and space!
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