If you spend any time scrolling through travel blogs or social media, you’ll encounter a very vocal, almost cult-like group of travelers: the Carry-On Only Purists. They will look you dead in the eye and tell you that if you check a bag, you are doing travel wrong. They boast about living out of a single under-seat personal item for a month in Europe, washing their merino wool socks in hostel bidet basins.
For a brief, delusional moment before we left, I thought, Maybe we can do that. Maybe we can be those people. And to be honest, when we’re traveling without kids, we ARE those people.
Then I remembered we were traveling with two kids. And a stroller. And my inevitable need to buy souvenirs (which are mostly books for the kids, we really like to support reading in our family).
So, we compromised. And by compromised, I mean we did a hybrid approach that saved our sanity, even if it did lead to a minor physical catastrophe on the JFK escalator on the way home (which you already know all about if you read Part 1).
Here is exactly how we split the baggage load between the adults, why we chose to check a bag, and the packing secret weapon that made the journey home possible.
The Adult Setup: The Cotopaxi Allpa Backpacks
For Mom and Dad, we completely avoided rolling luggage. Instead, we each packed into one Cotopaxi Allpa backpack (35L version).
If you haven’t seen these, they look like colorful (hubby, of course, went with a black pack, so scratch the colorful part there), highly organized turtle shells. What makes them brilliant for family travel is that they open flat like a suitcase, but they strap onto your back with a proper hip belt and chest strap.
Living hands-free is the ultimate luxury when you are navigating foreign transit systems. When we were boarding trains in Belgium or walking down the stairs of our hotel, we didn’t have to worry about dragging four wheels behind us. We just wore our luggage.
In those Cotopaxi packs, we had our own outfits, toiletries, and our laptops. They were heavy, but manageable. And most importantly, they kept our hands completely free.
Because, as it turned out, we needed every single hand we had.
The Deciding Factor: The Stroller and The Kids’ Carry-On
So why did we check a suitcase if we had these amazing backpacks?
It all came down to physics, logistics, and a healthy dose of parental realism.
First: The Stroller. We brought our stroller because, despite our best efforts to train them into Olympic-level walkers, kids’ legs simply give out after hours of walking cobblestone streets. But a stroller requires at least one hand to push—usually two when navigating uneven European sidewalks.
Second: The Kids’ Carry-On. As I mentioned in Part 1, the kids shared a single rolling carry-on suitcase, which our oldest was technically in charge of. I say “technically” because we all know how that goes. By hour thirty of travel, a seven-year-old is not rolling a suitcase. They are dragging it like a dead weight, or trying to ride it like a skateboard, or simply sitting on the floor refusing to move.
We knew, with absolute certainty, that Mom or Dad would end up rolling that suitcase at various points throughout the trip.
If both of us had also been trying to manage our own rolling carry-on suitcases, the math simply wouldn’t work. We would have had:
- Two adult rolling suitcases
- One kid rolling suitcase
- One stroller to push
- Two children to herd through crowds
That is five moving parts and only four adult hands. The math was not mathing.
By choosing to check one big suitcase, we eliminated an extra rolling bags from our active transit equation. On travel days, one parent was reserved for pushing the stroller, and the other parent was rolling the checked back, and sometimes taking over the rolling duty for the kids’ carry-on.
The One Big Checked Bag (And What Was Inside)
Our big checked suitcase wasn’t actually full of clothes. Since we had our strict 4-outfit rule and were relying heavily on laundry, we had plenty of space.
Instead, the checked bag held:
- The bulky items (extra shoes, rain gear)
- A bag of powdered laundry detergent
- The kid’s heavy-duty gear
- Our Secret Weapon: the return duffel bag + extra backpack
Before we left, I tucked a flat, packable backpack and a folded-up duffel bag into the bottom of that checked suitcase. They took up zero space and weighed next to nothing.
Why? Because I know who I am. I knew we would not leave Europe without acquiring things. There would be chocolate. There would be local toys the kids swore they couldn’t live without. There would be books, books, and more books. (Our kids speak French, and so when we travel to French-speaking places, we buy out the bookstores.)
On the way over, everything was neat, light, and contained. On the way back, those flat-packed bags were fully expanded, stuffed to the brim, and hanging off our shoulders (which, yes, contributed directly to the center-of-gravity failure at JFK, but that’s a risk we were willing to take for Belgian chocolate and French books).
The Verdict: Would We Do It Again?
Absolutely.
Checking one bag and going hands-free through airports with the Cotopaxi backpacks for ourselves was the perfect compromise. It gave us the mobility we needed for airports, while giving us the flexibility to handle the stroller and the kids’ tired moments without a physical breakdown (at least until we hit US soil).
If you’re debating carry-on vs. checked for your next family trip, stop looking at what the solo travel influencers are doing. Look at your hands. Count how many things you have to push, carry, or hold. If the number of bags exceeds the number of hands, check the bag. Your sanity will thank you.
Stay tuned for Part 3, where we’ll dive into the art of travel entertainment!
