If you know me, I am a person who likes to have all my spaces tidy. This goes for my car, too! As a mom, this is a space that can quickly become a messy space if I don’t keep on it.
While we are out and about, things accumulate in the car, like sippy cups, snack trash, crafts from Storytime at the library, and the different toy that always has to accompany my toddler into the car. I have a few things in my car that help keep my car tidy, but I also have a few tricks for keeping it tidy as well.
Everytime I come home, I reset my car by taking out all of the trash, cups, and whatever else that doesn’t belong in my car. Most of the time, I put all of this stuff away right away. My kids tend to fall asleep in the car so I have time to do this after I transfer them out of the car.
However, even when it is chaotic when arriving home I try to at least get the stuff out of my car. I am one of the fortunate ones who can park in my garage attached right to my house, which makes this a little easier. I can just throw everything into the kitchen and deal with it later. Even if that doesn’t happen, I still try to clean it out by the end of the day in my nighttime routine.
One more trick I do is cleaning out trash at the gas station. After I get my gas pumping, I go through the car and find all of the trash. For the most part, we have the trash accumulating in the pockets on the door, which we consider our “car trash cans.” However, my toddler has recently been chucking his empty applesauce pouches in the car just as far as he can to be funny.
Now, I’d like to share everything in my car as a mom of two young kids that just make my life a little easier and the car a little tidier.
Let’s get into it!
- Diaper Bag
If you’d like to see everything in my diaper bag, you can check it out here. This is not something that is always in my car, but it is always in my car when we are going out. I decided to include this because I know there are people out there who always have diaper changing items in their car, but this is something I have found that I don’t need because of the diaper bag. We have everything we need right in there since it is always packed and ready to go!
- Grab-n-Go Backpack with Activities
We have created a small backpack for our toddler to bring into church, restaurants, and any other places that may require entertainment for our toddler. This has stuff like books, coloring books and crayons, and small toys that don’t make any sound. We leave this packed up and in our car so it is one less thing to worry about when we are in need of it.
- Bag for Car Toys and Accumulating Toys
As I mentioned earlier, my toddler loves to bring a toy with him into the car, but sometimes he forgets. So, we have a small bag of toys full of toys and books we call our “car toys.” On those days he forgets a toy, he will usually ask for a car toy to play with or even the whole bag. We keep them all consolidated in a bag so we don’t have toys all over our car. In our car this is just a Mickey Mouse reusable bag from the Dollar Tree, but you could honestly use any bag from around the house.
Toys also accumulate when we are out, either from birthday party favors or kids’ meals and these usually get thrown into the bag as well. From time to time we go through this bag and see what we still want to keep and what we can get rid of.
- Plastic bags for dirty clothes, dirty diapers, or trash
Now this is something I also have in my diaper bag, but I believe you can never have enough of these around. You never know where you will be when blowouts and messes happen, but you are going to want somewhere to put the dirty clothes, especially if they are covered in poop. Having a few plastic bags around for emergencies is something I have found really helpful. There are also times you have dirty diapers or trash with nowhere for it to be thrown away, so just having a bag that can hold the messy trash until you can throw it away is a game changer.
In my car, I keep a few of these in the pockets behind the driver and passenger seats. I always make sure these are stocked up in there because I believe these are the most helpful things to have in a messy crisis.
- Double stroller
Finally, we always have our double stroller in the car, that is it’s home where it belongs. It is such a bulky item and we have found that this is the easiest place to store it in our home even though we use it for our daily walk to the park. When it is time to use it, I just pull it out. Don’t forget we have our car parked in our garage attached to our house, so this may not work for you.
We also love always having this in the car because that is something you don’t want to forget at home.In the past we have turned around after already leaving the house because we forgot the stroller! But, this is something we don’t have to worry about anymore, which is always nice to have one less thing to worry about.
We have the Graco Ready2Grow LX 2.0 Double Stroller that we love! It collapses really easily and compactly. We can click the baby’s carseat into it for quick trips or use the seat up on the top for him. My toddler can also climb in and out on his own in the front seat for him. There are other ways we can use in the future when the kids get a little bigger too, that we haven’t tried yet.
That is everything in my car with two young kids! I always feel like everything we need and it helps keep it tidy. As I have mentioned in other posts, remember there may be things my kids don’t need that your kids always need because every kid is different and has different needs.
I hope you found something in here that you can implement into your own car or maybe help you minimize yours. I have been tweaking over time what I may and may not need when our family is out and about and I feel like I have recently perfected what works for our family. Don’t be afraid to try minimizing the items in your car just to see if it works and if not, you can always bring stuff back to make it work for you.
With love,
Victoria O’Brien