With summer vacation on the horizon, I fondly remember those summer memories that I had as a kid.  It was a time for family trips, daily popsicles and staying up late…and it makes me want to be sure I create those happy memories for my own kids.

Our family recently took a trip to Southern California.  And while it definitely wasn’t stress-free, I love how travel can teach us some little things about our family and ourselves.   For instance, I learned that Elle can giggle non-stop through a 2-minute rollercoaster ride, and that Max can eat a funnel-cake with his entire face.  I also learned some things about myself --like, I haven’t outgrown my fear of rollercoasters (and I’m not  good at faking that I have); and that funnel-cakes still taste as good to me as when I was two.

I also learned that travel really brings out my inner “clean-freak.”

Now I don’t consider myself cleaning-obsessed, but being on vacation suddenly raises my awareness of my own personal standards of “a clean environment.”

I realized that when we travel, we are really at the mercy of someone else’s cleaning standards. When hotel rooms, bathrooms, restaurants are washed by somebody else, I am no longer in control of my family’s environment.   Now in some cases, like when I see a table being wiped with bleach, I’m pretty happy because I definitely don’t do that enough at home.  But in other cases, like when I stumble into public restrooms with toilets so dirty that they look like they could sprout legs and walk away…well, I definitely cringe.

So, to stay sane, I’ve reconciled with the fact that when I travel, things around me will fall into 3 buckets of cleanliness:  those things I can control, those I can mitigate and those I simply need to suck-up and deal with:

1)      Those things I can control

This bucket consists mainly of items that I have brought from home or otherwise prepared for.  For example, a mini pet-peeve of mine is when my dirty clothes co-mingle in my suitcase with the nice, clean laundry I’ve packed for our trip.  I realize I may be alone in this (my husband for example, sees no issue with placing his flip flops right on top of his t-shirts), but this intermingling drives me batty.  So, I’ve solved this with bringing “plastic bags galore” to separate and store everything from toiletries to white-clothing to shoes.  Yes, if the authorities opened my suitcase, I could probably be detained for extreme plastic-bag usage.  But this allows me to control what goes in and out of my suitcase and somehow makes me feel better about the cleanliness of what I’ve traveling with.

2)      Those things I can mitigate

We’ve all asked for highchairs only to see the wait staff return with what can only be described as globs of crusty food remnants fashioned into the shape of a highchair.  So I become that crazy person that busts out Clorox® Disinfecting Wipes that I’ve packed in (what else?) a plastic bag* . I give the highchair the ol’ wipe-down and then feel like, ‘OK, I can at least relax when my son starts manhandling every inch of his chair and then his spaghetti.’  This doesn’t prevent a stressful meal out with kids, but hey, at least the restaurant furniture is one less thing I need to worry about.

3)      Those things I have to live with

We’ve all seen those questionable 70’s-print hotel bedspreads that  look like they haven’t been cleaned since…well, the 70’s.  Inevitably, upon entering the room, my kids make a bee-line for the beds and start rolling around on them, making the equivalent of snow angels on the comforters, just to be sure that every inch of their bodies is smothered with whatever lives inside those bedcovers.  In these cases, I just realize that there’s nothing I can do.  I simply mentally prepare to make the kids take extra-long baths at night or otherwise, pray for the best and try to minimize actual contact with them (the bedcovers, not the kids).   I figure it’s the only way that I can stay sane; otherwise I’d go off the deep end and never leave home.

How does your “standard of clean” change when you travel?

*Use products as directed!