Pack a foldable hamper

When we travel, dirty clothes find the floor. The suitcase is still open for the clean stuff. The 10-year-old and the 8-year-old drop shirts wherever they take them off, and the 5-year-old treats the carpet like a drawer. A hotel room does not come with a hamper, so the pile grows in the only empty spot left.

At home the remodeled house has a place for worn clothes, but on the road that place disappears unless we pack it. The trick is a foldable hamper that packs flat and opens to a full-size hamper once we are in the room, and then dirty clothes go in it instead of on the floor.

We open it as soon as the bags are down, before anyone starts living out of a suitcase. It looks a little funny standing in a hotel corner—a real hamper, like we live there—and then it becomes the most used thing in the room. Checkout is calmer when we are not hunting under the bed for a sock.

We are not picky about which one. Any hamper that folds flat and stands up to full size will do, and once it is open the kids know where the worn stuff goes. The pile belongs in the hamper, not on the hotel-room floor.