All You Need Is Snacks and Clothes
There’s a pile of clothes on the bed and you’ve been staring at it for longer than you’d like to admit. You’ve started pacing around it. You even ironed some to delay making decisions.
You remind yourself you’ve already done the bulk of the work. Forty-eight hours of washing, drying, folding. Some new clothes for the kids stare up at you. You spent time choosing them, guessing sizes. You’re happy with them.
The weather is uncertain in a way that feels like your fault. It could be warm. It could turn. It could do both in the same afternoon. You sit on the thin edge of the bed — the only part untouched by clothes — and open the weather app again to see if it has changed. It has.
You pick things up and put them back down again. Add one more layer. Take one away. Try to imagine a version of the trip where each item earns its place.
There is also the question of where any of it goes, and whether it will all fit. The suitcase is somewhere in the house and you don’t know exactly where.
You start calculating how many hours are left until you’re due to leave. What needs to be done tonight. What has to wait until morning.
Sleep becomes another calculation. Four hours, maybe five, if everything goes well.
One of the children — half of your children — will not go to sleep. They are too excited. They packed their teddy in their backpack. All done, they declared.
They are already on holiday.
But you are standing in a room full of clean laundry that cannot go anywhere.
You are told, at some point in all of this, that what you are experiencing is pre-trip anticipatory anxiety.
In essence: before you get stressed — don’t.
All you need is snacks and clothes.
It is said to defuse the worry.
Have you checked the weather?
Silence.
You think about the snacks. Not just bringing them. Enough of them. The right kind. Things that can be eaten in a car without everything falling apart. That won’t cause a sugar rush but might give them a burst of energy in a slump. Things that won’t melt or create sticky fingers. Things that won’t be rejected on sight. Things that can fix things quickly.
You don’t say any of this.
You can’t travel with two toddlers on vibes and optimism. Someone has to know. And someone always does.
Weeks ago, when there was still time to decide things properly, you sat with your phone and asked: what do you think of this one? This one? Or this one?
It was all fine. Whatever you think. Looks great.
And then, the day before you leave, there is interest.
Oh — that’s a bit far from everything, isn’t it. Is it too late to change?
You look at him.
We had this conversation.
Yes, but — it’s too late now.
You take out the medicine box and put it on the bed.
You are aware, as you open it, that it looks like too much. You consider, briefly, whether this is the moment to strip things back to needs.
Baby paracetamol. Children’s paracetamol. Adult paracetamol. Different doses, different weights. Nurofen, in case the paracetamol doesn’t work. Antihistamine. Plasters. A thermometer.
You go through every box.
Everything stays.
Because if something’s needed and it isn’t there, the person everyone looks to is you. It isn’t just forgotten. It’s forgotten by you.
So everything stays. One big box, but one less worry.
After the conversation about anxiety, you sit down and write a list. Everything that needs doing.
You think about what he might enjoy.
You give him two pages.
Get some emergency cash. Travel documents. Inflate the tyres. Refill the petrol.
He moves through the house with purpose. Crossing things off. Getting things done.
You are glad. You are.
But meanwhile you are still standing more or less where you started. Because your list requires thinking, and thinking doesn’t move in straight lines. It loops. It doubles back. It depends on things that haven’t happened yet.
And also you are still with the children. Because he is busy. With his list. The list you wrote.
You ask him to wash the jeans you want to wear tomorrow. He says he will. Later, you go downstairs and they are on the back of a chair. He’s already gone to bed.
You look at them for a moment.
You don’t say anything. And you start another load.
You don’t sleep properly the night before. You’ve set your alarm to get up early and keep waking every hour. There’s also a small child who has crept in beside you, providing an intermittent foot to the face.
You wake before everyone else. There are still things that cannot be packed — the teddies, the white noise machine, anything still in use by those who slumber.
You move through the house.
You have already planned the route. Found a place to stop that makes sense. Not too far. Not too long. Somewhere the children can get out of the car. To have a coffee.
Another thing that appeared in your head and was dealt with.
There is always a last layer. A final sprint. Things going in as the door is closing.
And then you are in the car. Actually in the car. Moving.
He turns to you.
Did we forget anything?
You think about it.
Well. How would you know. You never know until you need it.
But you think you’re in good shape.
You forgot your toiletries bag.
Not the children’s. Not the medicines. Not the four seasons of carefully considered outfits or the snacks or the white noise machine.
Your toothbrush. Your hairbrush. Your own essentials.
Everything to ensure everyone else’s comfort arrived perfectly.
The destination, for context, was Disneyland Paris — the happiest place on earth.
It rained on the first day. On the second day there were hailstones and a wind warning.
At one point, amongst the chaos, you stopped. It felt like it wasn’t possible to get even more wet, so you might as well look up and survey the scene. Rain seeping into your runners. Rain rolling down your face, mixed with the bubbles from the Mickey Mouse bubble wand your three-year-old had negotiated instead of a nap.
You looked around — travel prams blowing across the square in front of the castle. And the Disney music, the full orchestral fairytale version, pumping through it all as if none of this was happening — underneath it, or maybe above it, the beating, relentless sound of a hundred clear plastic ponchos in the wind.
Children everywhere in summer clothes covered in ponchos, little legs going pink with cold, peeking out from under whatever their parents had thrown over them to protect them. Coats. Blankets. Another plastic poncho.
Your child had his rain gear. You had packed it. Your husband had suggested, at the time of packing, that this was completely ridiculous. Why would he need rain gear.
Your child, despite the rain gear, stood in the middle of Fantasyland crying that he was freezing. I want to go home. I want to go home.
The three-year-old had never seen Spider-Man. He knew about Spider-Man only because some of the kids at crèche had Spider-Man t-shirts. That was the full extent of it. He insisted on the ride.
The sign said thirty minutes. We can probably manage that.
Then there were technical difficulties, announced in French and then English, which extended things to sixty minutes. No snacks. A three-year-old who wanted to be carried. Attempts to pass the time by playing Spider-Man did not help.
Ninety seconds on the ride. Eyes closed the entire time.
Afterwards he declared that he was afraid of Spider-Man. And spiders. And that there would be no more Spider-Man ever again.
That night, the last thing he said before falling asleep: No more Spider-Man, Mama. And no more Stinky Dog.
(Slinky Dog. The ride.)
You started to notice the other mothers. You could see it, once you knew to look for it. The mental load of the whole thing. Now that you were starting to feel depleted, you were surveying them — looking for signs. The ones with the enormous backpacks and the lanyards and the ponchos already distributed and the snacks already out. All of them moving through the park like they were on a socially sanctioned endurance test. Which, it turned out, they were.
And then the families. Old and young, big and small, in matching merchandise. T-shirts, ears, hoodies. Family Disney Trip 2026. Because you saw them and you knew. Behind every single one of those was a mother who had thought of it, ordered it, organised the sizes, kept it secret, packed it carefully, and said nothing. Proof of nothing. Just the thing, done.
He had one job on the third day. You asked him because your hands were tied strapping a baby into the pram — the same baby who had decided to sprout his first molars over those three days. He checked the weather. He reported back: no rain.
So we definitely don’t need the rain covers for the prams? Or rain jackets?
Nope. No need to carry more stuff than we already have, it was declared.
It rained anyway. The canopy at the bottom of the pram filled with an inch of water.
You ran out of snacks. Not because you didn’t bring enough. You brought enough. But two toddlers on a rainy holiday in Disneyland Paris with nowhere to sit down will go through snacks at a rate that no amount of forward planning fully anticipates. Gone by day two.
All you need is snacks and clothes.
You had both. Briefly.
On the third day the sun came out.
You decided this was it. You were going to salvage the trip. You were going to rally everyone, lift the mood, make the most of the last day. You even gave the baby with the molars a pep talk about being positive while feeding him his morning Weetabix. You said to the three-year-old: we’re going to have the best day ever, right! Right? The second right spoken more like a plea than a statement.
You had bought new clothes for everyone — spent time on this, thought about it, guessed the sizes right — and this was the moment. The photo. Evidence that you’d been there. That it had been worth it.
You tried to get everyone together. You tried to be cheerful about it. It was important to you and you tried not to let that show.
The complaints started. Then the crying.
You tried for a while. The tower in the background, if you could get everyone to stop moving. And then someone said — genuinely, no harm in it — I thought we’d be on the road by now. It’s getting late.
And something in you just. You felt it coming and you couldn’t stop it. You were so tired. All you wanted was one photograph. One good photograph. Your children were crying. You had no snacks left. No toothbrush. You’d checked the weather fourteen times. It had rained anyway.
You took the sunglasses off your head and put them on. Not for the sun.
You got the photo.
When you look back at it, you see a family on holiday. Smiling, more or less. Everyone in their new clothes. The sun out at last.
You know what else is in it.