Tips to Get Organized for Travel in the New Year

Like a lot of people, I usually spend the first few weeks of the new year getting organized. Something about putting Christmas decorations away seems to inspire a cleaning and decluttering spree this time of year.

Although my closets and garage can definitely use some attention, my travel life often needs a good refresh as well. The new year is when our family starts getting serious about booking our summer travel adventures, which usually include one or more complicated trips to more distant destinations. Naturally I find myself immersed in a lot of travel logistics and planning this time of year.

As a former lawyer who pays a lot of attention to detail (sometimes perhaps too much!), I've developed a number of systems over the years that have helped get and stay organized when it comes to travel. The system is far from perfect, but it's been a major time and sanity saver for someone who travels as much as I have to for both work and fun.

If you are looking to get more organized and on top of your travel planning this time of year, here are my best tips (including some things I'm doing in the this week myself) for getting organized for travel in the new year.

The garage and the closets can wait... planning for travel is much more fun, after all!

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Tips for an Organized Travel Life in the New Year

1. Get a password manager.

Our digital lives have officially gotten far too complicated, and most of us have hundreds of passwords we struggle to track. If you travel regularly, particularly as a family, passwords for airline accounts, hotel loyalty programs, and other travel apps can proliferate far too quickly.

The single easiest way to get more organized, both and travel and more generally, is to invest in a password manager. This allows you to access all your accounts on multiple devices whether you are at home or on the road.

We have personally used 1Password in our household for over a decade, but there are a number of choices out there that get the job done. Others include Last Pass, Dashlane, and Bitwarden. If you are an all-Apple household, you can at the very least use macOS's Keychain Access.

2. Make a family packing list.

Family Suitcases with Disney Cruise Luggage Tags

One of the most basic ways I have streamlined my family's travel life is by having a comprehensive packing list saved on our computer. In fact, I have more than one, as I've tailored that original list and created versions of it specifically for different destinations over the years - beach destinations, ski trips, theme parks, outdoor adventures in national parks, cruises, etc.

As my kids have gotten older, the lists evolve as well. Diapers and booster seats have been replaced with makeup and video games. (Sigh!)

Having a list for everyone in the family at the ready is such a time saver. Before every trip, I pull it up and make a few final additional modifications in a couple of minutes. Each member of my family can then can start their packing almost immediately and not worry about essentials getting forgotten.

Need somewhere to start to make a list for yourself? Check out this master packing list for family travelers or borrow from any of these 25 packing lists for every kind of travel.

3. Check passport expiration dates.

There are a few things worse than realizing a few days before an international trip that someone in the family has an expired passport. This time of year is a great time to pull the family's passports out and check to see if anyone has a passport expiring in 2025 or even the first half of 2026.

Expiration dates can really sneak up on you. Many international destinations require you to have six months of validity on your passport, so your passport is "expired" before it really expires. If you have kids under the age of 16, passports only last for 5 years instead of the usual 10 years for adults, so this is a task families have to tend to more regularly.

If you have a summer trip planned overseas, there is more than enough time to get a passport renewal processed if you submit the paperwork in January. If your spring break travels include leaving the country, you might want to consider paying the extra fee to expedite a passport renewal just in case, particularly if spring break for your family falls in March.

My passport expires later this year so I'm doing this task right along with many of you!

4. Put next year's school calendar on your family calendar.

Most families, especially those with older kids like mine, have to plan their travels around the school calendar. Many school systems release the calendar for the next school year this time of year, so it's a very smart idea to get those dates on your own family calendar as soon as possible.

Looking ahead to 2025-2026 will help you spot school breaks and holidays where you might be able to squeeze in a trip. Planning in advance can help get the trip locked in earlier than other travelers for the best deals and availability. Plus, if you work in a traditional office setting, you can also get ahead of your co-workers in requesting time off during popular times of year.

This task has become particularly important for my family now that my kids are in separate schools. Finding those few precious days where the kids both have time off of school (other than summer and Christmas breaks) is essential for us being able to travel as a family.

5. Stock up on travel toiletries.

There are some items you need to take on every trip: toothpaste, shampoo, first aid, etc. I find it saves a ton of time in the days before a trip to already have those key toiletry items somewhere in my medicine cabinet.

In the new year after you've returned from any holiday travels, take stock of what travel size toiletries you have and make a drugstore or Target run to grab any missing ones. You'll thank yourself when packing time comes for your next trip.

And, if you are feeling particularly ambitious, consider pre-packing a toiletry kit for everyone in your family. I keep a mostly-packed toiletry kit with essentials always ready for my kids and for me so I'm never starting from scratch before a trip.

Do you have frequent flyer accounts for everyone in the family for each airline you fly? If not, why not? I can't tell you how many friends I know who forget to get accounts for themselves when they fly an airline for the first time. Even more common is that they forget to sign their kids up for frequent flyer accounts at all. Don't leave miles (and free travel) on the table!

Before my youngest was even 2 years old (when he could still fly as a lap child for free), he already had United and Southwest frequent flyer accounts. My oldest now participates in more than half dozen programs on U.S. airlines alone.

If you already anticipate flying a new airline in 2025, go ahead and get mileage accounts for the whole family set up. It's easier to do it now than when you've found a flight deal and are racing to get a reservation booked. And... don't forget to put those logins and passwords in your password manager while you are at it!

7. Get Award Wallet.

While a password manager can do 90% of the heavy lifting for tracking travel accounts, more frequent travelers may want one more related tool to help with travel loyalty program accounts. For these, you aren't just tracking your login and password, but you are also tracking the miles and points you are accruing, and perhaps other benefits like hotel free night certificates and expiration dates.

Award Wallet is the gold standard for tracking all of the aspects of these airline and hotel loyalty accounts. You can also track everyone in the family under a single account (I even track for my parents and my mother-in-law in ours!).

The basic version is free but if you want to test out the fuller-featured paid version that I rely on, I currently have 7 free upgrade codes to share. Sign up here and use code free-ztqfuc before they are gone.

8. Get the right apps for your next trip.

Having the right travel apps on your phone is extremely important for use while traveling. With WiFi and cell service not always available (especially on planes or in remote areas), you may not always be able to download them at the moment you need them.

I always have the app for any airline on which I travel on my phone at all times. I also have apps for all the major hotel chains (Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt), as many of them now offer digital key access.

Some of my other travel app favorites:

TripIt (for tracking travel reservations)
FlightAware (for tracking delays and information like where your flight is coming from)
Lyft and Uber (always compare both ridesharing apps for the best price and availability)
Mobile Passport Control app (for speedy re-entry into the US - often just as fast as Global Entry!).

And, of course, if you are headed to Anaheim, these are the Disneyland apps you need.

9. Purge your luggage stash.

If you are like me, you probably have a bin in the basement or garage that is absolutely overflowing with duffel bags. And perhaps you have a lot of suitcases from decades prior you've quit using because they don't have the latest in luggage tech. If so, it's time to clean out your luggage stash!

Santa brought my husband and our teenager a few new pieces of luggage this year, so this is on my own to do list. As your kids get older, the kinds of luggage that find yourself using will evolve. With a tween and a teen now, we are team carry on for shorter trips these days. So our kids are using 22 inch roll-on spinner bags the vast majority of the time, and we've needed to make space for more of those in the basement.

10. Start booking!

Have you booked any travel for 2025 yet? If not, get going! I know from years of tracking traffic to this very travel blog that New Year's Day always brings a big traffic bump. After the holiday craziness ends, millions of Americans sit down, log on, and start researching and booking their spring and summer vacations.

If you can find a few extra minutes now too, I highly recommend locking in some travel plans for spring and summer 2025. If you don't have time to do all the research, at least make some flexible bookings you can always cancel or change later as your plans firm up. And it's also not too late to find some last minute travel deals for a winter getaway.

I'm already taking my own advice as well. My husband and I just booked two Airbnb reservations for our family's European summer adventure. I also just moved a winter weekend in Yosemite to later in the month because the snow is not yet cooperating in that part of the Sierra. We have lots more to do before the month is out, so stay tuned...

Happy 2025 and happy travel planning!