Keep Your Road Trip Organized with This Essential Gear

Reusable, clear plastic bins are the organized road-tripper’s secret weapon. Store toiletries, snacks, dog gear, charging cords, wipes, and kids’ crafts and toys in bins of different sizes, and locate everything easily by just looking inside.

The aptly named Yeti Roadie cooler is compact enough to fit in the trunk and will keep your food and drink cold for a good long while. We love the No Sweat Design, which means it won’t make a wet mess of your car.

One essential component of smart packing involves organizing your phone. Delete any unused apps and photos so you have plenty of room for on-the-road entertainment and photography. And, before you hit the highway, be sure to load up your phone with podcasts, music, audio books, and possibly some game apps for any backseat meltdowns.

If you’re going even somewhat off the grid, Google Maps lets you download maps for vast swaths of the earth, so you can keep following those driving directions far from any cell towers.

Car chargers are a must for any road tripper. We especially like models with multiple outlets, so everyone in the car can charge their various devices at the same time. The TrippLight even includes a three-prong outlet for charging your computer or any large electronics.

It’s not only frustrating to constantly look down to see your GPS—it’s incredibly dangerous. Cell-phone mounts are one way to keep your eyes on the road, while still having a sense of where you are going with your maps app visible on the same line of sight. Enter your destination, connect your charger, and away you go. It’s hard to find a suction cup-based phone mount that stays reliably in place, but this model fits the bill, and easily allows for width adjustment for when you have to switch out one passenger’s phone for another, larger one.

Mind the gap! There is nothing worse than dropping your cell phone (or anything important, for that matter) down the crack between your seat and the center console, so one of our road-trip musts is a “gap filler.” There aren’t a lot of attractive options out there, but these unobtrusive pouches come in multiple colors and fit any gap.

Seatback organizers are a dream come true. This nifty invention transforms the often-cluttered backseat experience by creating a place for everything, from snacks to gadgets to first-aid items. The zip pockets on some of the seatback organizers we found are also a great place to securely store and easily access anything important.

True, you have a GPS app on your phone, but don’t overlook the utility of a good ol’ paper map. Yes, we’re talking about analog! Maps are a failsafe for directions (many parts of the country don’t have cell service, so there goes your GPS), and they provide a great source of entertainment and education for everyone in the car. Studying a map provides a great way to get the lay of the land, and you can just point to it when you get the inevitable “Are we there yet?” nagging.