Our last and greatest road trip sanity tip for traveling with kids is a bucket pulley system. This idea was the brainchild of my hubby. We went on our trip when I was nearly 8 months pregnant I was unable, unlike previous trips, to turn around and hand things to the kids during the long days in the car. We needed a way to hand them new toys, snacks, art supplies, etc. Why don’t we create a pulley system? It was brilliant! We tied a rope between the handles on the ceiling of our van. I knew those handles are good for something! Then I tied a bucket to the rope ends and we’d shimmy the bucket on the rope back to the kids whenever they needed something and would shimmy it back to me when the bucket was not in use.
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Sorry guys, we cheated in these photos. The originals I took on the actual trip and they were incredibly out of focus… hope you don’t mind our “recreation” of the bucket system, from the comfort of our driveway. We are glad to be home!
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That is brilliant! I bet they had fun with that.
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That’s brilliant! We do the pass back, which means that a big kid has to sit in the front row, because the littles can’t reach the back. I wish I’d seen this when I had all littles!
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Man I am so going to have to try this. Awesome idea!!
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This is an awesome idea. JDaniel will love it.
Wow, what a creative idea! I know I would have been THRILLED with this as a kid!!
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My kids would think this was wonderfully hilarious!
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How cool is that!!! We are definitely going to have to tuck that away for when we have little ones!!! Thanks for sharing!!
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Genius! I am so trying this for our next road trip!
BTW, I came over from Mom Loop.
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Useful implementation of a system using a bucket. Pretty brilliant IMO. I guess this pulley system only works on large cars or maybe I am not seeing it as a child would do. I have a small nissan sentra, I guess I should try with a small bucket.
This is SO cool Rachel! Thanks for sharing the link on the Mom Loop Kenmore live chat! Cannot believe I missed it when it first posted!
This is so incredibly awesome!!!!! We’ll be making the trip from Colorado to Michigan in July… with a 4 year old, 2 year old, and 10 month old. THANK YOU!!!
Bummed that I can’t get the pics to load, but this idea is GENIUS! I get motion sickness if I look back so I’m using this. Thank you, thank you!
Love this! Pinned it.
This is great! I’m going to try this with our 4 and 3 year old on our road trip from Winnipeg to Vancouver! They will love it (and so will I)!
Thanks for the great ideas.
I’m the second oldest (I’m 13) of 8 kids, and we are taking a vacation and the car trip will be around 8 hours. ( and thats before all the stops
I’m getting ideas to entertain kids and teens…. ages 4 months, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, Me 13, and 14. This is brilliant!!
I have SO ENVISIONED THIS VERY thing a million times on my car trips. I have become quite good and aiming pretzyls to the back row and bags of chips and toys, etc. I have one tip for you.
NEVER try to pitch from the front of the van to the back of the van a Sippy cup.
Painful when you miss.:)
(cough, this never happened, cough).
I have wanted to do that… could you email me the details of how your husband put that together?
Thank you! We are going on a trip in a couple of weeks!