Planning to be Spontaneous: How I organize my car to be ready for spontaneous fun

I'm not a planner by nature and love to go on spontaneous adventures and fun trips (remember I'm the girl who decided at 9:00am one morning that I wanted to go to Indianapolis, packed up the car and was off on an impromptu weekend away less than 2 hours later). 

But day to day spontaneity looks a little different when you have two kids under 5. Which is why I make sure to keep my car packed and organized with some essentials so we are always ready for a spontaneous day of fun!

I found this collapsible laundry basket at Target for less than $10 and it is the perfect size for my trunk and fits (4) 6qt shoe boxes perfectly. 

Inside, like I said, I have 4 plastic shoe boxes that I also got at Target (linked here). They were only $6 for a pack of 5! 

Now for the essentials I keep in my car to make sure I'm ready for fun with the little ladies!

Diapers, wipes, changing pad, Aleve and diaper cream.

I am the worst when it comes to carrying a diaper bag, mostly because I love switching my bag/purse every other day and for some reason the diapers never make it into the new bag. I started making sure this diaper box is stocked in my trunk and grab a diaper and a wipe before we go in somewhere so I don't have to worry about carrying them with me at all times. 

This is my seasonal box, which will change come winter, but for now it has water shoes, sunscreen, sun hats and a couple swim diapers

Ah...my hangry box. My poor children inherited my low blood sugar and are hangry all the time. In this box I keep Smart Pop popcorn, granola bars and any other shelf stable snacks that I'm not worried about melting or going bad (although, if I'm honest they are hangry all the time so they plow through the box in a week so the snacks never have enough time to go bad). This box has come in handy probably more than any others to make sure the kids are happy and fed and it buys us time if we are going on a spontaneous adventure (like a hike) where we won't have access to food for a bit. 

Box 4: 

In this box I keep 3 extra outfits for each of the girls, underwear, and socks. 

The other day we left my oldest daughters doctor appointment in Lorain (40 minutes from our house) and I decided to see how far Vermilion beach was from the office. To my delight it was less than a 10 minute drive but we didn't have any bathing suits or towels. I mapped to the closest thrift store, picked up $2 bathing suits for each of us and a big towel to share. We headed to the beach and had the absolute best time. My car was already stocked with sunscreen and hats and water shoes, outfits to change into after, snacks to eat on the beach and tons of wipes to clean them off after being in the lake. I love that a couple minutes of planning allowed us to have a great beach day and for a minute I felt like a cool mom who dropped all our responsibilities and spent the day getting dirty, splashing in the lake and getting covered in delicious sticky orange push pop ice creams!