It is summertime and officially hotter than the surface of the sun out there. We all need some relief, and heading to the pool is always a great idea. Let’s talk about what’s in my pool bag this summer!
With small kids like I have, one toddler (2) and one preschooler (4.5), a pool day is often easier said than done. Just as in pretty much every aspect of their lives, small kids need a lot of stuff to go to the pool. If you have particularly young children who still need a nap so they don’t turn into the Incredible Hulk by bedtime, you have the added hassle of planning your pool day around naptime. Listen, a trip to the pool with small kids isn’t inherently easy.
It might not be easy to head to the pool with your toddlers and preschoolers, but it’s worth it! So, to overcome the hard parts of going to the pool, let’s make a plan to make it easier to go.
The key to this plan is your pool bag. If you know what needs to go into your pool bag and it is mostly packed and ready to go at all times, you will be way more likely to grab that bag and head to the pool whenever the mercury soars this summer. After several summers of pool days with littles, I have my pool bag checklist down and I’m sharing it here with you.
Spoiler Alert!
Nothing in this checklist is unique or earth-shattering. But if you start from a list that’s already made, you’re 90% of the way there, so it’s easier to craft your own perfect pool bag. If your family doesn’t need something on this list, remove it from your pool bag. That will make room for another item that your family deems necessary that my family doesn’t. The key is to have a list that makes sense for you to remove one barrier to getting your family to the pool this summer.
What’s in My Pool Bag?
Snacks
My kids tell me that the most important thing in the pool bag is snacks, so I’m starting the pool bag checklist here. I like to bring a variety of snacks with me to the pool. Definitely enough for each of my children (and all four of my children if my nephew and niece are with us) to have the same thing. If I’m bringing Goldfish, I’m bringing enough Goldfish to satisfy as many children as I have with me. Same goes for cheese sticks, grapes, Pirate’s Booty, or whatever else has ended up in the pool bag that day. In addition to these essential snacks, we also like raisins, Cuties, Teddy Grahams, and Lara Bars. But throw whatever your kids love to eat in your pool bag!
To keep certain snacks cool without bringing a whole cooler to the pool with me, I love the Pack It Cool snack bags. They have built-in ice packs! I love the snack size bag for a few small snacks, but they come in all sizes and they are fantastic. Just store them on the door of your freezer where nothing else really makes sense to live, and you have a way to keep those snacks cold at a moment’s notice!
Water
Am I the only one who doesn’t remember really drinking water until high school? Pepsi? Yes. Capri Sun? Absolutely. But water wasn’t a thing until around the time I got my drivers’ license. Nowadays, my kids freak out if they aren’t within 10 feet of their water bottles. Don’t get me wrong, this is surely a positive development, but our kids have become co-dependent on their water. So yes, put the water bottles in the pool bag to avoid dehydration, but also to avoid a meltdown.
Sunscreen
It’s not a What’s in My Pool Bag post without mentioning sunscreen. Look, I get it, sunscreen in today’s world is an automatic add to the pool bag. But I grew up in Florida during a different time. We didn’t wear a ton of sunscreen unless we were sitting on the beach all day. I swam competitively for much of my childhood in an outdoor pool. I don’t remember ever applying sunscreen on that pool deck. This lack of awareness of just how important sunscreen is combined with my very pale skin has me hyper-vigilantly checking my body on a near-daily basis, looking for something that might be skin cancer.
I don’t want my kids to have the same level of anxiety about their skin when they grow up, so I am almost militant about sunscreen application. We put sunscreen on before we leave the house to go to the pool and it comes with us in our pool bag for reapplication after time in the water. This is mama’s most important item in the pool bag. If you need a recommendation for a good sunscreen, the best one for my kids’ sensitive skin is Blue Lizard Sensitive. You have to work at it a bit to get it to rub in fully, but it’s worth it for total protection and no eczema flares!
Hats
Also in the protection department, hats are essential items in your pool bag. Have you ever had a sunburn on your scalp? It hurts like the dickens! A hat is an easy way to protect your scalp (and your face) from the sun. I like a classic baseball cap, but you can choose a bucket hat, a floppy hat, or any kind of hat your heart desires. We like hats with brims and neck protection for the kids when we head to the pool. Can’t beat the price on these hats from Target, and they dry easily after they get wet!
Towels
Of course you know you need to bring towels in your pool bag. I won’t waste time discussing why a towel is a good thing to add to your pool bag, but I will give you some recommendations.
My kids love the monogrammed Pottery Barn hooded beach towels that they have received as gifts over the years from their Florida family. They love that their names are on their towels and it removes one thing for them to fight over – bonus! If you don’t want to go the monogrammed route, you can also assign each kid a color. Blue towel for one, green towel for the other for now until eternity. I also love the thin Turkish beach towels. They take up essentially no room in the pool bag and they dry extremely quickly so you don’t have that awful feeling of wrapping up in a damp towel when you take your snack breaks.
Change of clothes
When you have kids in car seats, I find it to be essential to bring a change of dry clothes for the kids in your pool bag. If you don’t change your kids out of their bathing suits before popping them back in their car seats to drive home from the pool, you’ll have a stinky situation on your hands with that wet car seat. Don’t do that to yourself. Throw a change of clothes in your pool bag for each of your kids.
I like to pack my kids’ dry clothes in a wet dry bag. I can then throw their wet bathing suits in the wet dry bag after they have changed so nothing else gets soaking wet in the pool bag. That bag then gets taken directly to the laundry room upon our return home and the bag itself gets flipped inside out and hung from our drying rack to use the next pool day.
Diaper supplies
If you still have a kid in diapers, bring more diaper supplies than you think you’ll need. Grab a stack of swim diapers, a few regular diapers, a pack of wipes, and some cream and throw them into the pool bag. I like to consolidate the diaper supplies in a smaller pouch that I can throw into the larger pool bag so if my daughter needs a change while at the pool (which is the case 90% of the time), I can just grab her and the pouch and head to the changing room.
Swim vest
For kids who are not confident swimmers, you may want to bring a swim vest. I know that people have strong opinions about swim vests, but I’m just putting it out there as an item you may want to include in your pool bag if your kids aren’t 100% comfortable in the water. If you do bring a swim vest, don’t put your full trust in it. Please continue to watch your kids like a hawk, swim vest or no swim vest.
Water toys
As my kids have gotten older, pool toys have become more and more essential items to have in the pool bag. My 2-year-old likes to play with water toys like fish or boats in the water table section of our local pool. My 4-year-old has become very interested in throwing rings and torpedoes across the pool and practicing his new-found swimming skills to go retrieve them.
If your local pool also has a sand box area, don’t forget to bring those sand toys along to the pool too. We keep it simple with a bucket and a shovel/rake/claw for each kid.
Whatever toys you choose to pop in your pool bag, encourage your kids to share them with other kids who might be at the pool that day. It’s a great way for them to practice social skills, and it might even make them a friend or two!
That’s it. That’s what lives in my pool bag for pool trips with my toddler and preschooler. What do you have in your pool bag? I’d love to know!