Column: A spreadsheet saved my family summer vacation

It’s official. We have become a vacation spreadsheet family.

If you’d told me a few decades ago that a family beach trip would not be possible without Google Sheets, I would have laughed in your face. Back then, I could throw a couple bathing suits, a beach towel, a pair of flip-flops, a bottle of tanning oil, some dollar store sunglasses, a handful of gym shorts and T-shirts, my Sony Discman, and a couple good books into a gym bag and be good to go for our week at the beach. This summer, I’m seriously considering renting a U-Haul.

It’s been years since my family has been able to find a solid week over summer break when all 10 adults and six children (11 years old and younger) were available for a vacation together.

Between work schedules, camp schedules and sports schedules, it’s not an easy task. But this year, by an act of God, we made it happen. One week at Topsail Beach, in one house, all together.

My younger sister, who is probably the most forward-thinking and practical of the bunch, suggested a novel idea a month in advance of our trip: What if we use a spreadsheet to organize several aspects of our vacation such as grocery-buying, meal preparation assignments and various items one would want to pack for a week at the beach?

As my smart sister mentioned, a simple, shared Google Sheets document with the categories “groceries,” “meal prep” and “miscellaneous items” that we could all add to at our leisure would help us avoid wondering who is spearheading dinner each night. And it would also prevent five families from arriving at the same house to find that we collectively brought 10 pounds of deli ham, seven beach umbrellas, eight gallons of 2% milk, 12 boxes of Cheerios, five boxes of Scrabble, 15 bags of Cool Ranch Doritos and … no toilet paper.

You see, traveling with young children takes planning. First, there’s the huge undertaking of packing up the whole family to leave town for seven days. In order to even begin to do that, four loads of laundry must first be washed, dried and folded.

Then you must proceed with gathering half the contents of your house and containerizing it for transport to your vacation destination (hence the U-Haul rental temptation). You’ll need Zofran, Children’s Motrin, adult Motrin, Tylenol Cold, Tylenol Allergy/Sinus, aloe vera gel, anti-itch spray, ACE bandages, maybe even a pair of crutches for good measure, and essentially everything else in your medicine cabinet because, as a general rule when traveling with children, the further you are from the comforts of home, the greater the probability of grave illness or severe injury.

Everyone will want to bring their favorite blanket and special pillow. You must load up the grocery bags full of essential provisions such as Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Glowberry PRIME sports drinks, and a family-size bag of Haribo gummy bears to sustain your family until you can get to the beach grocery store. And finally, four suitcases full of enough clothing for a month-long European tour. Your SUV will be so crammed with this-and-that that you’ll contemplate strapping the loudest kid to the roof.

And just when you thought your packing was done, you’ll remember that every trip from the vacation house to the beach will require roughly the same amount of effort. You will need sunscreen. Lots and lots of sunscreen in a wide array of SPF, scent and application preferences. And snacks. LOTS of snacks. An endless supply of snacks that is somehow still never enough.

You certainly can’t forget the special anti-chaffing stick for your son, and also the Aquaphor ointment for when you inevitably forget to actually apply the anti-chaffing stick that you were so proud of yourself for remembering to pack.

There’s the sunshade that works like a charm as long as the wind is blowing, and the back-up beach umbrella for when the wind dies in the 30 minutes it took you to put the sunshade up. Then there’s the all-important backpack cooler full of adult beverages that will nearly throw out your back on the trudge from the house to the beach, but be worth its weight in gold when you can finally crack open a cold one after rubbing in all that sunscreen, listening to the whining about the chaffing and wrangling the wayward sunshade.

You’ll need a stack of beach towels. Boogie boards. Skim boards. A bag of plastic buckets and shovels. A bocce ball set that weighs more than your toddler nephew. A book that you know you will absolutely not read because you can’t take your eyes off your kids in the water for more than a split second.

Cash for the Sunset Slush cart (unless you want to witness six perfectly content children transform into poor, deprived souls before your very eyes). A beach chair for every member of the family that hardly anyone ever actually sits in. And finally, a gargantuan beach wagon packed so comically full of all of the aforementioned supplies that elderly bystanders lounging in their chairs without a care in the world smile in sympathy as the circus rolls by.

And at the very moment that you finally have that wagon unpacked, your sunshade adjusted just right, each and every body sufficiently lathered in Coppertone, snacks doled out, and can take a deep breath of salt air, survey the ocean in all its splendor and appreciate the fruits of all your planning for this glorious day at the beach? The youngest kid will say he is just about ready to go back to the house.

At least back at the house, thanks to your handy dandy Google spreadsheet, you’ll know exactly who’s making supper, and that there will, in fact, be toilet paper.

Read CityView Magazine’s “The Downtown Issue” June 2025 e-edition here.