I have a lovely compact red leather passport holder that can easily contain my passport, airline ticket, credit cards, and cash.  I’ve had a hard time giving it up, but it’s not practical for traveling with a family and all of the travel documents that come with it.  I’ve tried stuffing all of our passports and boarding passes into it, and it’s a disaster.  I’ve dropped passports and boarding passes on the floor, and I fumble around getting them in and out at airport security.

I’ve finally found the light after misplacing airline tickets, digging around for travel itineraries, and trying to keep track of where everyone’s passports and documents are at any given time.  When you want to keep 4-5 passports, airline tickets, itineraries, credit cards, cash, and other important travel documents (such as baby’s birth certificate, or a notarized travel authorization letter), it’s really helpful to have a family-sized travel document holder to keep everything in one place.  It’s also really great having a pen readily accessible to fill out immigration forms, rather than digging around in a diaper bag for it, forgetting which pouch it’s in.

I recommend the Family Passport and Document Case for holding up to 5 passports and travel documents.  For larger families, or those with dual citizenship needing 6+ passport and document holder, consider splitting into two separate cases.  Also, don’t forget that if you lose this one case, you’ve lost a lot.  Rather than traveling with photocopies of everything, I save space by scanning all of my critical travel documents (passports, visa pages, birth certificates, yellow fever immunization proof, credit cards- back and front, and health records) into one file on a flash drive that I keep in a separate space from my travel documents.  It’s also saved on my laptop, so I have it saved in two separate places and can be easily printed from a hotel or internet cafe.

Related Pages:

What Documents Does Baby Need for International Travel?

15 Essentials to Include in Baby’s Carry-On

Travel Logistics

How to Apply for a U.S. Passport for Baby

Getting through Airport Security