Why parents swear by painter's tape when travelling with toddlers

Desperate families are getting rather creative to make their next holiday an enjoyable one.

Some mums have discovered the simple secret to an enjoyable trip with a toddler: Painter’s tape.

“I swear to you. It’s great on the plane but also on vacation,” Canadian photographer, creator and mum of two Nichola Knox wrote on Instagram last month.

“Label the kid’s cups, a bandaid for when your toddler ‘really needs one,’ taping over locks and drawers you don’t want them getting into. The list goes on. It’s forever the ‘weird’ thing I bring on trips.”

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Everyone's on board with the travel hack

Knox’s followers commented with a few more uses, including covering automatic flush sensors on public toilets; creating a hopscotch grid; and taping over light switches so kids can’t play with them.

One traveling-with-toddler tipster called painter’s tape “such an underrated item,” especially on a recent trip.

“I boarded the flight a little bit before my husband and son, and I put some painter’s tape on the latch to the tray table,” the TikToker explained in May.

“And we did not spend our entire flight trying to keep him from opening the tray table. It was amazing.”

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Another avid traveler says she uses painter’s tape to create stickers and a play mat on the tray table of airplanes and to tape over outlets and any dangling items in hotel rooms.

“This is your babyproofing workhorse,” she gushed as she held up a thick roll of blue painter’s tape.

Social media users have called the tape hack “expert-level parenting.”

“So simple but so amazing,” one raved.

“This is incredible. Huge brain energy. It potentiates their creativity, is ecological, mess free, and useful too,” another praised.

This story originally appeared on NY Post and republished here with permission. 

Originally published as Why parents swear by painter's tape when travelling with toddlers