Used to plan vacations with a 3 ring binder, now it's all shared docs

Every trip I took for like 15 years started with me printing out maps, hotel confirmations, restaurant menus, all of it. I had color coded tabs and pocket folders. My wife thought I was insane but it worked. Then we did a big trip to Portland last fall and she asked why I was bothering, so she made a single Google Sheet with everyone's flight info and one shared folder for ideas. I fought it at first but honestly the binder sat in the car the whole time unused. The part I miss is having something physical to hand to people, but I don't miss carrying 4 pounds of paper. How do you keep trip plans organized now compared to how you learned to do it? Do you still print anything out or is it all on your phone?

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adamgreen1mo ago

Laughing at the binder sitting in the car unused the whole trip because that is exactly how these things go. But I have to push back on one thing, it's not really "all shared docs" now for everyone. Half the people I travel with still want paper, my dad prints every confirmation even when I send him the PDF, and honestly some places still ask for a printed copy at check in. The other thing people forget is phones die, signals drop, and a dead battery at a rental car counter with no paper backup is a special kind of hell. So I do both, shared doc for the group so everyone can add stuff, plus a small printed packet with just flights, hotel addresses, and reservation numbers. That packet is like two pages now instead of the old war binder, so it costs me nothing. The shared sheet wins for planning, but paper still wins when everything goes wrong.

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