Planning a vacation soon? Looking to avoid expensive hotels in favor of more private, less costly accommodations? That’s generally why people book AirBnB rentals or other vacation homes on sites like VRBO. Of course, staying in an AirBnB is not exactly like staying in a hotel.

While some AirBnB locations have lots of extra amenities, many do not. You have to be careful to book places that list most of your wants, but even that might not be enough. Here’s a list of ten items that can come in handy when traveling to a new AirBnB location:

1. A Streaming Stick for Netflix / Hulu / etc…

The vast majority of AirBnB locations have access to a Wi-Fi signal, but not all locations offer access to smart televisions or streaming hardware. Heck, I recently stayed in an AirBnB in San Francisco that didn’t even have HD channels activated on their TV, despite their cable box having a HDMI port.

The easiest way to get around this problem is to bring your own streaming stick. You won’t have to bother logging into the streaming services; you simply connect to the Wi-Fi network and stream! The most popular options for portability are the Roku Streaming Stick and the Fire TV streaming stick; both relatively inexpensive and include 4K hardware options if desired.

Check out Roku Streaming Sticks / Check out Fire TV Sticks

2. A Carbon Monoxide Detector

Leaning towards better safe than sorry (and avoiding this tragic event), packing a carbon monoxide detector is not a bad idea. While the vast majority of AirBnB locations will include smoke alarms, it’s possible that your area of a home or guest house won’t include a carbon monoxide detector.

This can be particularly problematic when staying in a foreign country that has less stringent laws about protecting people from dangerous carbon monoxide levels. You can typically battery powered carbon monoxide detectors for around $20 to $30 on Amazon or more compact handheld versions from $80 to $100.

Check out Carbon Monoxide Detectors on Amazon

3. The Good Toilet Paper

Toilet paper quality in an AirBnB can really be hit or miss. I’ve stayed in expensive entire home rentals serving up 1-ply sandpaper and inexpensive 1-room rentals that offer the softest Charmin rolls available. It probably has to do with hosts hiring property managers to mange their AirBnB rentals, which brings cost cutting measures.

So you can either toss a roll into your luggage or get a more portable solution like StallMates. The same advice goes for tissues as some AirBnB locations don’t offer them, assuming guests will want to blow their nose in that horrible, scratchy toilet paper, I suppose.

Check out Toilet Paper Deals on Amazon

4. Comfy Footwear

House slippers, flip-flops, non-skid socks, whatever floats your boat! When you are staying in a place that has hardwood / cement floors and you are used to carpet at home, packing something to keep your feet warm and protected from flooring irregularities is a good idea.

 Check out Comfy Footwear on Amazon

5. An Expanded Charging Plug with USB ports

When hosts turn older homes into AirBnB locations, one of the biggest problems is trying to find enough plugs to charge all your devices. Solve this problem yourself by bringing a travel charger with additional plugs and USB ports.

This compact Belkin charger is pretty handy with 3 plugs, 2 USB 2.1A ports and surge protection. If you need something larger, Belkin makes a 6-plug port that’s roughly the same price as well. There’s also a number of options on Amazon that don’t offer surge protection.

 Check Amazon for Charging Plugs Deals

6. A Washcloth

If you prefer to wash your face off with a washcloth or use it in the shower to clean yourself, consider bringing it with you. I’ve found the vast majority of AirBnB locations offer towels and hands towels, but not always washcloths.

Perhaps it’s considered more of a personal item? In any case, pack an extra one or a shower loofah if you prefer that. The same advice goes for beach towels, if your AirBnB location offers access to a pool.

Check Amazon for Washcloth / Loofah Deals

7. NightLight(s)

If you wake up in the middle of the night to make a trip to the bathroom, it would be good to know which way to go if unfamiliar with the bedroom layout in your groggy, sleepy state. You can get packs of these on Amazon for less than $20, ideal if you want to light the way to and from areas of the home. Obviously, good for kids as well.

Check Amazon for Nightlight Deals

8. K-Cups / Sweetener / Tea

If your AirBnB advertises a Keurig machine, bring your favorite K-Cups with you. It’s better to have a few on hand instead of heading out to the grocery store to buy an entire box, then leaving it behind because it won’t fit in your suitcase.

The same advice does for tea bags, sweetener or even condiments. I once stayed in an AirBnB that only offered rock candy sugar sticks for sweetening my coffee. That’s cute, but not practical. A few packs of Splenda would have done the trick and made me happy.

Check Amazon for K-Cup Deals

9. A Wine Opener

If you like to pop open a bottle of wine after a long day, it’s a terrible feeling when you have to go back out searching for a wine opener instead of relaxing in your AirBnB. There are plenty of hosts that do offer one, but it may not be included if there’s no kitchen access. Just bring your own.

Check Amazon for Wine Opener Deals

10. Laundry Pods / Dryer Sheets

If your AirBnB host offers access to a washer / dryer set and you are staying over a week or two, then consider packing a few laundry pods / & dryer sets. That way, you can avoid purchasing them at the store and having to leave a box behind.

This also helps you pack less and avoid additional baggage fees at the airport, since you can simply re-wear outfits after washing. You can also just pack a bit of detergent in a zip-lock bag, if you prefer the powder over pods.

Check Amazon for Laundry Pod Deals

10 Things you may want to Bring when Staying in an AirBnB

Welcome to the very first entry in our very first travel blog series! My name is Kristin, but if you’ve been around Ben’s at all, you might know me better as AgentK. For the last five years or so, I’ve spent a lot of time finding and posting deals for Ben’s, and by this point, I like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at saving money online. But when we decided to hit the road for 15 days, and head for California with our three kids (5, 3, 10 months…yes we’re a little insane), I knew I was going to have to try and take my “bargain hunting” skills to a whole new level.

To clarify: this is not going to be a trip where “cheap” means picking a 4 star hotel over a 5 star, or going with Subway over Jimmy Johns for lunch. We’re talking let’s spend as close to $0 as possible each day, until we get to our destination. Basically, we can’t afford this trip. But because I believe you can’t put a price tag on making memories, we’re going to do it anyway…and just be really, really cheap about it.

Because technology is cool (and again, we’re on a major budget here), I will be working my regular hours for Ben’s the whole time we’re on the road. This will be my second long trip working remotely (we did a two week long trip to New Orleans last fall), and I have a lot of good tips to share on how to make it work, thanks to a lot of trial and error.

Anyway, I’m super excited to get out and see some parts of the country we haven’t seen before, and I hope you’ll follow along!

Our itinerary:
We’re leaving from Minneapolis, going as far as Southern California (Disney! LEGOLand!), and then heading back home again. Because we have small children with even smaller attention spans, we don’t plan on driving more than 6 hours total on any given day. Places we’ll be spending time along the way include Denver, Southern Utah, Las Vegas, and then on the way home we’ll hit the Grand Canyon, Albuquerque, and Kansas City.

Our car setup:
When we bought our minivan a couple years ago (I know, so lame, but have a few kids and you’ll get one too I promise), we purposefully didn’t get one with a built-in DVD/Blu-ray player because I knew as soon as we went there, I’d never talk to my children in the car again. But I am definitely not above keeping them entertained with movies on longer trips! So we have this super fancy setup for our vacation: a portable DVD player we found for $7 at Goodwill, mounted on top of a cooler (when I say I’m cheap, I’m not kidding!).

For sound, we have the DVD player plugged into the aux port of our car, and adjust the fade so that the sound only comes out of the back speakers (next to the kids). Up front, we have this Altec Lansing Solo Bluetooth Speaker ($15 in the pink color), mounted to the console with velcro 3M Command Strips. Allows us to listen to our own music or podcasts while the kids get their movies in the back.

Most of the movies we have at home are Blu-rays/digital copies, so we had fun picking out DVDs the kids hadn’t seen before at Goodwill in the weeks leading up to our trip (they’re $1.99 each there).

Food: We’re planning on eating sandwiches for lunch each day, so we brought loaves of bread, lunch meat, cheese, peanut butter and jelly, etc in a cooler and will picnic it up at rest stops or random parks along the way. We also made a huge batch of cold press coffee ahead of time and put it in an empty 2-liter soda bottle. As much as I’d like to hit up Starbucks drive throughs, this is much cheaper and probably tastes better!

Accommodations: We’re doing a mix of hotels, camping, staying with friends/family, and maybe even just sleeping in the van. Because we don’t know exactly when we’ll want to be done driving for the night (depends on how crazy the kids are being), we don’t book any hotels until like an hour before we arrive. More on this on another post, but we use Priceline Express to get cheap (under $75/night) rooms last-minute, and we also have a Priceline credit card that earns us points toward free stays. For me, half the fun of a road trip is not having solid plans and playing it by ear. It’s an adventure and I absolutely love it.

So day #1 is complete and we made it past the most boring part of the journey: through Iowa and part of Nebraska. Our stops included a rest area and, wait for it, Fleet Farm. Thrilling! Tomorrow we’ll get into Colorado and things should start to look a little more interesting.

Off to swim with the kids…check back tomorrow for a post about my “work from the car” setup, and more!

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Ben’s on the Road: Day 1