family

What To Pack In Your Perfect Beach Bag

This post contains affiliate links. We may earn compensation when you click on the links at no additional cost to you.

Summer days spent at the beach are some of our favorite days ever. The most important thing to make your beach day perfect is to pack the perfect beach bag with everything you will need.

Disclosure: I’m proud to be working with CVS Pharmacy to help spread the word about how to #FindYourHealthy. All opinions expressed are my own, and all product claims or program details shared should be verified at CVS.com or with the appropriate manufacturers.

what to pack in your perfect beach bag

After almost three weeks of beach time in Florida, I feel like an expert in beach bag packing. I think I might even add it to my resume. I’m that good at it. 

balcony view

I’m at the point now where it takes me only a minute or two to toss everything we need into the bag and we are on our way. Since we were staying so long in Florida, I decided not to buy anything here and instead to just go to CVS once we landed. It turned out to be a perfect plan as there was a CVS store practically around each corner we turned. During our almost three weeks there we stopped at 6 CVS’s. Seriously! It went even beyond beach bag essentials.

20160518_202057(0)

In Key Largo, Emmy bought her local magnet. We get a magnet in each stop we make and Emmy wanted hers from CVS.

20160515_205246

When we were in Naples, we were hungry late one night. With the time change 10pm local time was only 7pm to us, so we headed into CVS for some snacks!

20160513_182303

In Miami we needed buy sunblock and the rest of our beach bag necessities, and Emmy helped me pick them all out! Here is what we keep in our beach bag. I keep the same things in it if I have kids with me or not, although it would be very rare not to have them and be at the beach!

what to pack in your beach bag

Here is what we pack in our perfect beach bag:

Sunglasses or goggles for everyone! Sunglasses go beyond comfort. They also protect our eyes from the sun and the damaging rays.

Towels for everyone! Sometimes more than one. For Emmy I normally bring two. One for her to wipe her eyes on and one for her to dry off with. If we son’t have lounge chairs waiting for us, then I would bring more for us to lie on.

cvs childrens sunscreen stick
Sunblock! Big tubes of it and also a sunblock stick. We love the CVS Health Children’s 55 Sunstick. It makes covering faces and ears so much easier and also keeps hands clean when you reapply at the beach.

beach bag essentials
Lotion and lip treatment. I get dry skin and lips so easily and so do my girls. For our comfort we always keep both of these in our beach bag. 

what to pack in your beach bag
Children’s Anti-Bacterial Bandages. It totally doesn’t hurt that these have sharks all over them. They are the perfect ones to take with us to the beach. I keep these in the bag even without kids because I’ve stepped on something sharp at the beach too many times to remember and having something to treat it right then and there saves me from having to go back to the hotel room or home.  

what I pack in my beach bag

Snacks and beverages. A beach day isn’t complete without something to snack on and something to keep us hydrated. I love these CVS Gold Emblem Sparkling Waters. They are so refreshing and tasty!

beach time

What do you keep in your beach bag?

Heather Reese
the authorHeather Reese
Heather Delaney Reese is the storyteller and photographer behind the lifestyle and family travel blog, It's a Lovely Life®! For the past decade, she has vacationed over 150 days a year with her family. She is a vegan, and loves being by the water, spending time with her children, husband, 2 Shih Tzus and Cat.

18 Comments

  • We’re on cape cod, so I am at the beach all summer long. I have my bag ready to go at all times 🙂

  • We are always on the beach since we live in Florida! These are all must haves for our beach bag as well.

  • I like your idea of buying those things when you land, although with 2 little kids in tow here it might be easier to just get it all before we go so that I have it all when we get there. I love Florida and the beach. Super lucky that you are there now!

  • It is a great idea to buy some essential summer gear when you land. Means less in the suitcase. I’ve started adding Pacifica lotion wipes to my bag. They are a nice refresher and help get the sand off.

  • Great tips! I never leave the house when we go to the beach without sunscreen, snacks, some cold beverages, towels, sunglasses and beach toys!

  • It’s definitely important to have products that will help keep your skin and your body hydrated especially if you’re going to a place that has warm weather. These essentials are spot on and they are also what I would pack for a beach trip!

  • Wow, you’ve got a complete list of what to pack, I’m definitely take notes of this for our summer beach get away!

  • We are leaving for the beach this coming weekends and your post is so timely! How can I forget all of your tips?! I’m sure I’m not going to miss any!

  • CVS sounds like our equivalent Boots Drugstore. And My Beach bag is perpetually packed..because I am a dreamer and an optimist and I also create my universe. So we can pop off to Formby or Southport beach any day as long as its a weekend fr the kids and the sun peeks out of its grumpy British cloud, we are off.

    Yours is obviously also ever ready. Florida sounds like a bag of fun!

  • I got a beach bag but I never thought that I didn’t pack everything I needed! Thanks for posting!

  • Lovely pics! Just like you, I carry sunscreen, sunglasses, a hat, cover-up, towels, hand wipes, a good book, earbuds, water, snacks and goggles in my beach bag!

  • I think these are all great ideas. The top two on my list would be water and sunscreen. I can not go anywhere without either of those. I find those to be very important.

  • Water and sunscreen are musts! Along with beach toys and towels 🙂

Comments are closed.