Adventure is a State of Mind
What is your packing style? Are you a minimalist or a maximist? Can you get by with just a backpack, even if you’re going to be gone for three weeks? Or do you pack everything except the kitchen sink, you know, just in case you need it?
It seems every travel website has at least one post about packing. We’re no exception. But that’s because it’s so important!
As we’ve discussed before, the solution isn’t finding a packing list created by someone else to perfectly meet your needs. You’ll never find that.
Instead, learning how to think about packing will help you make the best decisions for yourself. So let’s discuss how to pack less.
Why Less is More
Are you planning a trip? Have you practiced pulling/carrying/dragging your luggage (including carry on bags) around the block? Yes, I know your neighbors may look at you funny… or even start some interesting rumors… but that will answer the question as to why it’s important to pack less.
It’s especially important to pack as light as you can if you are planning a travel adventure abroad. Here in North America, we’re used to packing as much as our vehicle will allow. Both the U.S. and Canada have well-established roadtrip cultures.
If you’re traveling in many other cultures, however, you will be required to carry your bags frequently, sometimes for significant distances. Even if you rent a car in Europe, for example, you often cannot park right next to your hotel or home rental. And if you are using the train or other public transportation, you often have to carry your bags for even longer distances.
You might be thinking, “Okay, fine, I’ll take a taxi.” Then you’re dealing with the fact that the cars in many countries are smaller than what we’re used to here in the U.S., so there could be problems if you and your travel companions all have oversized suitcases and want to share a taxi.
In addition, the rooms (and elevators) in many hotels in many countries are also smaller than what we are used to here in North America. Greg and I once stayed in a hotel in Japan where our bags took up all of the floor space in the room. I’m not exaggerating! Had our bags been any larger, we would have had to leave them out in the hall, which many of the other guests actually did.
What Counts as Light?
There are travelers who are far more efficient at packing than I am. Many of them never or almost never check a bag. (The travel celebrity, Rick Steves, is famous for this.) I haven’t attained this level of packing expertise, but it is something I aspire to.
Why? Partly because I like challenges. Also, because there has never been a time I thought, “I wish my bag was heavier,” or “I wish my bag was larger.” Ask other travelers, and you’ll probably hear the same.
Have there been times I wished I had brought something that I didn’t end up packing? Occasionally, but it was usually a minor inconvenience compared to not having to carry extra weight and bulk for days.
What I’m recommending isn’t a goal weight or size. Instead, I’m encouraging all of us to take steps to pack less. Less means less this trip than we took on the last trip. And less on the next trip than we’re taking on this trip.
If we’re constantly looking for ways to lighten the load and learning from our experiences, both good and bad, managing our luggage is likely to become easier and less stressful over time. So let’s look at some ways we can pack lighter.
The Obvious
Let’s get the most obvious solutions out of the way first – pack smaller versions of the things you need. Most things like shampoo and lotion have travel-sized versions. If not, consider investing in some travel-sized, silicone bottles that you can fill with your favorite products and use over and over with each trip.
Similarly, consider light-weight versions of your favorite clothes. My husband, Greg, loves traditional, heavy-weight clothing, such as heavy canvas pants and heavy wool sweaters, during the winter. If we are traveling to a cold climate, however, he leaves most of those clothes at home and wears light-weight synthetic fabrics that still provide a lot of warmth, such as a fleece sweatshirt.
If you’re traveling someplace warm, it’s easy to find clothes made from light-weight fabrics. If you need more warmth, however, wearing a couple of layers of light-weight clothing can provide as much warmth as a bulky wool sweater without taking up nearly as much room in your suitcase.
Disposable Clothes
Consider packing clothes you can throw away. No, I don’t mean adult diapers or paper hospital gowns! What I’m referring to are those pieces of clothing that are just one wear away from being thrown away or donated to a charity. You know, the socks that keep falling down around your ankles, the underwear with the elastic that has lost its will to live, or the t-shirt with a hole in it at the bottom. It’s the clothes that you were planning to throw away anyway. I’m just recommending that you hang on to them until your next trip, give them one last outing, and then throw them away. The result is extra room in your suitcase for bringing back souvenirs, rather than bringing a larger bag.
If your clothes aren’t quite far enough gone to throw them away, you can try to find an organization accepting donations in the area where you are traveling. Or you can leave them in your hotel or rental with a note for the cleaning staff explaining that you are leaving the clothing behind purposefully and they can keep them if they would like. These latter options are not easy or foolproof, but they’re worth a try if you’d like to minimize the amount of trash you’re creating.
What I am definitely not recommending is buying something new to throw away on your trip! Again, this tip is for those clothing items that you would be throwing away anyway because they are getting worn out. Similarly, if you have a tube of toothpaste that is a week or two away from being empty or other similar items, taking them on your trip and using them up while you’re gone is a perfect opportunity for creating extra space in your bags for bringing back treasures at the end of your trip.
Wool
Underwear, socks, and t-shirts made from merino wool have become a travel necessity for many frequent travelers. Why? Because merino wool has some amazing characteristics, including its tendency to resist odors, its ability to regulate temperature (making it temperature adaptable in both cold and hot climates), and its ability to wick moisture away from the body, which helps to keep you dry and cool in warm climates and dry and warm in cold climates.
Because wool dries quickly, it is also a popular travel choice because you can wash it and leave it to dry overnight. This means you don’t have to bring as many pairs of underwear and socks with you on your travel adventure. I have a good friend who, in addition to packing wool underwear when she travels, has also started using a wool bra for the same reasons.
Although wool has a reputation of making people feel itchy, merino wool usually does not create much skin irritation. If you want to consider wool underwear and socks and haven’t yet done so, however, I’d recommend buying a pair to try out at home long before you pack for your travel adventure. You don’t want to be traveling with only two pairs of underwear, both wool, when you realize that you can’t stand wearing them!
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
Neale Donald Walsch
Scrub-a-Dub-Dub
At home, it isn’t uncommon for many people to wear outfits only once before throwing them in the dirty clothes pile. When traveling, wearing your clothing at least twice will cut how much you need to pack in half. And wearing each item three times will cut it down even more. (We’re talking tops and pants, not underwear!)
You’ll need to bring even less clothing if you do some washing while on your trip. Talk with an experienced traveler, and you’ll find that most of them have washed at least underwear and socks in a bathroom sink at some point in their travels. This is a way to reduce how many outfits you need to pack and only requires a little planning.
If you plan to do some washing, consider what clothing you’re bringing. As already discussed, the quick-drying benefits of merino wool socks, underwear, and/or shirts make them ideal candidates since if you wash them in the evening, they are likely to be dry by the next morning. (It’s always a little worrisome to have to pack up damp clothes. Just in case, I usually make sure I have some extra plastic bags with me on my travels.)
Keep It Simple
At home, you may have a multi-colored wardrobe and enjoy accessorizing to create a unique look every day. Traveling is not the best time to showcase this, however.
Keep it simple and pick a single color – whether it is black or hot pink – to build your travel wardrobe around. This way, everything goes with everything in your suitcase, and you need minimal accessories. For myself, my travel clothes are almost all black and grey. In addition to mixing and matching, this also means that I can bring one scarf and one pair of earrings that will go with every piece of clothing.
Also consider simplifying your hygiene routine. At home, you might have and use different face moisturizer, hand lotion, body butter, and sunscreen, all in the same day. When traveling, however, consider whether just one product, such as sunscreen, could be used for all of those purposes.
Multipurpose
Consider whether the objects you are packing can have more than one job. It might be a long-sleeved t-shirt you can wear on warm days but use as a base layer under a sweater on cold days. Similarly, can any of your self-care products serve two roles? Maybe your shampoo can also serve as body wash.
In this day and age, our smartphones can definitely do this. Not only can we use them to call or email back home or for reservations, but they can store our electronic tickets and confirmation information. We also use them for our maps, language translation, and currency exchange. And, of course, unless you’re a serious photographer like Greg, they also serve as our cameras.
One of my favorite multipurpose items to bring is a light-weight tote bag. I take it with me when visiting markets and grocery stores during my travels, it has served as a beach bag and picnic basket on occasion, and when I’ve bought more souvenirs than my suitcase can hold, I’ve put my purse in my backpack and used the tote bag as my “personal item” on the flight home.
Limit Your Shoes
I love shoes! Not as much as purses and bags, but I still have more shoes than I need. Shoes, however, take up more space in a suitcase than almost any other items. An easy way to lighten the load, then, is to limit the number of shoes you pack.
Make sure the shoes you bring are comfortable and versatile. Don’t bring heels! Except for very rare occasions – like maybe you’re invited to tea with the queen – heels are not very practical and definitely not versatile. And when walking around on the cobblestones you’ll find in some cities, heels can be downright dangerous!
I usually wear one pair of shoes and pack one pair of shoes. To keep my bag lighter, if it works out, I try to wear the heavier pair on the flight.
Focus on the Experience
I know everyone wants to look perfect in their vacation photos. That’s even more true in this age of social media. If you focus on the experience you want to have, rather than what you want to look like in your photos, you’ll be less tempted to pack an abundance of cute outfits.
Carrying less weight and fighting less with oversized bags almost always means a better overall travel experience. And a happy traveler is likely going to show that happiness in their photos, regardless of the outfit they are wearing!
Change of Mindset
Some individuals go through life, and through their travel adventures, trusting that everything will work out for the best. Unfortunately, I’m not one of those people. I go through life planning for the worst and then being extremely grateful when it all turns out better than I expected, which occurs most of the time.
When packing, however, I’ve figured out that planning what to bring based on, “What’s the worst that can happen?” is not particularly helpful and results in significant overpacking.
In reality, when it comes to packing, even in the worst-case scenario, so long as you have a passport and a credit card, you probably can figure out a solution. For example, on our trip to Japan several years ago, the weather was much warmer than I had expected. Rather than wearing and rewearing just the two light-weight tops I had for two weeks, I bought a blouse while shopping with our friend and her daughters. In addition to addressing my clothing needs on the trip, I continued to wear it at home, and it became a reminder of the fun time we had with our friends.
Don’t ask yourself whether you might possibly need something during the trip. Instead, ask yourself whether you will need something enough to make it worth carrying the weight of it for weeks.
Create Your Own Rules
I’ve given you multiple suggestions to help you pack lighter, and I’m now encouraging you to ignore the ones that don’t work for you and create some personalized guidelines. Again, so long as you’re improving your ability to pack lighter with each trip, you’re on the right track.
There may be things you absolutely plan to take with you on every trip that I might consider extras to leave at home, and vice versa. That’s okay. We all have different interests and needs, so it makes sense that there will be differences in what we take with us on our travel adventures.
What’s most important is that you think through what you are bringing and why. Not doing so will inevitably result in overpacking and bringing extra things on your trip that you regret.
Have you written out your packing list? What adjustments can you make to the list to make it more efficient and reduce how much you need to bring with you? If you’re packing for a travel adventure now, have you considered each item and whether you can leave some of it at home?
