Every travel blogger seems to have a “How to Pack like a Pro” post. This is not one of them. While I completed my Eurotrip as a purported “backpacker,” I started with a backpack AND a suitcase (the contents of which were later dispersed through France and Italy once the roadtrip fell through). Trying to hoist it all in an overhead rack on an overpopulated Trenitalia to Napoli, I nearly walloped a family of three, losing a lot of dignity and gaining several short-term enemies. I also infamously packed 51 pounds for a five day Spring Break to Las Vegas. 51 POUNDS for FIVE DAYS. That’s mind-boggling since I could have easily gotten by with walking shoes, a clubbing dress and a swimsuit. Thankfully, those days are long gone, and my latest bag for an 11 day trip weighed 28.5 pounds both on departure and return (still too heavy for me to wear extendedly but a vast improvement and a testament to my lack of souvenir-shopping).
I’ve learned, even when I pack with a specific list and a lot of foresight, there are still clothes I don’t wear and items I wish I’d have brought instead. There is no universal magic formula to bring just the right items, and it differs for every person and every trip. Especially if you are the type of person (like me) who decides what to wear five minutes after you were supposed to be walking out the door, it’s tough to assemble a wardrobe in advance, let alone to plan for the weather and a variety of activities.
What I am trying to say is, it’s okay if you bring a lot of stuff when you travel, if that’s what you like to do! We all have “baggage,” and life is a little happier when we are not so hard on each other about it. So when I smile watching travelers heave-ho over the modern-day, patterned denier equivalent of a steamer trunk, I’m not smiling smugly because I think I am better or smarter as a backpacker. I’m smiling gratefully thinking of how much I’ve changed in my less-is-more approach to life, thanks in large part to my travel experiences.
So from a recovering overpacker, here are some tips for everything but the kitchen sink:
1) Before the packing party even starts, be sure to choose a mountain-bike-tire wheeled suitcase that adds at least twelve pounds to your load, empty. If it can hold a body, it can hold what you absolutely, positively cannot live without for the next week.
2) Lay out everything you want to pack. I recently read that celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe recommends using a rolling clothes rack, purchased solely for this occasion of course, to help with this part. Add at least one pair of platform high heels you’ll only wear once because you can hardly walk in them but they’ll add four inches of height and three pounds of weight; two thick scarves even though you’ll buy at least one on the trip since you acquired these others on vacation too, and one more pair of slow-drying, light-colored, bedazzled-ass security sensor-loving jeans in case the other three pairs get dirty. It’s not like denim pants were originally made to get dirty…
3) Keep items on the hangers to minimize wrinkles and space in your bag with the awkward angles. So what if the corners poke through and jab the driver in the leg as it’s loaded in the trunk? In the average daily crowd of 18,000 people at the Colosseum, you wouldn’t want to be The Slightly Disheveled Tourist as you jockey for the perfect view.
4) Toiletry time-savers! Don’t spend 15 precious seconds squirting shampoo into mini bottles and instead bring full-size hair and bath products. Ensure that you have no fewer than three “signature” scents of glass-bottled perfume/cologne. Stash these in a cloth makeup bag so when they break or leak, your entire suitcase and travel wardrobe will be pre-scented.
5) Pack at least two beachy cover-ups, but leave enough room for your body hang-ups. All those concerns about how you’ll look in a bikini will keep your butt firmly planted in a deck chair instead of frolicking in the waves and weigh more heavily on your mind than that extra slice of cheesecake will on your hips.
6) Don’t forget to bring the rest of your issues! That front zipper pocket with the key clip is the perfect place for all the stuff you booked the vacation hoping to escape. The daily grind need not be left behind as long as you maintain a charge in your seven pound company laptop. An international data plan will guarantee that your ex will text with absolute disregard for the time difference, most likely in the middle of your most fun night out or most hungover morning. Bonus if said ex brings up the birthday trip to Fiji/Finland/Ft. Worth you’d planned together last year. Shedding tears is almost as good as shedding luggage weight.
The most ridiculous items I’ve packed: an expensive ceramic “rum keg” multi-person drinking dish that took one-third of my suitcase to pad it, a fullsize set of hot rollers to have curled hair in 95 degree pool weather, and six pounds worth of hand weights for exercising which of course I never did on that particular trip. I probably will someday write a post about my real packing tips, once I feel qualified to give such advice, but reliving my poor-packing moments is a great reminder. What is the most pointlessly heavy item you’ve ever regretfully packed? Or what is something that you will bring regardless of how much space it consumes or how many weird looks you get from other travelers?
Your voice matters!