Packing Light
Clay and I were super blessed to travel to Rome to celebrate our 15 year anniversary (a few months early) and then on to Antwerp for some diamond buying. I don't tend to be a minimalist packer because I love clothes and options. On this particular trip we booked low cost flights for our trip back. Honeslty, we wanted the cheapest, shortest flights. As I was prepping for all the things I looked at our itinerary and realized we were only allowed ONE bag that was 5 kilograms. Hello! That's like a purse. I tried to change the luggage allowance only to realize that we only had one hour to get throught customs, security and to our gate in Newark which meant their was no possible way to check a bag. To change the flight completley would have cost over 1,000 bucks, so needless to say, I became a minimalist packer. I figured, worse comes to worse, I could just buy what I couldn't fit, but in true me fashion, it became a challenge.
When we were travelling, five years ago, for our 10 year anniversary Clay put our bullet train tickets to London in his side pocket and they got pick pocketed in the Antwerp train station. No Bueno!! So, I knew I had to find a bag with good storage but not too many pockets. Thanks to my super stylish sister I found this bag on Amazon.
It was awesome! super spacious and pretty darn cute! So the project of getting clothes for 10 days into this bag was on! I packed 3 cotton dresses, 2 pants (blue jeans, white denim), 3 long sleeve shirts, 2 sweaters, one sweatshirt, a short sleeve shirt, 3 tank tops/undershirts, raincoat, undergarments, socks. I also packed a comfortable walking shoe and a pair of short hunter rain boots. When we went to London it rained for 4 days and their is nothing worse than wet cold shoes while walking a bazillion miles, I bought rain boots there. Rain was forecast for quite a few days that we were there, so I felt like bringing rain boots was a must. Clay was awesome and carried a small cross body to hold those and a few other extras. On the plane I wore a pair of lululemon leggings, tank top, long sleeve shirt, long sweater (essentially a housecoat that is acceptable to wear in public....thanks anthro), converse and I carried a jacket. To be honest, not my cutest outfit, but I was imagining I would have to layer up like Joey on Friends when he put on all his clothes so he wouldnt have to give any away, so I call this a win.
The inside of my backpack
The trick. I bought the ziplock vacuum seal bags at target and put all my clothes in those and sucked all the air out. For those who hate wrinkles, sorry, a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do. This allowed me to stuff all my clothes in my bag with room for my toiletry bag, a pair of shoes and my flat iron. For toiletries I bought all travel size containers and hoped they would be enough. In full disclosure I may have only washed my hair once. #sorrynotsorry. I stuffed my makeup, snacks, book, meds, brush and chargers in my purse and was good to go!
Again, we had a washing machine in Rome, so I was able to do one quick load before we left, which was a game changer. After travelling like this successfully here are a few take aways. It made packing up for all the different destinations so easy. It kept us from spending money on souveniers we really didn't need and use that money for some incredible tours (another blog, but those tours are worth every.red.cent!). Checking in for flights and transferring planes was cake with no risk of losing our luggage. So! Their you go! Hope this helps for all the summer travels!
A super cool castle in Gent and my super comfy Hunter boots.