When Less Is More

Have you ever come home from a trip and noticed that you have just unpacked 14 pieces of clothing that are still unworn? You are packing way too much stuff.

Rule One—Unless your trip is shorter than a week, or you are going to single destination with guaranteed transport to and from every airport or train station, you need to take less, not more.

Seriously: If your trip is for anything longer than five days, you are going to have to do laundry at some point. That’s just common sense.

And if you’re changing from plane to bus depot to hotel, do you really want to lug your entire wardrobe with you? How is that going to enhance your enjoyment of the scenery?

Lay out everything you think you need and then cut it by at least two-thirds.

Rule Two—Following Rule One and keeping your baggage to carry-on only is one of the best decisions you can possibly make.

Not only will you save on baggage charges that airlines so enthusiastically add onto the outrageous prices they charge for getting you there (in what can only be described as “steerage” conditions—See: Titanic, Amistad), you’ll save a lot of wear and tear on your nerves.

Ask yourself: With only a few days to spend enjoying that beach or world-class dining or every Michelangelo painting ever, do you really intend to waste hours standing in front of an airline carousel, waiting for your bags?

Rule Three—It’s a global village out there. In fact, there is almost no place in the world where you cannot quite literally get off the plane and into a perfectly modern drugstore to buy bottles of shampoo, disposable razors, and ibuprofen.

There are very few city centres left where the stores you normally buy your clothes in haven’t opened an outlet in.

Trust me: If you need it, you can buy it. Sure, you should bring along those tiny plastic bottles of the main hygiene necessities to get you through the first few days, but there is absolutely no need to lug 500ml bottles of mouthwash all over the globe.

Strategies:

The first thing you need to do is to find a carry-on bag that limits you to the essentials.

I use a small backpack and a shoulder bag and that’s it. I’ve gone for six weeks with just that, and believe me, I could have gotten away with less stuff in both those bags, because of Rule Three.

Mine has a kind of “belt-pack” that clips on/off, and while I’ve never used it as a belt-pack, it’s a great place to stick the things that airport security wants to see—like those little bottles of shampoo and conditioner—because they are easily accessible and don’t require a complete repack of everything you own afterwards.

For any normal destination, you really need to think about what you are taking in relation to everything else you pack. Things need to go with other things: a one-off that doesn’t match, by colour or climate, anything else in your bag is going to be, ultimately, dead weight. You also need to pack things that don’t wrinkle, don’t need dry cleaning, and can serve multiple uses. A sweater that only goes with an evening gown you probably won’t ever wear is not going to serve you well. A shirt that creases the moment it leaves the hanger will drive you mad.

And when you are lugging that bag from pillar to post, you’ll wish you’d just brought an extra t-shirt instead.

A really good tip is to put all your underwear in a ziplock bag. Ditto socks. Those little items tend to roam around in your bag and get lost. It’s a whole lot easier to find them if you turn them into a discrete single object: When you reach your hotel, B&B, or hostel, you can simply pull out the bags separately, get what you want out of them, and dump them back in. If your layers are reasonably sensible (trousers in one layer, sweaters above that, shirts/t-shirts in the next layer, and the ziplock bags stuffed along the sides), you can yank out what you want without having to completely unpack and repack every time you stop.

Your shoulder bag should be just big enough to hold what you need for mental survival: A book or a tablet or both, your phone, a little notebook and a pen, any meds you need on a regular basis, and things like that.

If you’re the nervous sort, or travelling to places where pickpocketing is a big concern, get one of those holders for your passport, credit cards, and ID, and larger amounts of cash. There are the waist belt types that fit under your clothes, and there are the necklace types that hang around your neck and can be worn under your shirt. Both work, although the belt versions seem a bit less intrusive and noticeable.

Shoes: Shoes seem to be a special kind of packing insanity. I don’t know why this is—I love shoes as much as the next girl, but I rarely take any more than two pairs.

That’s right: TWO.

Look, you need one pair for walking in and one pair for anything else. The best bet is to wear your walking shoes/boots, because they are the heaviest, and carrying them for 100 yards will exhaust you faster than running the one-minute mile in them.

It is useful to have an additional pair of shoes that can manage to be a little dressier/goes with a skirt, but don’t get carried away. We aren’t jet-setting here and the paparazzi isn't going to be writing nasty things about your fashion sense in the local rag.

Both pairs need to be comfortable, broken in long before you leave, and they need to look completely matched to your clothes. All of your clothes. A nice pair of flat sandals or some canvas slip-ons are perfect, since they will work both for dinner out and lounging on a beach.

And if they’re old, or you don’t like them much, or they were ridiculously cheap, you will feel perfectly fine with ditching them in a wastebasket on the last day so you can stuff some more souvenirs into your carry-on.

And, finally, most important of all:

If you can’t afford to lose it (either financially or emotionally), don’t pack it.