Idea(s) to reduce expenses while traveling

In My Humble Opinion
41

This isn’t exactly per the OP but it’s a nifty idea.

We hate doing laundry while traveling. And we hate packing dirty clothes, especially after a beach vacation. Smelly bathing suits, sand. Blech.

So on vacas like that we pack old clothes. You know those clothes that are just about to go but you haven’t cleaned out your closet lately. We pack those for beach trips and then after a day at the beach just throw them away. It was time for them to go anyway. This includes old t-shirts, socks, undies, etc. Of course we pack decent duds for eating out and such.

It’s a good way not to have to do laundry and not having a smelly, sandy suitcase.

42

I once heard that as a travel trip for overseas. The volume of the discarded clothes=space for souvenirs.

43

Yep. And sometimes those souvenirs are t-shirts that eventually find themselves on their on “throw away vacation”.

44

My mother always had us wear tossable clothes on travel-only days. I still do it.

45

Been traveing for 6 weeks now, with a Yeti(-ish) cooler in back. It’s become obvious the rate of ice decay while jostling in a moving vehicle is far higher than when stationary.

We’ve noticed the ice will last much longer if we drain the water before starting a drive. Draining doesn’t seem to have much effect when still though.

I should start an info-tainment channel on YouTube demonstrating experiments like this. I’m sure no one’s thought of it. :roll_eyes:

46

It’s the circle of life clothes.

47

Heh. Yes.

Otherwise I throw them in the thrift store bin. But not smelly beach clothes.

48

America sure is different from Europe. A few years ago (pre-Brexit/Covid) I spent a week travelling through five European countries on a tight budget.

There are a couple of budget hotel chains which are pretty similar. You book your room and pay in advance. When you arrive, you enter a code on the gate to the car park and again to the hotel door. There was a small lobby with some vending machines and the room was clean but basic. TV and shower, yes. Included breakfast was bread and/or pastries, and that was the only human interaction.

Countries are not all the same. Large parts of Spain, for example, still close for four hours at 1 pm. Wherever you are, good cheap food can be easily found. I did eat moules et frites several times in France, and the menú del día in Spain is great value, so long as you aren’t in a hurry. In any case, every village has a shop where you can buy all the ingredients for a sandwich.

49

I have, once or twice, seen hotels in the U.S. that operated similarly – no desk clerk, just a place to enter a confirmation code for access to your room. I’m not sure why they haven’t caught on here, but even budget hotels seem to always have at least a desk clerk 24/7. (If I had to guess, it’s for security reasons.)

50

Although you might wonder how much security a minimum wage worker, who probably sleeps in the back room most of the night anyway, actually provides.

51

I’ve heard that, often from Rick Steves devotees, and I don’t really understand it. It might work in the beach example if it’s just an old T shirt and that’s all you’re doing for that afternoon.

But if I’m overseas, I don’t want to be wearing my oldest clothes on last legs. I paid a lot to go overseas and while I don’t really dress up, I definitely like to look decent while at museums or doing other tourist things. So, decent jeans, collared shirt and very comfortable shoes are usually what I wear.

I do have a few old clothes on their last legs but those are usually reserved for days when the weather is just horrible, those awful rain/sleet/slush days that Chicago gets in late fall/early winter that sap my will to live.

52

Long time night auditor here. It’s highly unlikely they’re sleeping in back. We have work to do, too. Geeze. Show us some respect.

53

Sorry…:frowning:

54

We often rent basic rooms/cabins in national parks. Some of them are kind of remote, with few nearby restaurants. Death Valley NP is especially bad that way—2 overpriced restaurants to choose from. Bringing our own food saves $, and tastes better. For such trips, we bring a large cooler and a small microwave that we bought for this purpose. It’s pretty light and fits in a duffel bag. The oven cost about $100, and we probably saved more than that on the first stay in Death Valley. We’ve traveled with it several times, and now friends borrow it for similar trips.

55

Years back I read about an experiment in which a bowl of ice was allowed to melt with the water remaining in contact with it, versus a bowl that had drainage holes, and the bowl that was draining kept the ice longer. Supposedly because air is a better insulator than water.

Makes absolutely no sense, except maybe in specific contexts. If you are doing this at room temperature, the meltwater will still be pretty cold, while any air that surrounds the ice in the drained bowl will be at room temperature.

Presumably the same would happen in a cooler, especially if you don’t open the lid to do the draining.

56

Here’s an article on the subject, and lots of others out there corroborate it.

[quote=“Bison web page”]
Reasons to drain the water from your cooler…When your trip is over and you’re storing the cooler. Seriously. There’s no telling what would grow in there. …[/quote]
Sadly, they did not bother to do the research that a diligent Doper did here, a few years back, to answer that very question.