When I travel with my friend, especially for just a night or two away, it’s a funny contrast: he carries a medium backpack and I carry a large suitcase and a shoulder bag. (This isn’t counting our laptops.)
He takes the bare essentials: one pair of clothing for each day, the essential toiletries, maybe an extra pair of underwear, that’s it.
I carry at least one spare outfit because you never know when you’re going to accidentally spill coffee on yourself or a kid at the next table is going to spew or a zipper’s going to break or whatever, a swimsuit, extra pairs of underwear and socks, a full length book or two and some magazines, spare batteries, and sometimes an “in case the weather turns” items, etc…
Where do you stand: do you travel like a Spartan warrior or a Persian prince as far as your gear goes?
I answered ‘more than I should’, although it depends on the travel - I’m good at packing light for work travel, but when it comes to holidays, I like to have options. So long as I’m not over the baggage allowance, I don’t see it as a problem!
It depends, really. When it comes to clothing, I pack only the necessities. When it comes to entertainment, I usually wind up overpacking. The former I already know what I’ll need. The latter, I really don’t, as what I need to remain entertained varies.
When I say what I need, I mean a change of clothing for every day. It’s generally easier to wind up with unusable pants when you are out than when you are not. The only exception is when there’s a place and time to do laundry, something that has rarely been the case on my trips.
I usually start packing 15 minutes after I should have left my house, so I usually forget essentials. Once I arrived to find a pair of pants that no longer even fit (I had mistaken them for some other pants) and ONE SHOE.
I travel constantly for work, and Japanese hotels always offer toothbrushes and a light cotton robe to sleep in, so whenever I travel to the US I leave these things behind and end up rushing out/begging hotel front desk/shamelessly borrowing friends’ stuff.
It depends on the trip. If we are headed up to my mom’s house, we have a bedroom there with toiletries and clothing, all we need to do is grab the laptops and go.
If we are traveling in general, I like to have enough underwear stuff for each day plus 1 spare set, and 3 sets pants [as a friend jokes one on, one off and one in the bathroom hanging to dry] and 4 shirts [I like pocket polos for travel] and 1 microfiber sleepshirt [it can be washed and it will dry over the course of an evening] and one terry bathrobe and turbie towel [terry cloth turban to wrap my hair in until it is dry enough to comb out.] I keep most of my ebooks on my droid phone so I don’t need to lug around dead trees. I have my 5 favorite movies ripped onto the drive on my laptop, and around 1000 songs for noisy entertainment. I keep a tiny 4 inch fan and a travel power converter and a surge protected extension cord in my rolly laptop hardcase. with the assorted wirey bits to plug in wherever to whatever. Last I looked, I had a car power thingy, and a spare droid charging thingy as well. We are planning on getting a hand crank phone charger thingy for my birthday this year.
My theory is that if I forget it, I can buy it, so I pack towards the light end.
I’m legendary in my family for pretty never packing a swimsuit (I have lots of them in the dresser now). Major bonus of being a guy, which I first realized the first time I forgot to pack one. I was on a canoe trip with a church group (yeah, no idea how I forgot to pack a swimsuit on a canoe trip). Walked into a store, grabbed the first non-ugly, size large suit I saw. One of the girls who was along freaked - I guess she had never noticed that all men’s suits (aside from Speedo banana hammocks) are pretty much identical, so “trying one on” is not necessary.
If the whole family is going, my wife packs like it’s the Apocalypse. 3 day weekend at her parents? At least 5 sets of clothing per kid, including jackets 2 stages colder than the record low temp for that date since they started keeping records. Enough medications to get everyone through multiple illnesses, even though the drugstore is 2 miles away.
We’re flying down to Disney in 3 weeks. When I told my wife that we’re limited to 250 lb of luggage (50 lb per bag), she flipped out.
We pack moderately then, just before we leave, my wife starts remembering a thousand things we might need. So we have our suitcases that aren’t too huge but she also has two purses, a tote bag, an armload of books or other reading material, some work papers, tickets, water bottles, laptop charging cord and so much more. So I pack light enough to allow an extra hand to carry and some extra space to repack some of her items when we get to the airport.
I pack more than I really need. I mean, I can and have packed everything I need in a small backpack, but why should I? Vacation is for enjoying, and I don’t feel as happy when I don’t have changes of clothes and my comfort stuff around me. I am in a point now in my life where I have money to go on decent vacations, so it doesn’t mean I should have to go and not feel comfortable with the things I need.
That doesn’t mean we go crazy, though. We just went to D.C. & Baltimore for a week, and I packed one suitcase for the both of us and each of us had one small purse like object to carry. On the way back we came back with one extra bag, primarily for souvenirs.
I choose moderately light, which is how I pack if it’s just me and I’m flying. We also pack moderately light if all four of us are going on a road trip in the Mini. However, if it’s a road trip in a bigger car, I’ll fill it up.
Being an unusual size, I can’t just go out and buy something I forget, so clothes wise I tend to be very careful about how I pack. I make a list, and then try to think of outlier situations. What if we want to go for a nice dinner? Skirt. That means these extra shoes. Okay, nothing else. Oh, wait, I have a hateful uterus. Extra underwear. Always extra underwear.
What gets me is toiletries. Since travel bottles are all designed for airplane travel as carry-ons now, they’re miniscule wastes that aren’t big enough for a week’s worth of body wash or shampoo, especially if I’m on vacation and swimming and hot tubbing and therefore showering more than once a day. So I end up taking up a ton of room (or taking a larger bag) because I have to take full sized bottles of stuff. That’s a drag.
I amused The Wife by going into a “throw everything at random into the suitcase” frenzy shortly before we leave for a trip. It does not matter that we planned, made lists, and packed everything needed but our toothbrushes days before, I always find a few things we overlooked.
I always find we didn’t actually need half of them.
Do you go swimming during two day business trips? Do you read two books during the same time?
I’m very much the minimalist. When it comes to clothing during travel, there’s no point in bringing extra clothes to suit my mood or if I spill something. If one pair of pants gets dirty, there’s always the pair I’m wearing (or have packed) that can be re-worn, for example. Nobody cares if you wear the same khakis for two days… though I will say that this is easier for men than women, in that men have a wider range of their wardrobe that can be easily mixed and matched.
I have the largest size suitcase that’s commonly available, big enough to fit several small children. I usually fill it up, and it weighs a ton. That goes whether I’m away for a week or just three nights.
I was away for three nights last weekend. I packed a beach towel, 4 dress shirts, 3 t-shirts, 3 pairs of underwear, a swimsuit, sandals, a laptop, and toiletries. I don’t feel bad about packing so much because I used everything that I brought.
I have to take all my medications and hypoallergenic toiletries, but I’ve found small bottles of most of them that I keep refilling for travel. Most hotels provide hair dryers, but if you need that kind of thing, a hair dryer takes up as much room for a two-day trip as it does for a two-week trip.
Yes, I certainly do read at least two books on a two-day trip.