For hiking/skiing trips we have settled on wearing one set of clothes for activity (hiking clothes) and one set for after (hut clothes). We wash our gear as needed during the week, but the active gear just gets sweaty quickly so it’s not critical.
Packing for a trip is easy. Packing for someone else’s trip, aka, when I’m going petsitting, is hard. I always pack way too much. I bring things to do so I don’t get bored, then don’t do them. I bring various toiletries though I know they don’t mind me using their basics. But I might need this lotion or that soap, though I rarely use them at home. I bring snacks and other foodstuffs though I know they could feed an army with what they have on hand. Food that they want me to eat as much of as I want.
Every time I vow to pack lightly, then leave my place with a suitcase that feels like it’s filled with bricks. When will I learn?
That is the “median” I was talking about. I know I would be a bit chilly in the morning, but only until the car heat warmed up. A light jacket was fine for the afternoon and evening when I would be out and about more. Packing/wearing a heavy jacket so I would be comfortable in the morning would be a PITA a large portion of the time. It’s more art than science, for sure.
What sucks is making everybody else’s packing list, then making sure they pack what they need! Kids and wife included.
Also, the shoe thing, also the everybody else doing it at the last minute thing.
I have two modes–I am checking a bag, so fuck it, and I am not going to check a bag, so help me god.
Once a year I go to the AP Reading, where we are all trapped in a convention hall for 7 straight days, grading the same essay 1500 times from 8-5. There’s no way I can pack for that in a carry on, so I have a big suitcase. I tend to overpack because I am going to have to amuse myself the rest of the time, and after 8 hours of the same essay, I am looking for stuff to do.
Most other times, I don’t want much luggage to deal with, so the biggest challenge is cramming everything into the smallest possible bag. Like mentioned above, my least favorite part is not being able to pack my toiletries until the next morning.
One of my packing “tricks” is to bring things I do not necessarily want to bring home withe me. A toothbrush I am due to replace, sandals with a few good wears still left, a tshirt I should really throw out, underwear that has started to tear, etc. I then leave these things behind when I return home!
I’ve heard this technique but I don’t agree with it. Nothing wrong with using an old toothbrush and I’m likely to forget it at a hotel regardless. But I don’t want to wear my old clothes when I’ve paid a lot of money for a trip. To each their own, of course. My old clothes are for cleaning or for wearing in terrible weather.
I think we “trip” differently. I vacation on a beach in the Caribbean. My ratty old tshirt is what I put on to walk from my chaise up to the bar to do a shot or take a leak. My tshirt is a step up from most guys’ bare chests. And my ancient swim trunks are fine, considering they will never get wet.
Yes, quite true. My trips are usually to London, Washington DC, or other very large cities. I’d be bored to tears on a beach. Even in Spain, I did some day trips rather than just be on a beach all the times
What sucks about packing for me is that my husband is constantly talking about what he’s going to pack or questioning me about what I’m going to pack, right while I’m trying to concentrate on packing my suitcase. I use a list and refer to it as I go along, and he doesn’t, so he likes to talk about it during the process.
On this last trip, I packed minimally (wore a warmer outfit to travel, packed shorts and one t-shirt) so that the carry-on wouldn’t be so heavy. I didn’t miss a thing by not having extra outfits. I just wore the same outfit all the time and washed it every other day at the vacation home, together with socks and undies. This is the way to go.
I’m positive we have different definitions of “chilly” “jacket” and “heavy”
What annoys me is that, when I travel, and no matter how well I pack, I only have access to a fraction of my seasonal wardrobe. I’m used to having a wide variety of clothes for virtually every occasion at my fingertips. It irks me that, when away, I don’t have that.
Ugh…packing for a work trip or a training course (I am not putting in a deployment, you except to need a lot of stuff then). Normally you end up checking at least three bags of just uniforms and kit, not even considering normal clothing.
My main annoyance when packing to fly is skin cream. I’ll try very hard to go hand luggage only for short haul- I tend to do a lot of walking around, and will often be hopping place to place, so having less stuff to lug around is good. But I need a pretty hardcore moisturiser, lots of it, and that’s not happening with the liquid limits, unless I want to go through all the rigmarole of getting it through on the prescription medication exemption. Or I can bring a teeny bottle, then spend the first day of the trip trying to hunt down an acceptable local alternative.
Other than that, packing is fine, I do enough impromptu trips I have it pretty well down. Not to mention living out of a backpack for a year at a time, twice. I can pack for a weekend trip in the time it takes some people to get out of the house in the morning.
This.
Only I will sometimes get my period while I’m on vacation, which means that going through all the underwear I’ve packed is a real thing.
It depends on the trip. The challenging trip for me is when I am both going to volunteer at one of my car races, and play tourist. I need to pack almost entirely different wardrobes for this, plus extras for the gear I need for racing and gifts for my fellow volunteers (we usually trade trinkets from our local clubs).
Luckily, because we are all a distant family, I can ask to borrow a tent and sleeping bag if necessary for the racing portion. Airbnb now lets me find a rental with a washing machine if otherwise needed. I am also lucky in that races are often held near population centers where I can find the local version of Target or Tesco’s to pick up things I forgot.
Once, on one of these longer trips, I was in the airport when I realized I had nothing to wear for cooler weather. In high summer, one of the airport shops had a sale on sweatshirts. Thank goodness! I wore my new sweatshirt almost every day for 3 weeks.
On this last trip, I dealt with the variable April weather by packing a warm camisole and a light jacket (windbreaker/rainproof). If it got nippy, I’d put the camisole on under my long-sleeved shirt, and then wear the light jacket over all. It was quite warm enough, given that the jacket was windproof. I wore the ensemble in the Columbia River Gorge with a chilly wind blasting and didn’t feel cold.
*Much *better than trying to pack a bulky warm jacket.
Yep - we have done something similar. When we’re planning on a 1-night stay en route to a longer-stay destination, we have trained ourselves (and the kids) to pack just what they need that night, so the rest can stay in the car.
Of course “the rest” will typically include things like laptop bags which of course need to come inside.
Like others: I’ve got big feet and the shoes take up an unfair amount of space in a suitcase. I’m a larger person too, so 3 changes of clothes will have a small suitcase filled to bursting.
Also: no matter how much packing you do the night before an early departure, there are always things like toiletries, CPAP machines and the like that simply CANNOT be taken to the car the night before. I wish it were more feasible to have duplicates of all that kind of stuff (well, toiletries = no big deal, but the electric toothbrush is spendy and a spare CPAP is unaffordable).
I deeply love strategic packing. Little offers me more pleasure.
I have similar issues with conditioner. I can pack 5 or so “travel size bottles” but it’s easier to just resign myself to checking a bag and packing conditioner (& moisturizer).
Also the shoes & bulky clothes thing.
I tend to make a list, I just don’t believe in them when it’s time to go. So I’ll pack, and then think “but what if …” or “I’ll just take one extra …” so I end up slightly overpacked.
On a recent trip, the airline lost my luggage, so I found out I could get by with a lot less, but it wasn’t comfortable. And the problem with “I’ll just buy it when I get there” kind of fell apart when I found out that while toiletry stores were easy, clothing stores were few and far between - especially when you’re a non-standard size (when I asked locals how they got clothes, most of them answered “Amazon” or “we take a long weekend in _______” which was not on my itinerary and doing that would have significantly altered my travel plans).