By Jan West
How do you pack for your summer holiday trip ? Do you travel light or do you take everything just in case? As time goes on and we travel more and for longer I and Mr I have been refining our packing to the point where it has become minimal.
Last winter we spent 3 months touring Australia ,Malaysia and Thailand accompanied by one carry-on bag each. That’s it – total. 7kgs each. Now I grant you it’s easier to manage a warm weather holiday than a ski-ing holiday, but then we don’t go on cold weather holidays!
We have he security of knowing our luggage is always going to arrive at the same time and place we do. We sail past the waiting lines at the luggage carousel. No excess luggage charges. Packing up and moving from place to place takes 5 minutes and no bad backs from hefting huge cases about. What’s not to like?
It does take a bit of forethought though – every item of clothing has to go with everything else – no orphans, minimum amount of undies, and creaseproof!
So what did I take for my 3 month trip? 2 pairs of capri pants, I long skirt that could be pulled up, belted and worn as a dress, 3 tunic tops,3 strappy tops, 3 more tops, 3 sets of undies, 2 tankinis ( the tops also doubled as daywear). I had room for a couple of shrugs to cover up shoulders. I travelled in linen pants, another top and a long- sleeved shirt. I took a large light shawl/scarfy thing and a fleece zip jacket. Shoes – one pair of sandals on feet, one pair of sandals in the bag and a pair of flip-flops. Pair of socks for the plane!
Doing the calculations and assuming that everything goes with everything else (which it did) I had at least 40 outfits!
Toiletries were down to the bare minimum ( and multi-purpose) as we had to adhere to the guidelines for hand luggage, so stuff got decanted and then re-bought as necessary once we arrived. Everywhere had hair dryers- (and anyway I was on holiday!) Medications minimised: I decided to stop taking my statins – three months worth of those things together with the other stuff I took to counteract the statins took up too much valuable space!
Have I made any light packing converts for your next trip away?
