| The Secrets to Successful Packing | Add To Favorites | | Print | |
Except on a cruise (which involves other considerations), pack light! Take one medium-sized suitcase, no more than two, per person, partially empty for bringing home purchases, and you assure the success of your trip. Take more, and you become a fatigued beast of burden, a prisoner of porters and taxicabs, the unhappy bearer of unwashed clothing or of items never used.
Come to peace with yourself About the only paraphernalia you will ever need to bring on a trip—items that perhaps can't easily be obtained once there (although they're really available everywhere)—are transformers for your electrical devices (like hair dryers) or adapters for foreign sockets, or perhaps coffee immersion heaters.
Don't bring another thing! The Biggest Secret To Packing
A light suitcase means freedom.
Don't sneer at this freedom A light suitcase means spiritual freedom, too, and an ability to concentrate on the attractions and activities of your destination, in preference to mundane, daily needs. With too many clothes, and too many parcels, you'll spend hours unpacking and arranging your apparel when you check into a hotel. You'll spend hours packing them away again as you prepare to leave. You'll awake on the morning of departure, spend frantic and precious time in packing and wrapping, and finally collapse in sweat on your outgoing plane or train. Moreover, you'll have a disorderly, bursting suitcase—cluttered with dirty and unwashed clothes. Remember, too, that these problems increase as the trip continues. However heavy your suitcase may have been as you left home, it'll be twice as heavy as you go along. At every stop of your trip, you'll pick up mementos, gifts, books, papers, tapes, and souvenirs. Unless you've had a one-third-empty suitcase to begin with, you'll be festooned with extra parcels and packages near the end. You'll loop them over your shoulder, you'll squeeze them under your arm, you'll carry some with your little finger—and you'll approach each new city and each new hotel search in a mood of desperation. The first hotel you examine will have you at their mercy. Make the right decisions and buy the lightest quality suitcase available. You'll then fill it with the skimpiest set of clothing your courage will allow. Having done that, you'll then remove half these clothes from the suitcase, and depart on your trip. You won't, for instance, take eight complete changes of underwear. You'll realize that three are enough; that there are few less-than-a-week laundries at your destination, and that you'll have to wash out those t-shirts yourself, in any event. You'll recognize how depressing it is to cart a suitcase of dirty clothes from city to city. For men, a packing list can be rather severe, and still perfectly sufficient. If you seek comfort and economy on a summer trip, then this is all you need take (in addition to comfortable and casual clothing worn on the plane or in your car for the trip):
Don't take another thing! For women: The following items (chosen with the help of a female adviser) seem sufficient for women traveling to warm-weather destinations, on any sort of trip other than a cruise:
As you can see, the above list relies in one or two instances on either drip-dry or other heavy-wearing clothing. If you can't find these items in your locality, then at least concentrate on clothing made of crease-resistant materials, and in simple, easy-to-care-for designs. Avoid pleats and ruffles (unless they are the permanent kind, which require no ironing), and leave at home those lovely light, wispy dresses that need constant care and attention to look fresh. Packing miscellaneous items Whenever possible, carry all liquids in plastic bottles. They are flexible, provide more room, and prevent accidents. If you must take along a glass container, such as a perfume bottle, avoid spillage by sealing the cap of the bottle with a layer of wax. Roll into scroll-like shapes whatever is roll-able: underwear, slips, bras and so forth—all the items that don't have to be wrinkle-free. In that manner, these items can be placed along the sides of your suitcase easily, or into the most unusual cracks and crevices (which you'll discover while packing). For items that do wrinkle, a layer of tissue paper placed above and below the garment will prove to be a surprising wrinkle-preventer. Finally, conserve space Don't let anything go to waste. A hand-bag should be jammed with small articles, shoes jammed with socks, and so on. Since you will probably be doing your own laundry, take at least one plastic bag, with a zipper, for carrying wet clothes or wash cloths from town to town. Also recommended is Woolite, the cold water soap. Take as many packets as you think you'll need—one packet will do for a full washbowl of laundry. Towels and soap are provided everywhere. Avoid bringing the clothing that requires a fancy cleaning-and-pressing job. Unless you do, you'll spend substantial sums for cleaning and laundry, you'll be continually inconvenienced, and you'll end up—in our worst nightmare—lugging a suitcase full of useless, dirty clothes. The suitcase itself For carrying these clothes, you'll want to buy the lightest suitcase available: one made of fabric. Cloth luggage is really quite durable, comes in several varying sizes, and is feather light. Equally important, they're the cheapest on the market and yet offer the greatest amount of space. You'll value the expandable nature of a fabric suitcase when you start to cram in all the “odds and ends” you couldn't resist picking up along the way. Try, too, to be a one-suitcase traveler. If you're a couple and feel that one suitcase per person just will not do, then, instead of getting another valise, buy a “valpac” (a fold-over, portable wardrobe) as your third piece of luggage. With a valpac, you simply hang up your clothes inside, and instantly have a suitcase with a convenient carrying handle. Most valpacs also contain extra inner pockets for shoes, underwear, or other soft goods, and they have a great deal of useful extra space on the bottom and along the sides. |
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More trips have been ruined by over-packing than by all the hurricane's, over-bookings, and surly waiters of the world, combined. A light suitcase is the key to an enjoyable vacation, and proper packing ranks with the advance study of history and culture, as the two most important steps of travel preparation for trips to anywhere.
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