Packing light can be challenging, but it’s not impossible. It is also undeniably admirable, highly beneficial, and the more you do it, the better you become.
There are two types of travellers in the world – the one who travels with her entire house in five pieces of luggage and the ‘light traveller.’ The former appears at the airport with insufficient arms to pull her bags, while the other wears a cute crossbody bag and pulls a luggage conveniently. Of course, the first person paid check-in baggage fees, while the light traveller had to bring one luggage only to maximize her free 7kg carry-on baggage allowance.
Who do you think would enjoy the trip more? Who seems to be the more frequent traveller? It’s the light traveller.
It is a skill, really, to be able to exercise being a minimalist with your traveling stuff when you want to ensure you’re not forgetting anything. After all, you’ll be gone for days and can’t ask someone to find that Hello Kitty shirt in your closet and ship it to you. Traveling light, however, has many other benefits than looking cute at the airport and saving on check-in baggage fees.
Benefits of Traveling Light
First, packing light means not having to worry about checking in your bags. You’ll save time on luggage scans and money on overweight fees. Once you’ve learned the art, you just need to come to the airport, be cute, and take OOTD photos if you like while waiting for your flight. Next, arrival at your destination, you wouldn’t have to wait for your luggage at the baggage carousel and proceed to exploring! Especially if you have a tight schedule and itinerary, the more time you save, the better.
Other major benefits include being in control of your belongings and not stressing on them getting lost or damaged. Also, you’ll save yourself from a sore back and feet from lugging a heavy bag around. Walks during your trip would definitely be easier and more meaningful since you’d be able to come to wherever corner you want. You’d be able to secure everything away in airport or hostel lockers and find it easy to unpack too.
So where do you start? Here are some tips you can follow to ensure your next trip would be easy-breezy:
- Start with a smaller suitcase instead of using your big suitcase because you would tend to fill whatever bag you have.
- Buy travel scales for accuracy and don’t be like the weird ones who like guessing the weight of their bags. It would be too late for you if you weigh at the airport.
- Use a packing list and stick to it. Pack only the essentials and avoid going through your things.
- Opt for compression packing cubes for your clothes. They serve as a natural limit on how many clothes you can take and the compression element halves the amount of space your clothes take up.
- Don’t pack shoes for every occasion. Stick to a maximum of 3 dual-purpose pairs.
- Use shower caps instead of bulky shoe covers. It’s cheap and you can easily find it at the department store or supermarket.
- Use a thin drawstring wash bag and skip the bulky beauty organizers.
- Go for lightweight and technical winter clothing and don’t give in to the temptation of bringing thick and heavy clothes.
- Wear your largest items instead of packing them. Airports are largely the same temperature regardless of the destination and flights are usually cold, so you can keep the boots on.
- Towels are heavy, right? Bring a sarong instead.
- Take only your essential medications and leave the ‘just in case’ items
- Check out solid toiletries instead of liquids. The latter are smaller, lighter, and won’t tip you over your liquids allowance.
- Invest in some travel sized versions of your perfume. Get yourself a travel sized atomiser.
- Call to check if your hotel has a travel hairdryer if you don’t have a travel hairdryer.
- Yes, you want a good ‘sound trip’ during your flight, but earphones is a much better idea than your favorite headphones.
Packing light can be challenging, but it’s not impossible. It’s also highly beneficial and the more you do it, the better you become. How many places do you want to go to this year and how many trips do you think would you have in this lifetime? Do you want them to feature mostly memories of you looking haggard and tired from worrying and carrying heavy luggage around? Time to learn the art of traveling light.