Friday Favorites – Packing

Happy Friday!  What better day of the week to talk about packing than Friday?  Dreaming of a vacation is always more fun when it’s the weekend right?  I’m a perpetual over packer but have learned to pack a little lighter after missing a flight because I needed to check a bag.  More trips than not, I now fly with a carry on and it’s made life so much simpler and I don’t have to worry about being without all my favorite things.

I love this packing flow chart and realized the step that might help me the most is to actually make a packing list!  This seemed reasonable versus the haphazard way I was pulling out clothes the night before and shoving into my bag in fear of not having just the right thing to wear.  Now I start with my itinerary and make a list of the outfits that work for each day.  Once it is on paper it is so much easier to see what items could partner with one another on various days to create more of a capsule wardrobe.

Seems like a crazy question to ask if you can lift your bag, but this is one of the big rules I’ve had even for my kids.  If you can’t carry it, you can’t bring it!  Having a carry on rolling suitcase paired with a backpack has always been the easiest way for us to insure everyone can carry their own luggage.  I grabbed this travel backpack for our most recent trip to Hawaii and was amazed by just how much it could hold and still fit under the seat on the plane.

I almost always head back to this post by Cassie at Hi Sugarplum and review before packing. Lots of helpful tips. One of my favorite tips I’ve learned from her is to use the space in my shoes to pack items.

Packing cubes are another solution I’ve found incredibly helpful.  You will be surprised how much more you can actually fit into a carry on using the cubes to sort your items. Typically I use one for clothes, a small one for undergarments and athleisure and a third for my hair tools and miscellaneous items. Of course learning to fold the clothes to maximize space is the game changer and you can find so many You Tube videos that will show you just how to make this work if you want to invest the time.  With baggage fees a given on most airlines, time literally is money!

Typically we are heading for short trips and coming home with lots of dirty laundry but sometimes there are items we did not wear and who wants to mix the clean and dirty laundry together?  Using packing cubes can also help you keep the laundry separate or there have been many times I’ve added our dirty clothes to one suitcase with the remaining clean in another.

Of course the first step is always getting all the dirty laundry clean so the packing can begin right?  Blah!  I’m hoping the fact that our next trip is taking us away to a warm climate when we are just heading into spring at home will mean I don’t have to stress with this detail before packing!

Hope the next time you travel you are able to use a few of these tips to maximize your carry on but still have plenty of great looks to create a stylish vacation!