other stuff
My husband and I both packed well for our travels last spring with regard to clothing and toiletries. Really well. Our bags were lightweight and manageable and had room to spare.
And then we added other stuff:
We brought my laptop to share. It’s reasonably lightweight and not bulky, but my laptop cord (all laptop cords?) is bulky and had to be packed just so in order to fit properly in the zippered tech pocket.
A sewing kit that I should have slimmed down a bit, as it contained an assortment of fabric scraps to use for patches if needed. (They were not needed.)
A pencil bag with pens, paper clips, small pieces of paper, and other miscellaneous desk items.
A pouch with chargers and other electronics-related items.
A couple of other pouches with random stuff.
None of these things weighed much but all together they added a few pounds, not to mention meant that I had more stuff to organize and deal with every time we repacked to move on. To be honest, it was sorting through those random pouches that irritated me every time I went through my bag. My husband also packed some random things he really didn’t need.
We both acknowledged early on in our travels that we could have — and should have — done better. In the past, we have eliminated bulk like that, but we’ve both relaxed a bit on recent trips.
We have another trip coming up next month and will be doing a hard reset of all that other stuff. I have already slimmed down the aforementioned sewing kit. And based on my experience with playing Tetris with my packing cubes, I’ll be combining all those miscellaneous pouches into one (maybe two) combined ones.
How are the rest of you doing with your packing these days? Any room for improvement?
I like to keep my packing lists on the computer. At the end of the trip, we note what wasn't used. The next time we have a similar needs trip, we're not starting from scratch - and taking less with us.
The last time we lugged two large suitcases and backpacks up and down the Paris metro steps to get from CDG to Montparnasse, we swore we would streamline. Recently we bought those very small cabin bags and that, plus a backpack, seems to work well, as long as it's not winter clothes. I'm also wrapping my head around wearing the same thing over and over and NOT bringing that dress or nice shoes, "just in case." It's definitely a process. Packing cubes help a lot, too, but the electronics thing is getting out of control.