Packing Light: The Basics and Philosophy

good morning everybody and welcome to an adventures with sarah packing event uh today we are going to go back and revisit my very popular packing class that i did for many years for rick steves it had over a million views on it on the internet so i thought it's time to kind of revamp a little bit and try it again and also to kind of update because there's been some interesting changes in the world since the last time i did it which was a few years ago so we're gonna get right down to it uh since i'm by myself today i don't have my teenage assistants if you have questions please go ahead and put them into the chat and i'm happy to answer those uh afterwards i'll respond to the questions as they come up so let's get going all right first things first what kind of a bag should you bring that should be the top thing that you think about before you think about anything else and that leads me to the whole overarching point of my talk today that is that you are not gonna be packing based on uh how many things you should bring two pairs of pants six pairs of shoes whatever i don't care what you bring what you bring doesn't matter what matters is what does your bag weigh when you're done so i usually start about two weeks ahead i know it's a little excessive but i think it's a great idea if you get started really early i know a lot of us right now don't have a lot to do so this is a really excellent moment for you to consider going ahead and doing some kind of packing practice uh so you're you're going to be thinking only about weight when you look at what your airline restrictions are the airline restrictions in the past have been about 16 to 17 pounds for a carry-on and the reason i'm sticking with this number is that you need to carry your bag on please do not even think about checking your bag because the problem when you check your bag it could get lost on the way over and then you're going to have two weeks or more of having no luggage it very well could be possible so i would say almost every tour i do one person loses their luggage because they checked it and they didn't heed my advice so please listen to my advice and be sure to carry your bag on the other good thing about doing carry-on only is it forces you to be honest what do you really need think about all the things that you use in your daily life do you really use 25 pounds worth of things in your regular daily life for me especially during the pandemic i've been wearing the same sweats practically every day i have a feeling that you have been too so that means you don't need 25 outfits to go for a week somewhere you can use the same things over and over again and you can really boil down the things that you need to a really small amount and here's a lucky thing now that we have to travel with masks on the airplanes that's less makeup you have to take right so you can lighten your bag even more so the biggest tools you have for making sure you have a perfectly packed bag are scales one is a kitchen scale this is just the oxo kitchen scale the other scale that i recommend is a handheld scale for your baggage to find out what the final weight of your bag is and also before you even think about how to pack you need to weigh your bag empty now this is a really good way to choose luggage i'll have to do another video just on choosing luggage because that's a whole topic but um there are two different strategies essentially for bags for travelers who are carrying on one is going to be a backpack this is my favorite option because i prefer to have a backpack it just makes me lighter on my feet i don't like dragging something around behind me at all so this is a much more preferred option or a rollaboard bag now rollerboards you have to be careful if you haven't bought one in a long time check the dimensions on the ones that you have because the airlines have changed their scale so some of the airlines actually require you to carry on something smaller than maybe what you had in the past i know i have two or three different ones from the past that they're useless i can't use them at all so go ahead and consider your bag first so the best way to do that is just to weigh them you can actually get one of these little hand scales and take it with you to the luggage store and weigh the bag before you purchase it you can also if you're buying online look in the details uh usually if you go into the menu and you look in the specifications of the product it'll tell you what it weighs so that's the number one thing you want to know what it weighs these kind of bags here the rolling bags the frame alone usually weighs five or six pounds now if i'm taking only 16 pounds with me on my trip that means i only actually have 11 pounds because i'm taking a rolling bag and that weight has already been eaten up and if you don't believe me about this weight thing by the way uh just so you know lufthansa is notorious for weighing your bags and not just at the counter but they'll weigh it before you actually get on the plane and they'll wait again when you land i bought a bottle of water in a magazine once and i was getting on the lufthansa flight and they took my bag away from me because they said it way too much because i put the magazine in my bag even though it had already been weighed so the weight thing is actually pretty serious and this is the whole keystone of my whole philosophy on packing weight weight weight okay so you can reduce the amount of weight and you need to consider that in your bag so for me it kind of makes the rolling bags obsolete i know for a lot of you you can't do backpacks so if you are going to buy a rolling bag your kind of mission is to start looking for a rolling bag that doesn't weigh much so that's uh something you'll have to look into um so for me i choose backups and a few different ones that i like i am a huge fan of tom bin bags tom bin is one of the most reputable bag manufacturers that i've ever met they're from seattle they hand make everything right down the road from my house they're only about 10 minutes away from my house and you can watch them make the bags in their factory and these bags you'll buy one and you'll never have to buy another bag again they're super well thought out well designed and i love every single one of them my favorite is the tristar this is the bag i take with me almost everywhere it's got pockets on the front it's got a front kind of slot it's got a middle slot and then it opens up all the way in the back and it's got a flat fold section so i put my pants dresses and other flat fold things here in the back in the front i put one slot has my shoes the other slot has my tops which i'll show you how i put that together in a second and then the middle is for other random stuff so right now i've got some flip-flops in here but any other things i can put my laptop in here and one of the nice things about these tom bin bags is that they have these little loops if you can see there's these little loops and they make all these fun accessories that you can attach to the loop so this is a little pouch that i've attached that i put my earrings in i have another pouch in there that has my necklaces and then another pouch that has all of my travel documents so that's a way to just organize within your suitcase so organized pre-organized suitcases are really nice another brand that i really like is code epoxy because they also have kind of compartments that come inside already and i've even seen some newer ones that i haven't tried yet that have a wardrobe you open up the backpack or the rolling bag and then you hang it up and it has everything stacked already so lots of ways to get organized i'm a little old-fashioned so this makes me pretty happy if i'm serious about weight i just get the cheapest thinnest backpack available um there's one from a company called go to free i think some of you have purchased it who've traveled with me before and it's just a big hollow bag it's just a big sack but if you organize things with packing cubes that works really well and the bag weighs nothing the bag weighs like i would say half a pound maximum so lots of different choices in the ways you can go with bags and that's a very personal choice i like this little bit sturdier bag that's padded and that's going to work well and has all the different slots i need so this is my go-to bag for just about everything now if i'm talking about other bags you know i'm i buy stuff i know that maybe shopping is not the main thing you should be wanting to do when you travel but i love to shop and i love to bring things home with me so i either leave space in my bag or i bring well and or i bring a little thing like this this is from lewis and clark and i think it's probably the best duffel that i've ever gotten the best kind of collapsible duffel it's just tiny tiny this fabric weighs nothing i mean it feels like underwear it weighs nothing little tiny thing and look at this enormous duffel bag that was in there so i take this with me on almost every trip and it's my overflow this is where i put my souvenirs and things like that lightweight things the wine is going to go into the backpack but anything else that's light goes in here and what's important in these bags that scrunch up like this is you need ones that have a zipper because if it doesn't have a zipper on it you can't check it this one zips all the way up and is secure so once i fill it up with all my goodies i can just check it on the way home and that's just another point about my philosophy on packing which is that you really don't need to check on the way or carry on on the way back you can check it on the way there because you don't want to lose it on the way back who cares bring whatever you want home you can pack as much as you like so just be sure that you are being light on the way there and then assume leave room for the things you're going to buy another strategy is to just buy stuff when you're there you can always buy clothes you can always buy toiletries you can buy anything everywhere in the world except for i don't know maybe madagascar you can buy everything that you could possibly need so don't worry when you're packing that you've forgotten something and sometimes it's interesting to just be strategic about leaving things behind and then choosing to buy those things when you're there i love for example i wanted to show you this i love this deodorant this is spray deodorant this is available in europe it's in a pump bottle you can't get this in the united states it doesn't exist here but you can get this everywhere in europe so i sometimes will choose not to bring deodorant and i'll bring this home the other thing that this is marvelous for because it's a spray deodorant is putting it onto your shoes when your shoes get super gross and funky uh you can spray it on this you can spray it on your clothes if your clothes are getting kind of gross or your bag believe me everything gets stinky eventually so please do like hop into a pharmacy when you get to europe if you go there and buy some of this and send some to me because we love this all right so i thought what i'd do now is just go through a few of the basics um your day bag is kind of the next thing you might want to think about and day bags are sort of a whole thing again i like i said love these tom bin bags but you guys can choose whatever you like i don't recommend a backpack as a day bag the reason is that a lot of times when people wear backpacks as day bags they unzip them and then they don't re-zip them and i can't tell you how many times i've been walking through museums or through cities in europe and i see somebody with their stuff falling out of their backpack please don't do that you want a cross body bag so this one is one of my favorites and it has a nice padded shoulder so you want something that's essentially like this and the reason i recommend this is that when i'm walking down the street i just rest my hand like this okay so i am six foot two i am a little bit more intimidating than most people but if i'm walking along like this and i just have my hand resting on this i'm the i'm less likely to get pickpocketed or bothered because i'm protecting my bag so this is what i recommend a crossbody bag there are some that are kind of just like purses these are all somewhat unisex my very favorite one of all time unfortunately they don't make anymore but you can kind of see what it's like this is also a tom bin bag from a long time ago this is a neoprene strap which is amazing because i don't feel the weight on my shoulders at all and then it just sits like this this has been attached to my body for probably a decade it is the best bag i've ever had it actually started falling apart the fabric here and i kind of renovated it by having it painted in thailand i've had it repainted twice in thailand now with a dragon so something like this is really nice and comfortable i always clip a little light onto the end of my bag like this because you just never know when you're going to a hotel and it might be dark it's good to have a little bit of light and this has all the pockets you could possibly need i'm not going to show you what's inside because i never unpacked it uh the last time that i traveled i'll show you a few things that are inside and how i use this bag though for my day bag i always have inside you've got these little loops i have a pouch this pouch here i particularly love because it has two sections one in the front i put my tiny little things so i put in like my these are my cell phone chips for different countries i put in safety pins which can save all kinds of things so always bring safety pins and then the back one is where i put receipts and i put my different currencies so that's easy and then i also have another pouch in here that i stole off of a different bag which is like a money belt now a lot of people really like money belts and if you like money belts that's great i i would say wear a money belt do as i say and not as i do money belts make me feel a little uncomfortable i'm already sensitive about the size of my tummy and i don't really want one there and it makes me sweaty anyway so i have this attached to my bag and it's where i keep my documents but i would say wearing a money belt is going to make you more secure but inside this i keep my passports my credit cards my global entry card all of that kind of stuff so then i know where all of the most important stuff is and i can pull that out of my bag real quickly everything else in here is a big fat mess so i'm not really going to show off the messiness oh but there is one fun thing i'll put this into the electronics pile um adapters now i'm going to talk about electronics in a second but i got so sick of those adapters that plug in for the usb right here um having like an adapter and then an adapter on top of it i just went to the apple store in i don't remember where maybe it was palermo and i bought this it is the european plug usb port which is marvelous because then you don't even have to worry about adapting plus an adapter plus an adapter plus blah blah you just go plug that in the wall and everything runs off of these usb things now this was probably about maybe 20 bucks worth it worth every penny so think about that wherever you're going if there is a different kind of plug just go into a shop and buy the local usb plug you don't need to buy a million adapters unless you bring a laptop or something like that then you have to bring that but this has been very very useful and that's why it's in my bag right now all right so uh oh yeah also this hey by the way um bottle openers that's something that's a little bit of an extra you don't really need this i don't buy i don't bring them i buy them and i bring them home because of course they're going to get taken away from you on airplanes but that's one of the first things that i'll buy when i get off a plane is a bottle opener okay so i will go over a few more things in this bag a little bit later so getting back to the main bag uh to be able to let's say you have a bag like this one that's a rolling bag and you just have a big empty space inside okay so we've got just a big empty space inside how are we going to fill this big empty space inside now this is what's going to change your life if you don't already pack like this these are packing cubes packing cubes are the most wonderful invention ever the very first year i was tour guiding 20 years ago they came out with these they were brand new and oh my gosh it made my life so much simpler so what you can do is you can buy packing cubes for each kind of thing you're packing and just roughly what i do is i'll have one for shirts i'll have one for my shoes you see this long sausagey one i'll have one for pants i'll have one for underwear and things like that and i'll have one for my toiletries after you've done that you've basically kind of covered all the bases right those are all the things so when you need something out of your bag you unpack it and you've got one two three four five cubes you can take all of those out onto the airport floor or wherever you are and find the thing you need and then repack within seconds so compartmentalizing like this is really important i never just leave random stuff in my bag because you never know when somebody's going to need to look in your bag sometimes the security guys will completely take your bag apart so that's what i recommend now which kind of packing cubes should you choose that is the question there are lots of brands out there so my favorite one from tom bin is this one here which has a compartment on the top that's deeper and a more shallow one in the bottom so i love this one because i put my flat fold stuff here like pants down there and in the top i put my shirt so all of my clothes are in one cube the theory on this one is supposed to be you put clean clothes in the top and dirty clothes in the bottom i guess you could use it that way too so that's the best one from that brand um i think that e-bags make some really good ones and in fact i think it was um somebody who follows me who suggested i look for e-bags and bears come in a big set and they have this kind of interesting uh frame they're a little weird they're a little bit wonky but they take some shape and they're very well built and for the amount of money you'll spend on them they're pretty nice they're also made of that ultra ultra ultra light fabric so these don't add a lot of weight to your bag now that's the problem with some of the packing cubes some especially some of the older ones that i have the the cube itself weighs a ton so if you get this ultra light kind of material it's just like a super thin nylon that's a smarter way to go lewis and clark also makes them i like this fabric i think better than the e-bags it's a little bit softer it's kind of like yeah very silky and this is another one that i think is kind of a fun concept because it's just a regular size cube but then it has an exterior zipper so if for some reason you buy more things or you need more room in your cube the bottom drops out of this one and it makes it deeper so that's a really nice one and lewis and clark is a very very affordable brand so if you don't have a lot of money to spend on upgrading your luggage stuff this is a good brand to look at i also use them for my shoe case this is my shoe bag i don't know that this was meant for that i think it was supposed to be for socks but it's perfect for shoes so if i'm going to grab a pair of my favorite shoes which these are by the way one of my favorite pairs to travel with i'm not going to talk about shoes today by the way because that's a whole thing so we can talk about shoes in another video i promise we will um so shoes i i always recommend you bring one pair of sandals and one pair of really good walking shoes you really only need two if you're going to throw in a third make it sort of like a lightweight shoe maybe a slip-on and that's that's the truth for women and men but the sandal should be something that can go in water if you're going to be going to a place with beaches because often especially in europe the beaches are not soft they're rocky especially in italy so these are my favorite shoes for that these are called tiva wedge mandolins and what i love about them is they can kind of kind of double a little bit as an elegant shoe because they've got a heel so they almost look like they're fancy but they're definitely not and they're very inexpensive so for um this shoe cube i just stack two pairs like this because i can easily fit two and zip them in and here's the cool tricky part this particular cube has a compression zipper so you put your shoes in and then you zip up the outer zipper and it squeezes them together so it makes this nice and compact so that's my little shoe sandwich there and i do recommend you get a cube for your shoes because shoes get gross and dirty and you don't want to have them inside your bag with any opportunity to touch your clothes or other things that are kind of sensitive so that's what i recommend for for cubes please if you don't have cubes already go look into it cubes are absolutely fantastic all right so we're going to move on now um to look at a few other things that you'll want to bring one of those is toiletries now this is a very very personal thing toiletries are something that everybody's going to have a different amount now you're going to disagree with me probably but this is as much as i bring this is my toiletries limit and i limit myself to this little case first of all because this is the official airline limit the 411 container size so this is the size of a quart ziplock bag right it has a little hook so i can just hang it up um there's a whole lot of other people that make these i mean you can look on amazon this one again is from tom bin just because i love their stuff um and you can find something similar but i really would like to suggest you limit your toiletries to the size i don't care how much makeup you wear you can do it you look beautiful just the way you are it's not one of these things where we're trying to win a beauty pageant right i've also had people say oh i have to bring my my hair dryer i have to bring my curling iron all of these things you don't for hair dryers first of all they have them in almost every hotel and also as far as packing toiletries shampoo conditioner lotion every hotel i've ever stayed in has those now it wasn't that way in the past but now you really have that everywhere so as long as you don't mind using a shampoo that you're not used to you're going to save yourself a lot of space and a lot of hassle if you just do the regular shampoo in the hotel i bring a little backup bottle of what i like and if i need conditioner because sometimes the conditioner is not great i just buy it locally so that's a good way to trim down your toiletries case but what goes in my toiletries case is pretty darn simple i'll bring one tube of my favorite conditioner or shampoo usually my favorite conditioner and these are a couple of different tubes that i have used over the years these are from target they're kind of eh i'm not real impressed with them this one i really like this one um is a silicon bottle and it has a suction cup on the back that's really cool because a lot of times you're in showers where there is no shelf and so i love the suction cup thing my only regret about the suction cup is i this is the only one left it came in a set of three the others are still stuck to the shower door of some random hotel somewhere in the world so that's the problem is that when you stick them to that door it's real easy to forget them but this is a really cool invention i think so i really recommend these they are a little heavy is the only problem with them but they uh they do the trick uh when we talk about makeup and things like that that's very very personal so i recommend that you think about scaling down and using more concentrated products so for deodorant if you don't like the spray stuff this is really great this is a cream deodorant and these paste deodorants are very popular all over the world and you can order them on amazon this one i just got it's i got it from amazon it's called cayenne i think it's a tea tree oil deodorant it takes like the tiniest little dab and it works great i am testing it out right now i think i smell okay i don't have any i don't have anybody in the house to confirm it but i think i smell okay what's great about this is that it takes so little you could put this into a contact lens case and just put one side full of this and that would be enough for your trip because it takes you know half the size of a pea basically for each armpit so really really this could last you for an entire trip just a really small amount uh the other thing is your face cream you don't need this whole thing this and face creams notoriously come in heavy bottles and giant packaging and inside it's like half as much as you think it's going to be because the jar is so big so just take your favorite face cream and use the other side of a contact blends case or some other kind of small container to transfer your favorite kind of face cream i recommend a face cream that includes some sort of suntan lotion component so an spf level because then you can also use that as a suntan lotion if you wish and on that note for for a base makeup i know a lot of ladies like to have their faces looking perfect and i'm not a big makeup person as you probably know but my very favorite thing to use is this this is called um bare minerals this is a powder base makeup so in the morning you know i get zits every now and then or blemishes or you know redness on my face so i'll put on my my lotion and then i take this with a little brush and i even have a little brush in here i have a mini one here's my little mini makeup brush i got this for 99 cents at archie mcphee which is a joke store in seattle but you i'm sure can find one at your local drugstore and i use this in the morning and just take the tiniest bit you don't need hardly any of it and then you just kind of dab it all over your face and this makes your skin look flawless but it also because it's minerals it provides a level of suntan protection as well so i think it's an spf 15. so this is probably my favorite thing and i use this also as my backup suntan lotion if i happen to be out in a place where i don't have any you can put it on your shoulders as well and i actually had a dermatologist on one of my tours once who said that powdered sun protection is actually better for you than the lotions i don't know if that's true but i'm gonna go with it because having makeup and suntan lotion in one container that's really great so i'm gonna take that it just lightened my load for other makeup things i like i said i don't bring a whole lot but the the products i do recommend uh revlon colorstay lipstick this stuff is amazing it will last you all day you put it on in the morning and you never have to look at yourself again i know with wearing masks and things maybe nobody's wearing makeup now but you will eventually so this i highly recommend they have all different colors uh and it really really works color state ultimate liquid lipstick you can get this at target you can get it online uh it's great and then this is my new favorite mascara and this was a gift from andrea avert who is one of you guys she brought me a little gift bag to a cooking demonstration i did last year it's thrive cosmetics and it is called their liquid lash extensions mascara it is my favorite now it looks so good on and it stays on all day it doesn't run and then when you want to take it off you don't need anything more than just warm water so this is probably the best travel mascara that i've found anywhere so i highly recommend that i think you have to buy this online i don't think it's on in stores thrive cosmetics cause like as in rebel without a cause so that's a really good choice there and i did look on their website and they do have some trial size things available which are always perfect for travel for toothpaste uh to you want to bring three ounces or less and this is something that you will run out of you can easily buy toothpaste anywhere but i always find foreign toothpaste to be suspicious so i bring my own if you go and you comb through target or wherever you're going to find that they have some packaged in this very specific bottle it's usually a little bit more expensive almost every brand makes something that comes like this it's usually like their higher end whitening toothpastes but it comes in this little bottle that stands up like that on the table i don't know what it is about this bottle but it's three ounces and it's really hard to find toothpaste that comes in exactly three ounces so look for something in this shape you'll see it usually comes in a box but read the label before you buy the toothpaste to make sure it's three ounces because then it it adheres to the f uh uh the four one one categories because it has to be three ounces or less so there you go that's what you need to find three ounces of toothpaste this is colgate optic white and i got that at target just yesterday all right um moving on a lot of people have to take pills when they travel i do i have medications i have to take so what i do is i bring um this little container here this is basically like an altoids container so i take this altoids container and i empty it out and i fill it up with my favorite things that i need to bring their pills so um this is a very easy thing to do and you may say oh well don't i need the bottle well theoretically but i've been traveling for 25 years i've never once been asked for any of my prescriptions what i do is i photograph the bottle with my camera so if anybody asks what is this i can say oh here's my prescription so you can do that if you're concerned but this is an easy way to really downscale the size of your your medications if you don't have any have many i have like two and then i'll usually toss a few aspirin and other things in here too but you know it's not that much so that's a good way to downscale and if you have a whole bunch of different kinds of medications you have to take just get several of these little tins and then you can mark on them what each of them is but it's a lot smaller and more compact than bringing the whole the whole bottle with you all right so i think that's pretty much all for the stuff i bring last little tip floss now your dentist tells you you should use floss right your mama tells you you need to use floss do you use floss every day some of you do probably and some of you may not but bring the floss with you because floss is so useful it's not just for your teeth you can use it for cutting cheese for example you can use it to tie your bag back together you can use it to lace your shoes if you have to it is really really useful so i would absolutely bring some like this i would bring the kind that's um kind of made of like a a thread rather than plastic because the thread kind will be a little bit stronger if you actually you do need to use it to tie things so this is kind of like a macgyver thing you can use it for a lot of different items all right moving on to a few other little things electronics well electronics are very personal thing obviously you guys are wondering if i use my phone for for my pictures or a camera i did just buy a high-end camera but that's because this is my job now you know you don't need to break to buy a fancy pants camera your phone is fine and actually you'll probably use it more than having to pull out a fancy pants camera because your phone is always somewhere in your pocket or nearby so i highly recommend just sticking with your phone the other thing that's really fun is if you have an iphone uh your travel partners if they have them as well you can send pictures to each other which is really fun or you can create online albums and just everyday upload them so everybody creates kind of a collaborative album so absolutely stick with your phone don't don't buy a fancy camera you don't need to but other electronics you might consider is i bring an ipad with me sometimes this is an ipad air and it's got the little pen so i can take notes and things like that if i if i want to this is a luxury item to be honest you don't really need something like this and you probably don't need a laptop i usually bring my laptop just because i am a writer and it's easier for me to write like this but then that you could in fact bring something like this and type on it so if i'm really trying to minimize weight but i will be doing a lot of writing i bring an ipad air otherwise i just bring my full laptop if i'm doing other stuff other electronics like i said you want to bring the adapters bring multiple usb adapters some people like to bring a power strip with them which is really smart but just be sure you get one that has like a breaker in it because you don't want to blow the fuses at the hotel you're staying at bring cords these cords uh this one is from amazon and i really recommend getting a charging cord that has this fabric on the outside they last so much longer and i have teenagers and they break these cords the charging cords constantly i think i've spent millions of dollars more probably on the charging cords than the electronics themselves but what i recommend is buying one that's really long this one's six feet long and you want to get one that's at least six feet because sometimes the outlet in your hotel room is in a really funky place so you want to be able to plug that in and still be able to access your phone so get one of these really long ones these are about 15 maybe 20 bucks and it's a good investment they also have very solid ends this is where it usually breaks right they usually break right here at the tip so make sure that the one you get is really beefy and will be sturdy on a trip because they do die now headphones um are a little bit of a tricky subject because i have air pods i love them they're great um they're good for long flights i also have the bose noise cancelling giant ones but those take up too much room so if i'm going to be gone only a short time and i don't really care about the weight in my bag i'll bring my big bose ones because they're so awesome uh if i don't bring those i'll bring my my air pods because they are noise cancelling but here's the problem these wireless headphones like this will not help you for a bunch of travel things that you're going to need help with for example these don't work on an airplane you can't plug these into your seat i think you can get adapters for them or something i haven't tried it but you can't do that also many tours employ these little audio systems called vox and you can't use those for those for sure absolutely not so you actually do need a pair of headphones now if you're going on a tour they're going to give you these craptacular little earbuds which i have these all over my house i think i could make a garland for my christmas tree out of them they're terrible and you're gonna think that your radio is screwed up because these are so terrible no it's just these are so terrible so get yourself a pair of cheap headphones these ones i think i was given on on a plane and i just pocketed them thinking uh well maybe i'll use them another time they're a step above the ones that come with the um the box for a tour but even better if you don't mind investing in uh headphones with a regular cord connection like this you know i really love the bose soundsport ones they are fantastic they last forever uh i can't even find them right now because i think my children borrowed them because they're just the best headphones and they last forever absolutely ever just a regular corded headphone but the the little thing that goes in your ear is very very comfortable they're called bose soundsport i typically bring those rather than these and then i just bring the adapter to put it into my iphone if i'm going to be using it with my iphone the other thing to note doing a lot of experiments with making videos like this if you want to make videos or live streams these don't work that well they do for certain kinds of technology but they they're they don't work on facebook live for example so the corded earphones like i was talking about the bose soundsport ones with an inline mic actually are much better if you're going to be making videos or even just calling home the sound quality is significantly better than airpods so i don't know i like them i think they're great in a lot of ways but for travel i don't know that i recommend them actually they also need to be charged and that's really annoying so i might suggest just get those bose sound sport ones with the the actual wire they're better that way okay so now it's time to get to the fun part which is the wing so i had mentioned that you need to get a kitchen scale and now i'm going to show you what you're going to use it for so when we're packing it's so easy to over pack but not over packed by things over pack by weight i don't honestly care what you bring if you want me to tell you what you should bring you should bring at least two pairs of pants and at least five shirts six shirts i always go two tank tops two short sleeve two long sleeve maybe two regular pairs of pants and one pair of capri pants or shorter pants or whatever you want skirt something that's a little bit lighter weight and then i'll bring a dress so that's kind of my minimal sort of packing men you should probably have two pairs of pants one really lightweight one a little bit nicer and then at least six shirts and then you can mix everything mix and match everything so two short sleeve maybe two button up short sleeve and two long sleeves depending on the weather so that's just my kind of formula for the minimum that you should bring but how do you pick now this is where things get a little tricky i brought some of my favorite travel clothes to show you guys to talk about today and the first thing i'm going to point out is why the scale is important this is what i call false friends right everybody says don't bring jeans you'll look like an american everybody wears jeans and you love your jeans i know you love your jeans i love my jeans too so you can bring jeans but you just have to choose the right ones so for example i have two pairs here i bought these in italy actually um these are from gap i think and i'm just going to go ahead and turn on my scale i'm going to fold these up into a ball and have a wave let's see this is one pound six ounces all right i got 16 pounds for my bag really really i'm gonna take up like a sixteenth of my bag just with this pair of pants i better only be wearing these pants so that's probably not going to work but i found these pants these are jeans that were just they felt really lightweight so let's see what they actually weigh these are 10 ounces 10 ounces so we're about half half the weight and they're just fine they're just nice a nice pair of jeans that look great and what's the difference the difference is the thickness of the denim these ones are super duper thick these ones weigh nothing the problem is that the jeans makers don't label their clothes by weight they don't tell you oh this is an ultra lightweight denim some may but most don't so what you're going to have to do is kind of do some research you're going to need to go and check things out i often go to the clearance rack or to old navy and i buy the cheapest jeans if you buy the absolutely cheapest jeans that look acceptable on you the cheaper jeans typically are lighter weight so it's a little counter-intuitive you know i always advocate for kind of spending a little more on the things you bring so that they'll last longer no for jeans buy something cheaper because it'll be lighter weight also look for jeans in the summer time because sometimes brands put out lighter weight denim just for the summer time but just bring your scale i know it sounds crazy and my kids have looked at me like i'm insane but i bring this scale with me to nordstrom i really do i will sit in the shoe department with this and i will weigh all the shoes until i find the ones that work because you just really have to the weight is so important so that right there is your example of why it's important to weight these look the same on me they really do almost the same cut and everything but this one weighs half so when you go through your own clothing and you start trying to decide what you want to bring kind of keep these things in mind i'll give you another good example a t-shirt just a regular t-shirt if i weigh a regular t-shirt it's seven ounces for just a regular women's large t-shirt this is a blouse that looks like it's gonna weigh more because it's longer sleeves but it's made of gauze and that's a fabulous material if you can find things made of gauze this is the good time of year to be looking for clothes of this weight uh and i'm gonna weigh that and this one weighs two ounces okay so i can bring four of these for the same amount as this one here so this is how you're going to bring whatever you want you just have to wait so we're going to toss that one nobody wants that one this one is going to stay the other thing that you might consider is looking in the athletic departments uh like at target i'll go into their yoga department and look at the clothes in there because they have invented these wonderful athleisure clothes and this is kind of new since the last time i did this packing talk obviously we've all been wearing sweats and yoga pants for a year and nobody wants to give that up but that's okay you know what in the past i would have said no never bring that stuff traveling i am so bringing that stuff traveling with me because it's comfortable and comfort's important and some of this athletic clothes the athleisure looking clothing looks pretty good these days so this is the top from target it's just a kind of sheer black top i could put a tank top underneath it and you know layering is always the key with all this stuff and if we give this a little way this is three ounces so again weighs absolutely nothing packs down really really light and it's great in warm weather but it also looks nice enough that you could put something underneath you could put a jacket over the top and it's going to be versatile and nobody will even know it's athletic wear they also have leggings now that look a little bit more like proper pants these ones here i think are from target but they also have pockets and that for me is the most important thing if you're looking at getting some really nice leggings that you want to take uh make sure they have pockets the only problem with these athletic leggings uh that i think are just so so comfortable is they are not necessarily lightweight let's see what this comes in at it comes in at nine ounces so it's it's up there but it's not too bad um so i would recommend thinking about this as if i think these are great to wear if you're going to wear longer things if you like shirts that are long that kind of go down to your hip it's a nice look so don't don't count this kind of stuff out we've been in sweats for the past year so has everybody else around the world another twofer you can get is these athleisure tops that have a built-in bra oh i have been going braless for too long that's a little tmi right there but man the pandemic has made me lazy i do not want to put on a structured hardwire bra with all of the boating and all that that i used to wear for years i will never wear one of those ever again and so i'm trying to find strategies for how can i still look pretty good and not have to worry about that so i love these ones that come with the built-in bra super soft so you get a top and a bra all in one and then you can just layer over the top of that these do weigh more that's the only thing but consider that this is basically a tank top and a bra all in one it's a it's a twofer um now looking at some other clothing choices that i really love and recommend eileen fisher now a lot of you probably think oh i can't afford eileen fisher eileen fisher is really expensive but when you buy it once and you wear it forever um these are their um silk joggers now silk clothes are awesome i love them so much it's my favorite thing i i brought these out just as a comparison these are from athleta and athleta i like quite a bit they have some nice things but these athleta ones are made of polyester and they make me so sweaty i feel disgusting wearing these they're cute but they feel gross on me these are silk silk is a natural fiber and i will always always recommend natural fibers over polyester or anything like that any day of the week because they just breathe better and they feel better on your body so these are really wonderful you can get them at the only fisher store if you look at nordstrom racks sometimes you can find deals but this is probably my most utilitarian pair of pants all of you have seen me wearing these i wear them all the time and silk is such an interesting fabric to look for again this is an investment in your your wardrobe because it is expensive another example um i'll just show you you know eileen fisher's silk stuff is not travel clothes per se right travel clothes i have bought things that are travel clothes and it's a bunch of crap they're terrible um some of them some most of them i would say some are great this one here i bought from royal robins which i bought things from them before that i liked so i ordered a travel shirt which was going to be good for cambodia for hot weather it's cute i like it but let's have a way and see what it weighs it weighs 5 ounces which is a lot so the other thing i have that's kind of a counterpoint this is a very elegant looking eileen fisher silk shirt that i got actually at one of their recycling sales so i think i only spent maybe 15 on it kind of similar more dressy looking but it weighs let's have a look it weighs two ounces so these things that are allegedly travel clothing i have found way a ton they have needless features and they weigh two to too much so be real careful not to fall on that trap exofisho does it royal robbins does it anybody who says travel and the thing that they always are promoting is not light what they're promoting is things that don't wrinkle for example like anything that says ponte knit i will not bring because any of those knits weigh too much they're way too heavy they take up so much space in your bag so i just think that the travel clothing companies are on the wrong track because they're always looking for how to make it you know this one i think has like spf something in it and it's made of some wicking fabric and all this kind of stuff i don't need that i mean a silk shirt does all of that too and is a lot lighter weight so don't just look at these catalogs for travel company clothing i think that those travel companies they usually make things that are just needless like they're not they're not that great okay um so costco is a great place to go uh and uh kind of comb for treasures you'll never know when you'll find a little treasure this is a treasure i got from costco 32 degrees uh the travel vest that i was showing off a few years ago i also got from costco i think this was about five dollars it's a layering piece it's a long sleeve black t-shirt but it weighs nothing and it's buttery soft it weighs four ounces and for a long sleeve shirt that's crazy so that's a really good choice um and just also to change up your wardrobe some i recommend grabbing shirts like this that are button downs both for men and for women think about bringing some button downs because a button-down shirt looks good just on its own but also you can use it as a jacket so you can if you have a another shirt on underneath you can just put this on top and then that changes up your look so you get a twofer on these as well they're a shirt but they're also a jacket let's see same thing with long sleeve shirts like this this is a twofer for me i bought this in uh syracuse in sicily um it's made of that gauze again but this gauze makes it super lightweight i can wear it as a shirt i can wear it as a bathing suit cover and i can also wear it as a jacket so just another really good thing now i typically don't go crazy with patterns you know i'm an architect black as you can tell you can see i'm wearing black but it is nice to have one or two wild things in your bag just to kind of you know spice it up or buy something when you're on the road just assume you're gonna buy something because i always find something that's a little out of character that i normally wouldn't wear and it's it's kind of fun so i bring this sometimes and like i said it's not me but maybe it's me in the bahamas because i may be somebody different there uh shorts are a question many people ask me about should you bring shorts and my answer is always no but that's up to you it depends on where you're going if you're going to hawaii if you're staying in the us absolutely i just think that there are better options than shorts personally i like skirts now this is a royal robin skirt and actually they have great skirts and it's kind of made of a lightweight fabric it's very comfortable it's got deep pockets it's got a little zippery pocket skirts are so versatile because the thing you can do is you can put a skirt on and throw a pair of really lightweight leggings into your bag and then if it starts to get cool you can put the leggings on underneath your skirt you can't do that with shorts so it's just a little bit more of a flexible look and i think that skirts look really cute i know that a lot of women these days don't like wearing dresses or skirts i'm a big fan also let's be serious sisters it's air conditioning you're going to get hot in shorts but if you got a skirt on that's extra air conditioning and i would pay good money for that so on that point dresses i usually bring at least one or two and i love these ones here these are from pr this is from prana and my favorite new brand of dress because ta-da it's a twofer there's a shelf bra in there and i'm waiting on i'm getting the holy grail of travel dresses because for me the holy grail of travel dresses would be a shelf bra on the inside and zippered pockets and i think i found one i have it on order and i'll share it with you guys later on if i get it and it works but finding dresses with shelf bras i think is magnificent and you can wear these in all kinds of ways you can put all kinds of layers underneath them and on that note i'll show you what i am wearing today this is a typical travel outfit for me this is eileen fisher this dress it's just an a-line dress and i love it because it's got pockets i think no to all clothing makers pockets women like pockets stop making clothes without pockets so it's got two nice pockets it says sleeveless and over the top i put my favorite layering piece which is a cashmere sweater cashmere cardigan so it's just a little sleeveless dress so if it's hot i can take off this i have underneath really lightweight leggings these are again a costco fine they're the felina brand they weigh nothing and they feel absolutely wonderful on and they're very variable in size i'm super tall and they fit me so i'm just layered up right now i can get on a plane right now and this is what i typically wear on a plane i typically wear leggings a dress and then a cashmere sweater over the top and then i'll put my coat on top of that so that's how i dress and i think it's pretty comfortable and i think that it would probably work for most of you now jackets i usually bring on top of this a puffer jacket if you're going to go and buy like a puffy down jacket buy the cheapest down jacket you can buy because it has the least amount of fill in it so that means it'll be the lightest and i also like to get ones that come with a little stuff sack i had one here but it seems to have wandered off all right so the last part of our show today is the sexy part of the show and this is where the men in the room might want to walk away uh let's talk about under underpants and bras like i said i can't stand wired bras anymore for a variety of reasons i just can't so i have gone pretty hardcore into trying to find other options right now i'm wearing a bra that is actually like supposed to be one of these comfort ones it's seamless it's all one piece super comfy but for travel i would recommend getting a little sports bra like this something like that now if you look at the back it's got kind of cute cross straps in the back this is really cute and you know what it can do it can double as a bathing suit so this is what i bring now instead of bringing an extra suit a swimsuit i just bring a sports bra top that i like and i have a pair of bikini bottoms that go with it best thing i've ever bought this is so comfortable and i swam all the time and actually when you're swimming a lot i was diving off of boats in sicily and stuff last summer this is so much better than a swimsuit because it's made to hold you in so i highly recommend looking into this one this is um one from amazon but athleta also makes excellent excellent sports bras uh i would highly if you like i said you don't have to be a sports person to love sports bras once you start wearing them you'll never go back i can guarantee you underpants this is the most embarrassing part of the show so again the men in the room might want to leave here's the thing we women need certain things so we have certain things that men don't have to worry about underpants um let's just start there i highly recommend these uh getting the lightest underpants you can because again this is really just all about weight these weigh nothing they weigh like half an ounce and this is my favorite brand i found these at nordstrom it's called on gossamer they are super sheer i know i'm actually sharing my real panties that i wear and i hate that word panties by the way they are made of like a mesh you can see totally see-through so that means that it takes about 10 minutes for these to dry i usually bring about seven or eight pairs of underpants every day that i take one off i put it into the sink or the shower and i wash it and then i just hang it in the bathroom and in the morning they're dry and they're ready to go because there's nothing more disgusting than having gross underpants in your bag and i refuse to do it so i bring at least one pair per day for a week and that way i can kind of cycle through them and wash them as i go i really encourage you to look for these mesh underpants this particular brand i think is the best one i've found they're expensive though so if you don't want to spend the money on those i have found these these are fruit of the loom they're not quite as sexy i shall i should say they're kind of granny panties but that's okay um they are made also of this kind of mesh material that's really stretchy and you can see right through it right very comfortable again wash up and dry in a flash so through the loom totally unsexy panties but really really functional the other pair that i really like is from exo fish show i did buy their i think they're like twenty dollars a pair travel underpants and they're exceptional they really are exceptional i just can't bring myself to buy more than one pair of 20 underpants all right and then the last piece of information here i have been asked by by ladies before what do you do if you're on your period how do you deal with that so real talk here sisters so what we're going to do is you're going to bring with you all the things that you need so be sure to bring pads and tampons and like put those in your bag i've always said you can buy everything you need anywhere you you go that's not always true of feminine hygiene products so please think about that stuff ahead of time and bring what you need a lot of younger women love the cups i've gotten some really great feedback from some of my millennial assistants or gen z assistance that they like those diva cups so that's a really good product to look at for travel because it doesn't take up any space but i have another creative solution for you and this is actually for women who maybe don't have a period problem but maybe a leakage issue they have these wonderful new underpants called link nicks i just got these and i'm trying them out right now i think they're fantastic basically it's got a built-in pad i'm going to carry these around for emergencies i'm going to have these in my bag always from now on because you just never know and even if you think oh i'm going to be gone for two weeks i know that this isn't going to be a problem you just never know when you could have a problem so this is a good way to kind of have an emergency pair and they're very comfortable anyway and they're kind of pretty so i highly recommend looking into these there's a whole bunch of different brands doing the same concept right now and you can try different a few different ones and see what works for you but i would really recommend if you have any issues at all with leakage of any kind to be delicate about it to bring some of these along some people do also just like to bring panty liners along with them anyway and use those on the airplane for example and that way you can feel a little bit fresher as you are traveling through the skies so i know that i've embarrassed everybody now but you know what we need to talk we need real talk so last thing i wanted to talk about today is um optionals now that you've been good you've weighed all of your clothes you've been really thoughtful about everything that you've brought uh you have 15 and a half pounds let's say you are just under the board under the bar of how much you need to bring you are entitled to some sort of uh optional item a bonus item an impulse item so i'll show you my impulse item i have two one of them is my pillow you all know that i bring my down pillow it's a regular size down pillow and then i just kind of squish it all together the other optional that i bring i like to bring a little watercolor kit so i bring postcard size watercolor paper i bring this little kit i bought this in london but a lot of art stores offer something similar has a little tiny brush and it has your paint kit and then this here is a brush that has the water in the actual brush itself so it's like a pen slash brush and you just squeeze it and it gets all the water to the tip and it's so much fun this is really a lovely thing to do i highly recommend everybody consider when you go back out to travel to bring some sort of creative tool with you so maybe you're a writer so you bring your lab your ipad i'm a painter i'll bring my paints if you're a musician i mean maybe there's some kind of small instrument you can bring i think sharing your talents and your skill with the people around you it's a great way to connect too if i sit down on the riverbank of the arno and i paint the ponte vecchio you don't you can't even imagine how many friends i make last time i did that i had people talking to me all day so as a solo traveler it's a really fun way to share your passions and your skills if you bring as your luxury item something that helps you to be creative and to share your passions with the people around you so that's it my friends i know you probably have a lot of questions this is a condensed version of my packing talk i promise i'm going to go and talk about shoes later this week i'm going to do a separate video for you and we'll just talk shoes because that is for sure everybody's biggest question but i would be happy to also follow up with another video to answer all of the other questions you may have so please go ahead and put any questions you have into the comments and i will get back to them but this is the idea so just to kind of wrap it all up weigh everything bring whatever you want but weigh everything and also pack at least a week or two in advance walk around the block with your bag either as a suitcase behind you or as a backpack try all of your things on again and what i always do is i'll pack a week before and about two days before i'll unpack the whole thing and remove at least two things because there's always more things in there that you just didn't need so always bring less and you know what my wisdom is if you take one thing away from this talk today it's this nobody ever said i wish i'd brought more nobody that's never been said okay bring less have more fun all right everybody mwah i'll talk to you later this week more packing tips coming on up on my way to my departure on thursday

Channel: Sarah Murdoch

Views: 26,546

Rating: 4.9164491 out of 5

Keywords: Rick Steves, Packing, Packing Light

Id: Ja7_NxE4fQQ

Length: 60min 6sec (3606 seconds)

Published: Sat May 22 2021