Becky and I pack pretty lightly when we travel, but we certainly carry our fair share of stuff. This entire post might sound a bit over-thought and pedantic, but when you carry the entirety of your luggage for two weeks on your back, every cubic inch has value and each ounce matters.  Our strategy revolves around reuse and compartmentalization.

For example, there’s space enough in the top of my main luggage to stow my carry-on once we arrive at our destination. From there, clothes are bagged according to when we expect to wear them.  If our first destination is a 3-day stopover, we have 3 days worth of clothes as the next layer down in the bag.

If you’re still not convinced, consider the airlines’ fees for over-weight bags.  On our most recent trip, we had around 40% of our 100# combined limit available for things that we were “planning” on bringing home.  We learned our lesson on that one a few years back, when we were frantically shuffling luggage at the airport to account for the weight of a few bottles of wine.

Read on for a few examples of our luggage tricks and how we plan to improve our system, going forward.

For example, on our recent trip, we brought the following electronics:

• 2 cameras (his and hers)
• Laptop (5# Sony 13″, with extended battery, which is the only one we have for it)
• Cellphone (just mine)

Remember that this is  just the big parts, too; Additionally, we carried memory cards, thumb drives, DVD-Rs, card readers, e-book readers, chargers, cables and enough batteries to choke a small dog. To lighten the load, we’ve made a few discoveries.

Most of Europe has 220v, 50hz power, and many people carry a potentially heavy step-down transformer to run their electronics. To save on weight, we carry simple plug adapters and make sure that all of our electronics are 110/220 ready. Dual-voltage capabilities are pretty common (but not universal) amongst devices with “real” power supplies like laptops and cell phones.

As far as chargers go, we re-use cables where we can, carrying a wall-wart to USB plug, a USB to Mini-USB cable, and a mini-to-micro USB adapter. This lets us charge a variety of devices, or connect them to a PC with virtually no duplication. In cases where we’re concerned about losing or damaging one setup like this, the weight and space savings allow us to carry a few extra components.

Our current photo storage system looks like this:

1. Take photos directly onto 16gb SD card
2. Move photos to laptop hard drive, and into a “hidden” folder on the 16gb SD card.
3. Burn photos to DVD every time you reach 4gb
4. Optionally purge photos from the card as needed to make room (or switch cards; We only have 1 16gb card, which we didn’t fill completely)

This system leaves you with no less than two copies of a photo, and allows for DVDs to go in a checked bag for added redundancy (not that it’s likely that you’ll lose your carry-on, but still)… Going forward, I think I’d carry a smaller, lighter laptop, and a USB hard drive instead of DVDs.

On the battery front, we’re almost entirely Ni-Zn AAs. By fluke, we ended up with 3 sets of those, and wouldn’t have needed but 2.

Going forward, I plan to also carry one of those Energizer 2xAAs to USB Step-Up boxes, so that I can make use of some of those extra AAs in case the cell phone needs a boost.  Also, I’m hoping to replace the laptop and stack of DVDs with a new Android Tablet, a large internal SDHC card, and a sizable thumb drive.  A process similar to the current one would be used to ensure data continuity, but instead of burning DVDs, I’d back photos up to the thumb drive, which could then be stowed in checked luggage.

Also on the gear front, I’ve learned that I don’t have quite enough, erm… underwear, to be gone for 2 weeks without doing some laundry.  Recent experience says that washing them in the hotel sink isn’t so bad, but that waiting a few days for them to dry (especially if you’re changing hotels during that time) is not much fun.  To that end, I think I’m going to look into some technical assistance going forward.  Not only will this solve the Underwear Drying Problem, but could potentially lighten my luggage quite a bit. For what it’s worth, the clothing portion of my luggage is almost 40% socks and underwear. (A rough estimate, either by weight and/or volume, as I’m too lazy to calculate the density of my clothes).

Filed under:
Products, Technology, Travel by Kevin