Get Set
Packing Light
The first time we heard about the "packing light" concept was through Rick Steves. We have to admit to being skeptical about the whole thing: We're going to traipse around Italy for ~2 weeks with one carry on? Are you crazy? After having done it a few times now, we are in a different camp and our attitude now is: There's no way we're travelling anywhere with anything more than a carry on. We are not the first - and we certainly won't be the last - to espouse the benefits of packing light. For us comes down to these three biggies:
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Challenge - 13 outfits, 12 days, 1 Carry-on
In order to determine what we need to bring clothing-wise, Amy dropped the tour itinerary into a spreadsheet and tallied up the number of days we are travelling, categorized by activity type. A simple calculation gave us the total number of different outfits we need = 13. For a woman, this equates to approximately 3 dresses and 4-7 bottoms (combo of skirts, shorts/capris and pants). Amy aims for the same number of tops (tanks, tees and long-sleeves) but depending on season and fabric, she may tuck in a few extra shirts to allow more flexibility. The key is that everything should mix & match. It also assumes we are hand-washing a few items at some point on the tour.
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List
First we make a list of the clothing and everything else we plan to bring. We allocate each piece into one of two categories: carry-on or personal item. We have separate lists for each of us because our needs are different.
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Gather
We create a space in our home where we begin to gather our travel gear in the weeks before our trip. We've used a corner of a bedroom, and more recently now that we are empty nesters, a spare bedroom. This makes it easy to find everything and prevents last minute scrambling. Mostly.
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Pack
We set a false deadline two days prior to our actual departure date and pack up everything then. Before anything goes into a bag, it gets cross-referenced against the packing list. And we don't touch our bags again until we make the journey to the airport. It works, trust us!
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We are set.