8 Ways to Travel Light On Your Next Vacation

Since I was on a vacation in Atlantic City and Cheap Flight Day falls on 23 August, I thought I’d do a post on ways to travel light.

Traveling light is advantageous:

1. Easier to pack for the trip, at the end of the trip and unpack after the trip!
2. Lighter luggage = ease of travel
3. Easier to keep track of what you have with you so you don’t lose things
4. Lesser worries about overweight baggage, stairs and space constraints

Read on and see how you can travel light!

1. Know what the essentials are

Have you ever had this experience? You’ve packed for a trip, but you kept wondering if you’ve missed something. So you keep adding things as the trip approaches. Just in case, you thought. Before you know it, your luggage is full.

If we worry a lot about forgetting something we may need – we tend pack more. In reality, we often bring more than we need when we travel. To ease your mind, and prevent over packing. Remind yourself that if you have the following, you shouldn’t worry too much about other things.

• Passport/Identification
• Money and credit cards
• Medication (if applicable)
• Phone and charger
• Undergarment
• Clothes
• In winter – heavy coat, hat and gloves

When you’re done packing, and you wonder if you’re missing something. Assure yourself that you have everything you absolutely need as long as you have these 7 essential items. In fact, only the first 4 are really important. Everything else is easily replaceable.

Usually, we can get away with not having enough clothing. There’s always a way around it. You can find shops and laundromats in most places.

I’m not recommending you to buy everything else when you get to a place. because that’s plain wasteful. Knowing you have the essentials serves as a reassurance and prevents over-packing.

2. Your clothes aren’t that dirty. Re-wear them!

A trick to traveling light is to wear your clothes more than once on a trip. Of course, this is more applicable for typical travelers who walk and sight-see than sporty travelers.

Always hang your clothes up on a hanger after wearing. Airing your clothes help remove smells.

Also, choose natural fibers. If you’re traveling to a warm area, choose light cotton or linen. They won’t trap odor the way synthetic fibers do. If you’re traveling in cooler weather, choose wool. Wool has antibacterial properties and wouldn’t retain odor.

If you’re on a longer trip, a laundromat’s your best friend!

3. Bring a super versatile capsule wardrobe

Make versatility a priority! Make sure the colors and styles of your clothes go together. Bring tops than can go on a dress, and match your pants or skirt. And bring dresses you can wear with a skirt to create a different look.

Bring t-shirts that can be worn on a hike or to a lunch at an expensive brunch place. Keep it to two pairs of shoes – comfy walking shoes and dressier shoes.

Be creative so you don’t have to bring a bunch of clothes and still look interesting in your travel photos!

Or you can go the other extreme – do the Steve Jobs trick. Standardize your look and just enjoy the trip so your travel photos look like your trip was one long day. Hey, that’s fun too!

4. Take a break from keeping up with your appearance

I have gorgeous travel photos, but you’ll hardly see me in the pictures. They’re mostly about the scenery. Isn’t traveling about the experience and the place? If you want to travel light, an easy way is to skip the bags of cosmetics, skin-care and hair-care products.

Yes, be presentable, but don’t be over concerned with your appearance. Bring the basics to take care of your skin and doll up, but leave everything else at home. Your skin will be fine missing that attention for a little while. Take it as a vacation from your usual beauty routine, because it is a vacation!

Of course, if doing a mask is one of your favorite parts of traveling, bring it!

5. A bar soap to rule them all

If you’ve read this post, you’ll know I love bar soap. It’s so much easier to travel with a bar of soap than bottles of liquid soap. It’s my body, hair and hand soap. I don’t use travel size hotel soaps because 1. it’s often not of a good quality, and 2. it causes a lot of plastic waste.

On a whim, I can also lather up a bar of soap and use the lather to wash undergarments. The best part? I can bring it in a carry-on.

6. Don’t bring your work with you

I know so many people who have work in the back of their minds or on their phones, even when they’re on vacation. Unless you’re a travel blogger or you love your job, leave work at home, please. How do you travel light if you’re still stressed out about work? You can’t.

Clear as much work as you can before your vacation, then set the “out of office” email response and don’t think about work until you’re back again.

There’ll always be more work waiting for you. There’s no sense disturbing your vacation for work that’s never going to be done anyway. Do write your password somewhere safe though, in case you forget what it is when you’re back.

7. Lighten your carbon footprint to travel light

I can’t talk about traveling light without talking about traveling with lighter carbon footprints! Flying is carbon footprint intensive, but I can’t and won’t dissuade anyone from traveling. Here are some suggestions to help you enjoy your vacation with a lighter conscience!

Consolidate your vacation.

Fly lesser, travel longer. It’s not always possible because of work schedule, but it’s always advisable. Rather than flying twice a year to take two 1-week vacations, try to fly once a year for a 2-week vacation.

That way, you enjoy the same length of vacation time, but incur half the carbon footprint from flights and flight waste. What’s more, you get to experience a place more completely.

Travel by train or bus

Consider taking the bus or train to visit different places in the region rather than flying. Not only is the carbon footprint lighter, it’s way more scenic.

I once took a Greyhound bus from San Francisco to Flagstaff, Arizona. I watched the scenery fly by, dozed, woke and dozed some more, in a cocoon of peace. My friend was with me, but we didn’t talk much because it was an overnight bus.

When the sun rose, I watched the beautiful Arizonian landscape come to life as a soundtrack of my favorite songs played in my ears. My heart almost burst from all that beauty. It was one of the highlights of my life.

So yes, take a bus or a train, make peace with yourself and enjoy the journey.

Bring reusables

Of course, I can’t talk about reducing carbon footprint without talking about disposables. I used to use a lot of disposables – travel sized toiletries, disposable panties, packets of tissue paper and bottled water etc. Now I bring a bar of soap, my trusty cotton underwear, handkerchiefs and my trusty Kleen Kanteen bottle. I still generate waste on my travels, but these are 4 things I no longer waste.

Thanks to the relatively small size of the items, washing and drying cotton underwear and handkerchiefs are easy and more hygienic than placing them in a bag for the duration of a trip. Definitely don’t use disposable underwear anymore. They’re so uncomfortable too.

Unless you go to a country with non-potable tap water, you’ll be able to get away with boiling your own water. Bottled water, in my opinion, should be reserved for emergency situations, like in a natural disaster, or places where there aren’t safe sources of drinking water.

8. Momentoes aren’t memories, and souvenirs are overrated

So often, we travel with a loosely packed luggage and return home with a stuffed one. We should bring something back from our trip for memories’ sake, shouldn’t we?

Well, no.

If you want to travel light, I suggest you don’t buy momentoes. I don’t have a momento from that memorable greyhound ride, but I’ll remember it all my life. Memories aren’t in things. Take a picture, it’s just as good.

But if you really love having something to remember a trip by, make it something useful! I have a t-shirt I got from a shop at Bondi Beach that says “Apple Crumbles and Fish” and I love it so much. I still wear it often 5 years later. Also, I have a compass from a Christmas market in Paris. Do I really need a compass? No. But I’ve been traveling with it since. Who knows, maybe one day, I’ll need it to tell me which way is North.

I’ve no problems not buying things for myself, but it’s so difficult when it comes to buying souvenirs for others. When I don’t bring something for friends and family, I feel bad.

The truth is, souvenirs are overrated. Why do we buy magnets for friends back home when they weren’t the ones who visited the city we went to?

What’s more, souvenirs are often not made locally these days. Why we visit one country to buy souvenirs imported from another country, I don’t understand.

If you love bringing something for friends and family at home, buy local snacks or local made soaps! Since they can be used up, they aren’t that “intrusive”.

Honestly, the best way to approach it is to not buy any momentoes or souvenirs at all. I trouble over souvenirs too much on trips, worrying about missing a loved one, or slighting a loved one by buying something that’s not as good as someone else’s gift. At the end of the day, none of us need those things.

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There you go, 8 things to keep in mind when you travel light! Hope it helps you to focus on the vacation with lesser stress and worries!

Travel light and travel happy!