I used to travel with a huge check in bag when I wen on a 7 days trip, now, I share one bag with my husband traveling for 6 months, here is how we do it.
Video coming this week
The tricks
Only the best, only the necessary
- Most reliable clothes
- Only necessary gear
- Limit the beauty products
Clothes
The most space in my suitcase was always taken up by clothes. Most of which I didn’t even touch. So lots of schlepping for nothing. With time, I figured out how to pack wisely. Now, I’m using 100% of the cloth I bring. My ground rule is 3 outfits. If I have 3 outfits, I have enough time to wash and dry one while wearing the other 2. I usually have 1 dress, 1 pair of pants, short pants and 2 shirts plus a large scarf or a jacket for the plane. Shoe-wise, I only have my running shoes and flip flops, which are solid enough to be worn as shoes outside.
Picking the right cloth isn’t easy at all. There is the weather, the mosquitos, the activities that should be considered. I like to be prepared for the mosquito situation as mosquito prove pants are not so easy to find.
In the tropics, the life is very different from the life back home. It is much easier to get stains on the clothes and washing machines only operate in the cold water mode, wo once you get a stain, you are gonna keep it. I try to find colourful dresses and shirts I like.
The humidity leaves everything wet for days after washing. If we are lucky, we have a dryer, but most of the time sun drying is what we do. It really helps to have thin, fast drying fabrics.
Multiuse is the key. My bathing suit is at the same time yoga pants and my only bra. My dress can be worn as a shirt.
Most of the suitable cloth can be purchased at the destination. We buy couple of items which work great in the environment where we travel and donate them afterwards. Besides of my mosquito prove pants and flip flops, and one dress I love, I would hardly miss anything.
Gear
Gear is a biggest part of my luggage now, but it is still pretty minimalistic. I don’t carry around huge tripods for filming anymore, I do most of the stationary filming with a small camera and a light weight tripod.
Read my post on my gear
Beauty Products
The beauty routine will not be the same in the warmer place. I’ve seen girls wearing false lashes in Bali, but tis is not what I’m gonna do.
This time we travel with minimal beauty products. I’ve been missing couple of things and had hard time finding them in Bali, here what I brought and forgot.
Sunblock
I brought 3 tubes of mineral based sunblock, bud hardly used any. We can avoid sun pretty good. Our schedule is flexible and we can choose when to leave the house and when to stay under the protective roof.
Hair care products
Haare care products are tricky. Good vegan once are hard to find. We have been testing local products, but I wish I would have brought more of our fav shampoo and conditioner.
Make-up
I tried to go minimal and underestimated how pale I look on the camera here. I needed to get a mascara, concealer and powder here and it was pretty much impossible. Wish I had brought it with me. I had just the essentials, like a good under eye concealer, smoky eye easy shadow palette, eyebrow gel and a lip tint. I thought is would be enough, but it wasn’t.
Mosquito Protection
I completely forgot to bring my organic citronella, maybe because it doesn’t help that much. But i need something, even something not 100% reliable. It is hard to find organic oils in Bali. I wish I would have brought mine with me.
