My Tested Travel Essentials

I am a big champion of efficiency and organization when I travel. Long gone are the days of checking big bags when we travel. If flying domestically, we can ship whatever we need by buying it on Amazon. If flying internationally then we need to pack smart. On our last trip to Europe with our full Party of 10, we all did carry-on. Were they filled to the brim, of course, but we didn’t lose our luggage and had everything we needed.

It all starts with the right expectations of what you REALLY need to bring and that primarily starts with what clothes you need. We all tend to overpack and think we need more than we actually do. For our last trip, my Party of 5 did an experiment that I saw on TikTok (where else would we find something like this). We planned each day and night outfit (we were on a cruise so there were days when a second outfit was needed). We then put together a “clothes itinerary” for each day for each person on the trip. This made it extremely easy to confirm we had everything we needed (or needed to buy), made it easy to know each day what we were wearing and made packing quick and easy. Thanks to the TikTok tutorial by Rilee J Smith (@rileejsmith), we were able to create the clothes itinerary easily and it was frankly kind of fun. You can check out that tutorial here: https://www.tiktok.com/@rileejsmith/video/7219413496059022635?_r=1&_t=8e3HJ9Qybyk

I am a big believer in packing cubes. They keep everything organized and in several cases I’ve not actually had to unpack. I simply put the packing cubes into the drawer as is. My kids have even used them at summer camp and just transferred them into the drawer. Much neater and easier to manage. With the “clothes itinerary” listed above and packing cubes, we knew exactly how much could fit in our carry-on and we also used it as a way to repack and make sure we had everything. With four boys in one small inside cabin on a cruise, you can only imagine where we found all of these clothes! This was kind of like a checklist to make sure we packed it all back up. There are a ton of packing cubes but I like these ones specifically because they came in a pack with two colors to separate my two boys for easy packing. Once you try packing cubes I doubt you will go back to regular packing. The real argument now is rolling your clothes or if you should just fold them in the packing cube.

Now that you have packed, how do you make sure to secure your belongings. Make sure that all of your carry-on (and any checked) luggage either has built-in locks or buy TSA-approved locks that you can add. Even when you not checking your luggage, they can get stolen or poked thru in a hotel so keep them locked. The kind built-into the luggage is the safest because it’s the hardest to break thru. These simple locks are ready to use.

Beyond your carry-on luggage, you also need to secure your personal items like a purse, backpack, crossbody bags, etc. Without sacrificing style that some of the “theft-safe” bags have, I prefer to use zipper clips that easily secure my zippers closed so pickpockets can’t get in or don’t even bother when they see them. Here’s what I prefer to use:

Some other safety products that I rely on heavily include Phone Tethers to ensure no one can steal my phone when I’m taking a picture (my kids also tethered their phones to their belt loops or to the inside of their purse). I also like to make sure I have all of the passports in one safe location so I recently bought this family size passport holder that holds up to 6 passports.

And my last two products are more about convenience but they were super helpful on my last trip to Europe. I like big floppy hats but they are a pain to travel with. While the one I did get was somewhat foldable, I didn’t really want to put it inside my luggage. So I tried out this new magnetic hat holder that I put on my backpack (and later on my straw bag while walking around in Greece). When I didn’t want to wear my hat, it was easy to just put it back on the bag. The last two trips I did with a big floppy had I had accidentally left them both (two different times) on the airplane on the way home so this way I was for sure going to bring it home!

And last but not least is whatever is raving about – and the reviews are absolutely true! The AirFly bluetooth wireless audio transmitter let me use my Apple Airpods on the plane to watch movies. No more having to make sure I had the wired headphones with the round plug or worse have to use what the airline handed out (those are the worst). Easy to set-up and easy to use.

So the moral of the story here is EASY. Do you have other great products that you make travel easy for you? I would love to hear about them. I might even try them on my next trip.

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