Want to travel light but not sure how to do it just yet? Luckily for you, you have landed in the right place today!
In this Mustreadmoment blog, we are going to tell you everything you need to know to succeed in travelling light. Travelling light is something that has more benefits in store than you might even imagine. It is a practice that can really reduce holiday and trip stress, save money, save time, and give you an overall better experience when travelling and flying.
And who doesn’t want all of those benefits?
If you want to find out exactly how to do it – keep reading!
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Tip 1 – Find the perfect piece of hand luggage
The first thing you need to think about when it comes to figuring out how to travel light is the actual luggage you bring with you on trips.
Lots of us bring heavy suitcases, usually more than one, and some bulky hand luggage too. We end up cramming loads of clothes, books, bottles of suncream and extra shoes into those bags until we have to pay extra at the check-in desk. We drag these heavy bags in and out of taxis, up to our hotel rooms, and all around the world.
It isn’t fun.
Having the right kind of bag can solve a lot of these problems for you. And to travel light, a great piece of hand luggage is often all you need.
There are awesome options out there these days for hand luggage. There are lots of pieces out there designed to be the only bag that you need to bring with you for a trip. Finding the right bag with the right compartments and separate sections means that you can drastically cut down on the luggage that you need to bring with you.
Do your research, find the right bag for you, and enjoy another step into the travel light life!
Tip 2- Get great at folding
Now that you have the right bag, the next step will be packing it in the right way.
It might not seem like too big of a deal, but packing your bag in the wrong way can make everything much more difficult. Pack it the wrong way and you might think that you need more bags than you actually do. Pack it the right way and you will realise how much you can actually fit into a small place.
A great person to look to for inspiration on this is Marie Kondo. You can check out some of her very effective and space-saving folding techniques on her YouTube channel. With videos like this one:
You can also use accessories such as packing cubes to help you with your packing. Separating different types of items into different packing cubes helps keep things neat and tidy, and it also helps you see exactly what you have. Using packing cubes helps you realise that you are often trying to shove things into a suitcase that you didn’t need in the first place.
Tip 3 – Get comfortable with washing clothes on the go
Very often we pack a lot of clothes because we are predicting accidents and spillages happening. Which they do. So we pack lots of extra things so that we have plenty to change into while we are away from home.
But would we do this at home? Or would we sometimes simply wash the clothes that have been the subject to spillage or an accident. We can do this while travelling too. We commonly forgot that there are laundromats and laundry rooms available to use in all sorts of places. We don’t always have to pay for expensive dry cleaning or hotel laundry services. Do a quick Google search while you are away and you should be easily able to find a local laundry room where you can pay to use washing machines and dryers.
Yes, it adds an extra little chore to your trip if something does happen to your clothes. But, in my opinion, it is well worth it for how much space it can save in your luggage. Carting around lots of different spares that you might not even end up using is not in the travel light manifesto. It is something we can definitely do without if we just get right. Which we will with experience and practice.
Tip 4 – Prioritise experience over aesthetic
The most important thing about travelling is experiencing the world around you. Sometimes we all fall into the trap of getting too into our looks and aesthetics in holiday photos and social media posts. We can get very wrapped up in packing things with the idea of looking amazing in every photo we take. This means we need lots of alternate outfits and accessories and everything in between to pull off these looks.
What we really need is to think about the experience we want to have while we are travelling, not what we look like while we are doing it. This means that we don’t need to worry just so much about the outfits we have with us. We just need clothes to keep us comfortable while we travel. Anything else isn’t a necessity and doesn’t really need to take up on an extra bag that we drag about with us for 2 weeks.
Focus on experiencing the trip and making memories, and you will realise you don’t need half the luggage you think you do. You can save yourself a lot of time money and stress by leaving the unnecessary things at home.
Try to travel light from now on and see how you feel.
I guarantee you will love it.