There’s absolutely no excuse for any travel blog to be adding to the self-replicating list of packing essentials. But when I saw this while shamelessly looking for ideas to steal I knew it was time for a voice of reason to finally bring a stop to the madness.
Bring some clothes, your passport and a way of getting to your money. There, you’re done. Don’t even bring a book — pick one up along the way and give it away when you’re done reading it. If you’ve got a lot of paper tickets and reservations and boarding passes then presumably someone printed out this article for you because in the age of the internet there’s no excuse for any of that. Few destinations can’t be reached these days without e-tickets and print-at-will boarding passes and if you just need reminders then by all means have one, single sheet in your back pocket but make sure it’s accessible in the cloud, too, because no vacation should be at risk because you lost a piece of paper or all your luggage or anything at all. In fact, scan your passport and your credit cards and put them in the cloud, too, and you can be stripped naked and left for dead under bridge and, assuming you don’t actually die, if you can get online and/or to your embassy you can get your stuff back and you’ll lose maybe a day (depending on how you wound up naked under a bridge, possibly two days).
That’s the most offensive thing about these helpful lists of essentials — well-intentioned or not the effect is to instill fear. What if you lose a button and you haven’t packed a miniature sewing kit? What if you have to sponge-bath in an airport toilet and you haven’t brought any hand soap? Well obviously in either of these cases you’ll have to turn around and head home and prepare a little better next year.
Sleepwear? In 2013? Who wears jammies in 2013? I suppose if you’re on a shooting weekend at the country estate of your uncle, the Duke of Elmsworth, in turn of the previous century England, then by all means have your man pack your flannel dressing gown. Otherwise I suggest you practice in advance to enure yourself to the risk that someone might see you in your underwear.
Money belts are itchy, sweaty, uncomfortable and above all useless artifacts from a thankfully dead era they shared with travelers’ checks and charter flights. Put your passport in your breast pocket, secured with a button, and your wallet in the other breast pocket, secured with another button. Everything else should be digital and if it’s not then for Christ’s sake stop using a “travel agency” — they belong in the past with money belts. Airport security is already pointlessly and absurdly time-consuming, you don’t want to be the one to hold up a line while you get half-naked so you can show your passport.
Clothes line, laundry detergent, hair dryer, spot remover, flashlight and first aid kit are just a few of the altogether pointless items that inevitably turn up on lists compiled by those who’ve failed to make the important distinction between that which you must pack and that which you can pack. Don’t pack anything because you might need it. Don’t pack anything that you can acquire just as or more easily at your destination. Never select what to pack motivated by fear.
I’m of the school that says you should assume that everything’s going to go well and pack accordingly. If things don’t go well, respond to this at the time, and be physically and psychically prepared to do so because you packed the only real essential — the right attitude.
Suitcase photo from Cea.’s photostream
