
How to Pack For 10 Days In a Carry-On - samratjp
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/05/06/business/businessspecial/20100506-pack-ss.html?src=me&ref=general
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timr
Pfft...10 days is amateur hour. I just came back from a trip to France where I
did nearly a month out of a single carry-on. Part of the strategy is to depend
on the amenities of the country you're visiting: most places have laundromats,
and so you can get away with carrying a week's worth of socks, underwear and
shirts, knowing that you'll be doing laundry every week. Same with stuff like
soap, towels, shampoo, etc. You can (usually) find it there.

The heaviest things to pack are shoes, pants, sweaters and coats. Buy the
right shoes, and you'll get by with one pair. Likewise for pants: you only
really need two pairs, and if you're really intent on traveling light, you can
find exceptionally lightweight nylon pants that look dressy enough for most
situations, and that don't wrinkle. Sweaters and coats are a little tougher,
but if you count your body as a piece of baggage, you can minimize the burden:
for this trip, I carried two sweaters and a hoodie, and was pretty much always
wearing one of the three items. The other two were in the bag.

The other important thing to do is to make sure that everything coordinates in
all possible combinations. The easiest way to do this is to buy everything in
shades of black or gray, but you can be more creative, just so long as your
pants, shoes, shirts and sweaters are interchangeable. Master this, and you
can go for a surprisingly long time off of five days worth of clothing.

For this trip, I had two pairs of pants, five shirts, five changes of
underwear and socks, two sweaters, a hoodie, a tiny laptop computer (EeePC's
are awesome for travel), my iPod, two books, an extra pair of shoes (I have
bad feet), a travel towel, and the usual cohort of tiny shampoo, soap,
deodorant, etc. Everything fit into an REI travel backpack that will fit into
the smallest overhead bin.

The only other really critical tip that isn't totally obvious is that you
_must_ carry a zippable bag for your used clothing, or you'll smell like feet
after a few days. You can pick up hand-compressable space-bags at REI for $10.
They're awesome -- unzip, stuff your laundry in the bag, rezip, compress, and
you're ready to go. Thanks to the compression, I actually had _more_ space in
my bag at the end of each week.

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zach
Wonderful picture set, but by the the fourth slide, Heather Poole has become
"Ms. Pools" and in the ninth photo drops to "Ms. Pool." Maybe the NYT needs
instructions for how to proofread for 12 captions in a web browser.

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macrael
I love <http://www.onebag.com> the site design may be a bit outdated, but e
information is great. I especially recommend reading the bit on packing
clothes. I always use his method of "bundle wrapping".

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SandB0x
_Three bathing suits...three nightgowns_! I can pack for 10 days in a small
backpack if I don't need smart clothes.

~~~
matwood
Haha so true. I spend 10 days in costa rica surfing and get by with just
bringing a small back pack. Surfboards take up a bit of space tho ;)

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ComputerGuru
I never considered _rolling_ clothes instead of folding them. I guess I can
imagine how it truly would limit wrinkles if they're rolled tightly enough!

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hugh3
My problem is shaving cream in the no liquids-gels-aerosols world. As far as I
know you can't get it in a small enough package to be allowed through
security.

I realise that theoretically I could buy an electric razor, though they don't
work well on my beard. Alternatively I could just buy a new can of shaving
cream every time I travel.

~~~
gaius
You want this: <http://www.shave.com/shave/?tab=oil>

~~~
hugh3
Hmm, perhaps I'll try something like that. Thanks, random internet person! My
beard is pretty severe though.

~~~
gaius
Mine is too - I can grow a beard as long as my hand is wide* in about 6
months. The oil is great if you have a good razor (again I recommend King of
Shaves - all their stuff is _so_ much better than Gillette rubbish) and shave
every day.

Male grooming discussion on HN, who'da thunk it :-)

*This is the minimum length to join the Taliban, apparently!

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impeachgod
And this is news? I routinely go on 2-3 week trips with nothing but one carry
on and one laptop bag.

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cstross
Consider yourself lucky -- you must live in a nation that doesn't strictly
enforce the "one carry-on item" rule (and yes, handbags or laptop bags count
as a separate item of luggage, so the whole lot has to go in your carry on
before processing through Security).

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warfangle
Most airlines I know of allow a carry-on and one personal item (purse, laptop
bag, backpack). Where _do_ you live that you can only bring one item with you
on the plane?

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cstross
The UK. Where, after the liquid bombing thing, they not only brought in the 3
x 100ml of liquid rule, they insisted that passengers only carry _ONE_ bag
through security (because ramping up to actually check each bag properly was
taking too long).

This isn't the airlines, it's the government. There is no work-around and it's
a rule they've relaxed only at a handful of airports with additional screening
equipment. Beware -- if you visit the UK, you may well only be allowed to take
a single carry-on item when you fly out again!

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gaius
1 carry-on + 1 camera bag was OK at LHR, last month at least.

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cstross
LHR is one of the few hubs where they installed extra securiy screening. I
live in Edinburgh; EDI is still enforcing the one-bag-only rule, as are the
other airports I've flown through in the past year (I avoid the British hubs
wherever possible).

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stinkytaco
Grrr... I hate these slide show things. Stupid, artificial attempts at driving
up pageviews.

That out of the way, I notice that conspicuously absent are electronics with
their bulky chargers or other personal items that pretty much everyone needs
to carry with them now.

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JimmyL
I travel a fair amount for business (although for no longer than five or six
days at a time), and this is exactly how I pack - except my bag has a fold-out
section that I can put my suit jackets in so that they're only folded once.

Aside from clothing, all that I carry is a book, a laptop and charger, and a
few cables (all my other electronics - BlackBerry, iPod, etc. - can either be
charged off the USB port of my laptop, or I know that I won't need to recharge
them).

Now, if only I could get a nice new bag that fit in the overhead compartment
of a CRJ-705...

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dave1619
Truly incredible how she's able to get that much into a carry-on.

~~~
gaius
That's still way too much stuff. Maybe this is a girl thing. A man might take
one suit in addition to the one he's wearing, and just a fresh shirt and
underwear per day, a pair of jeans and a couple of t-shirts. Once you've done
it a few times, you realize how much stuff you don't need to carry, the hotel
will have it. Or you don't need a wide selection of clothes if you know what
you're going to wear. If it's business, suits, if it's a vacation, no-one's
going to care if you wear the same board shorts or whatever twice. Or all
week, if you're going in the sea every day. Check the weather forecast before
you go (and if you get it really wrong, hell, you can just buy something).

~~~
ido
Exactly.

I don't think I need 3 pairs of shoes even when I'm at home.

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tomjen3
I don't own 3 pairs of shoes.

I really, really don't get how people can fill up their house with shoes, or
have a problem buying too many.

But then, I buy too few seeing as those I wear have a hole in the sole.

~~~
ido
I actually own more than 3 pairs of shoes, but that has more to do with me
failing to throw away the old worn-out ones.

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blackguardx
The best trick is to constrain the size of your pack/suitcase. If you set a
small limit, you don't have room to take things you don't need.

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Shamiq
Are slideshows like that automatically generated, or does some guy sit down
and copy/paste text and images into a template for each one?

~~~
ComputerGuru
If you're making that much money/impact due to the greater pageviews, you can
afford the 10 minutes it takes to do the copy-and-paste donkey work.

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gaius
I'm always amazed by how bad most people are at packing. I see people going to
lie on a beach for a week with a suitcase big enough that they could fit in it
themselves. Sometimes two.

When I was a 13 year old Cadet they told us, after every exercise make two
piles, stuff you used and stuff you didn't. Aim was for the second pile to be
as small as possible. Nothing teaches this as well as everything you pack, you
have to carry on your back!

If I'm on a two week business trip, I'd pack for one week and just expense the
hotel laundry.

~~~
jedbrown
> I'm always amazed by how bad most people are at packing.

It is truly extraordinary. I frequently do two week trips overseas (e.g.
connecting two conferences with a weekend in the mountains) with a 30 liter
backpack (no separate laptop bag). I've also done 4-day technical alpine
climbs with a 26 liter pack. And somehow people need 4 times that much for a
week in a different city. I blame the wheeled bags, they encourage people to
bring more than they can comfortably carry and produce kinematic waves at
every transition (stairs, escalators, curbs).

~~~
gaius
Yeah, wheeled luggage is a pet hate of mine. It's compounded by the people who
own it usually being inexperienced travelers so they're flailing about at
check-in or security on top of that.

I recently did a week dive trip, with all my gear, in a 70L kitbag. The
average person coming to that resort just for the beach and the casino seemed
to have at least double that!

