Economizing with Space and Funds While Traveling

In March of 2008 our first born daughter left for Europe on a solo trip. This was a trip she had been saving up to make for many years. She was gone ten days, yet all she carried was a back-pack and a purse. She stayed with friends, and in some cases with friends of friends, so she had no hotel expenses, and while she will needed to eat out a few times, most of the time she was also able to eat with those friends.

She left wearing a light and comfortable dress, tights, comfortable shoes, a sweater, and a jacket. The layers were important because they are adjustable depending on the temperatures. She could also roll up the sweater or jacket to use for pillow-roll and use the other to keep warm on the long plane journey.

Because of her host's work schedule, When she got off the plane early on Saturday morning, she would immediately be spending the day in London, not able to go to her accommodations until late in the evening. This mean she'd be wearing the same clothes for a long time. How long? She started to tell me how long and then stopped and said, "never mind. I don't want to think about how long."

She washed her long hair and braided it just before she left. This way it would still feel pretty clean at the end of the plane journey when she took it down and brushed it out. This is a trick I learned years ago during our peripatetic family's own frequent journeys. I would wash the girls' hair in the morning, braid it back tightly in two braids (they claim so tightly that I altered the shape of their eyes and made them look like they'd had Botox injections). This way the children still looked fairly tidy as we traveled, and their hair did not get that disheveled, snarled look from sleeping in the car or on the plane.

First of all, make sure you have a good backpack. Her backpack was the one she used for school every week. After going through about three backpacks the first year of college, we got smart and spent some extra money on a good quality backpack from LL Bean. That's the only backpack she had since then, and it's lasted through 4 years of heavy use at college, several road trips, and quite a few flights stateside. If it hadn't lasted, we could return it. LL BEAN has a 100 percent guarantee- you can return anything to them at any time and they will replace it or give you your money back.

Stuffed inside that backpack she another bag, a very large sort of beach bag that zips shut and folds up to take up about as much space as a folded pillowcase. I found it at a thrift shop. On the flight back, she put her backpack through as luggage and use the large beach-bag as her carry-on, stuffed with souvenirs, mementos of her journeys, and a few neat books from London bookshops, or a few unique finds from British Charity shops. After all, when you're coming home, you don't need to be sure you have a spare pair of underwear in case the airline company loses your luggage.
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Online friends of mine who traveled to China to adopt a child used the same idea of an empty travel bag on the journey out, and on the journey home they put their backpack through as luggage and used the extra bag as the carry one diaper bag for their new daughter.

When we traveled when our children were small, I made home-made wipes for freshening up, and we adapted that idea for this trip as well.

I read somewhere (too long ago to recall where), that bacteria actually causes most underarm odor, and that if you can't get to a shower, you can make do by swabbing with a bit of rubbing alcohol. I developed this idea to make some disposable wipes for her to use while traveling.

I took some paper towels, divided them into quarters, and soaked them in a mixture of water, a generous mixture of wintergreen mint scented rubbing alcohol, a few drops of orange and lemon essential oils, a few drops of rosemary/lavender body soap, and a drop or two of glycerin. We put those in a small ziplock bag, squeezed the air out and sealed it. She used those to 'freshen up' periodically on the plane and in her travels- focusing on face, neck, underarms, and, um, etc.

Incidentally, these are also nice on picnics or long car trips. Since she was flying and carrying so much, we wanted disposable wipes but on car trips I just pack several small washcloths soaking in the mixture. We rinse them out later.

Long, ultra-thin feminine hygiene products can be used, and changed once or twice, when one cannot change one's undergarments.

You can buy small travel toothbrushes, but I discovered, quite by serendipity, that the replacement heads for electric toothbrushes make great travel toothbrushes on their own. They are smaller, so take up less space in a carry on bag.

Travel sized bottles of shampoo and conditioner- we save these and refill them for multiple uses. Also, you can use shampoo as body soap, dispensing with the need for a third product.

She used a small mint tin to hold enough of her allergies pills for ten days in addition to mints and a few vitamins. She could do this because the mints and her allergy pills were different colors and different shapes. You would want to have a childproof container if traveling with children or staying somewhere with small children.

You could also use the small tins to hold a tiny sewing kit- a few safety pins, a prethreaded needle or two, a couple of extra buttons, and a small pair of nail clippers which can do double duty as nail clippers and thread snippers should be more than adequate.

Two drier sheets can be used and reused multiple times to prevent static cling. She folded them tightly and squeezed them into a small ziplock bag, which was then stored inside the ziplock bag holding her toiletries.

A travel tube of toothpaste in a small tube- although you can just use warm water and brush longer and get your teeth just as clean
Gum
tinted chap-stick, (Burt's Bees also makes a nice lip shimmer in a thin, smaller tube that helps save space in that carry-on luggage)
cough drops
hand lotion
deodorant
A spare pair of socks, and underwear
If you wear make-up, did you know that you can use lipstick as blusher? If you use a small touch of your lipstick on your cheeks and rub it in well, you have a nice matching blusher and lipstick in one tube of lip color.

One textured scrub glove- these dry quickly, take up small space, and work great in the shower for quick, clean feeling scrub down.

One small pocket-pack of mouthwash strips- these mouth-wash strips are made of a waxy, rice-paper like substance that dissolves in your mouth, leaving your mouth feeling fresher. Very tiny.

One small travel sized hand sanitizer spray

A few band-aids and some foot cream in a small tube- indispensable for those doing a lot of walking

To eat and drink:

An empty reusable water bottle and a few envelopes of Emer-Gen-C- a flavored vitamin powder you put in drinks. Water in new places can taste strange to visitors, causing you to drink less than you should. These powders can help you keep hydrated and give you some extra vitamins.

A few peanut butter granola bars

Some beef jerky or nuts

Another daughter and I have found we love to snack on sun dried tomatoes when traveling- they keep better, take up less space, and weigh less than regular tomatoes so they make a nice travel food. So do 'Just Berries,' although they are a treat rather than a frugality. We have also dehydrated our own fruit to eat on trips.

Clothing:

Obviously, pack light.

My aunt traveled all over the world in the 60s and 70s, and as I've heard it, she basically packed two pairs of underwear, washing one pair out in a sink every night and air-drying it all night.

You can pack a few more items but still pack light- mix and match things- two shirts and two skirts or pants makes five outfits, more if you can layer them. Add one long tank for underneath or over, and you've got even more combinations. You can pack a slip, or you can pack two thin skirts, using one skirt as a slip.

Hang up all your clothes at night and go over things you've worn using a dampened wash cloth (sometimes using a bit of soap on the wash cloth, and then going over it again with a rinsed cloth) to freshen them, spot clean them, and help remove wrinkles. In fact, in the old days when laundry had to be done by hand, this was pretty much what even the upper class did, only they had servants to go over their clothing at night. And yes, it's a good idea to wash out socks and underwear in the sink at night and hang them where they can dry.

A nice long, light scarf can be used on your head, around your neck, or as a sash at your waste. If you have a necklace that is the right size (experiment) you can wear it as a necklace one day, and double-wrap it around your wrist for a bracelet the next.

You can get by on one pair of shoes, but you really should have two if you're doing a good deal of walking. Sometimes just changing your shoes makes all the difference in the world. Our daughter's backpack was stuffed so tightly that she had nowhere else to put them except the mesh pockets on the outside, one on one side of the pack, one on the other. We were afraid that the shoes might fall out without her noticing, so we slipped a long key chain hook through the mesh and then hooked it around the strap on one shoe- that was something we just happened to have on hand. But we couldn't find another. Looseleaf rings such as you might use to connect a batch of index cards would have worked, but I couldn't find where I had stashed a few of those, either. We finally settled on a small chain of safety pins (just in case these did not pass through security, she had a bit of ribbon to loop through and tie to her shoe strap). The safety pins could also be used in case she lost a button, gets a tear, or needs to attach something else to her backpack.=)

As I said, our daughter had been planning, saving, and preparing for this trip for a very, very long time, so she had collected a nice little travel wardrobe for just a few dollars over the years. One resource for fantastic travel clothes, clothes that wear well, look classy, don't wrinkle, and fold up quite small and take up almost no space at all, is Travelsmith. They are not inexpensive as my family defines inexpensive, but once you know what you're looking for you can watch for sales (they do have quite good ones), and we have found two or three Travelsmith brand items in a thrift shop.

I am also a firm believer in taking along a book or two to read. I have read of a fellow traveler who buys cheap paperbacks, and tears out the chapters he has finished and throws them away as he reads. I couldn't possibly bring myself to treat a book this way. At any rate, I favor travel books that are substantial enough to stand up to reading and rereading- Jane Austen, Jerome K Jerome, Thoreau, these are the sorts of books I take along when I can only bring one or two titles.

The most important item to take with you won't fit in your backpack- that is your open mind and sense of adventure. As G. K. Chesterton once said, 'travel broadens the mind, but you must have the mind.'