Excited for your pending vacation? How about the packing and getting ready for your departure? For many, packing is a major stressor of vacations – so it really negates the relaxation many are trying to achieve in their planned getaway.
Did you know that packing is one of the greatest travel stressors associated with the trip planning stage of travel, according to a research article on travel stress featured in Tourism Analysis?
However, there are steps you can take to avoid packing anxiety disorder. Implementing a few of these tips will help you prepare for your journey with no packing stress to ensure a smooth start to your vacation.
The top mistakes that travelers make when packing for a summer vacation include taking too many clothes and too much luggage.
Here are a few tips to avoid making packing mistakes:
Select one base color (black, brown, navy, grey).
Coordinate clothing around this single color. This simplifies the selection of what to pack. With one pair of black (brown or navy) pants (or skirt), you can take two to three tops and an outfit looks totally different. By selecting one base color, this makes it easier to mix and match. Pack one accessory item – jacket, scarf, vest, poncho – for evening.
Flatten your clothes, don’t fold
(or minimum fold) as you can get a lot more in, and use a packing bag to take out the air in the clothes.
Have a set traveling outfit which you wear on the plane and going home.
Take two pairs of pants for one week of traveling
even if traveling for two weeks or more, still only pack two pairs of pants as you won’t need more than that combined with your traveling attire.
To help pack beauty products and accessories, have a “travel drawer” where you keep only your travel items.
You can grab and go. For my beauty products, I love the plastic bottles and small containers from the Container Store to aid in my organization. This “grab and go” list of items serves me well. I can pick and choose according to the trip I’m taking. These are all in my travel drawer.
- Travel size bath products: Toothpaste, toothbrush, dental floss, deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, hand lotion, wet ones, mouth wash, Kleenex package, cotton balls and soap.
- Travel size skin products: Moisturizer, toner, cleanser, eye cream, eye makeup remover and night cream.
- Travel size hand products: Nail file, polish, nail polish remover wipes vs the liquid and nail clippers.
- Medicines: Pill container, aspirin, Advil, Aleve, Claritin, vitamins, ointments, and Band-Aids.
- Cosmetics: travel size brushes, duplicates of your cosmetics that you just take you’re your travel drawer vs your daily makeup make including lipstick, blush, foundation, eye-shadow, eye liner, mascara and sponges.
- Miscellaneous Items: Sewing kit, tweezers, and other.
For traveling, I recommend getting travel size containers and products.
Weight is an important ingredient in traveling and the regular size bottles weigh a lot and take up needed space. When traveling, you don’t need the same quantity in your lotions, potions and other beauty and personal care items.
Finally, once you arrive at your destination, I do have another packing, or “unpacking” tip to ease your transition. I recommend unpacking the suitcases. Clothes are easier to repack. Once you are unpacked you just feel more organized and ready to go fully on vacation mode.
About Barbara Brock: Barbara Brock is the Founder & CEO of Beauty & The Box, a company dedicated to fusing beauty with organization for the traveling woman and at home. There is no doubt Barbara has the “organization” gene in her DNA and is dedicated to bringing order and efficiency to everyone’s lives. Barbara is a successful home-staging owner, entrepreneur (she negotiated a lucrative deal for an executive “daily/monthly planner’” pre the Palm Pilot years) and past President of NAPO®-NY (National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals™ – New York Chapter). In setting out to design the perfect cosmetics organizing system, her philosophy was simple: “Be organized. Be beautiful”. So, it is mission accomplished! Visit: https://beautyandthebox.com/
