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The point of these posts has been simple: take only what you need to use. Pick smart items that handle travel well and keep honing your system.

I hone my system after every trip when I unpack. If there was something which I unpack and never touched during my trip, then I know that I likely don’t need to pack that item again. Make a mental note, keep paring your gear down with each trip you take. This also helps you ease into it. You might feel uncomfortable if you try to travel with just one set of clothes, so instead start with traveling with just one pair of pants. Once you are used to that, pare back somewhere else. There’s no need to do it all at once.

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Everything we’ve covered thus far has been tailored towards my needs and my tastes. This is the post about all the other stuff I have come across which might interest other people. And tips I have for buying travel oriented gear.

While I have covered the basics, the basics might not be enough for you. That’s fine, just remember, that for the most part, those items are a nice to have and not a necessity.

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The key: pack one pair of shoes. In fact, most people who travel long enough slim down to one pair of shoes, and a pair of sandals for a full year of travel. I don’t do sandals, but I fully agree with one pair of shoes being all you really need.

Shoes are not only bulky, but they are heavy. There’s two things which will push you to having to carry a larger, and often heavier bag: shoes and jackets. I’ve talked about picking the right jackets — they need to be compressible. Most people really only need one pair of shoes when they are traveling — and honestly the only reason you would need more than one pair is again: variety.

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I really hate packing pants, because they are bulky and they always seem to get wrinkled — the only worse thing to pack is a cotton dress shirt. What makes pants doubly annoying is that you typically only need one pair — the pair you wear when you leave. However, then there’s the fear of a spill, or a rip, or of them not being flexible enough to cover the range of activities and situations you have planned. Can they go on that short hike and still to the five star restaurant for dinner? To the business meeting, but also everything else in between?

When I started down the path of looking at travel friendly pants I knew there were two things I really wanted to avoid: cargo pants and pants that look more like hiking pants than “regular” pants. If they have “zip-off” anything, no thanks. If they focus more on hidden pockets and insect repellent, no thanks.

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You need far fewer electronic devices than you think. All I carry is my iPhone and my iPad Pro. Done. My rule here is very simple: take a phone and one other device. Unless you have a major reason why you need three devices, take only two. For me the second device is my iPad Pro, and before that it was my MacBook. If you need a Mac, take a Mac and use your phone for anything else. But decide if you even need that second device — I take mine strictly because if I can squeeze in writing time, it is worth having the iPad Pro. But I could do it all with my iPhone if I wanted.

There’s lots of ways to talk yourself into taking one more device, but I’ve always found that when I travel with three devices, one will always go unused. There’s nothing more frustrating than lugging something around you don’t use.

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