Tag: travel-light

After I last posted about travel pants, I had a pretty comfortable routine for my life: Icebreakers were my day-to-day pants, and the Bluffworks and Ministry of Supply pants were what I wore if I wanted to dress up a bit more. Sitting at the top of my “to test” list were the Outlier Futureworks. Aside from having a great name, they had a compelling promise:

These are the ones to take around the world. Classic looks meet technical movement in a lightweight yet durable pant.

At $140 they are more money than many other options you can buy, but they are the most inexpensive pants Outlier sells. I picked up a pair of them shortly after my last post on pants, and have been testing them nonstop ever since. I chose dark navy, as the color is versatile for both work and leisure.

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When I posted my initial Traveling Light post on socks, I mentioned how I don’t wear anything special for style considerations. There is, however, one caveat: athletic socks, or more specifically the ankle socks I wear with shorts and sneakers.

I picked up two different kinds to try over my recent family vacation, and I am a little blown away at how great they are. (I would have bought them sooner, but I so rarely wear these, I never got around to it.) I picked up Icebreakers and Darn Tough socks, both are heavily Merino wool based.

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I mentioned in my initial posts that I would be following up to post about shorts and short-sleeved shirts. This is that post. I tried out the Outlier New Ways, and the Ministry of Supply Apollo Polo shirts. Both are outstanding.

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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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Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.

Wrinkles and stains. For me those are the two largest concerns I have when I know I need a dress shirt, or “button down” shirt on a trip. (This is also the standard shirt I wear, so I can’t recall any time when I didn’t pack one or more.) Will it wrinkle? Will it clean easily if I spill my Tex-Mex all over it? Will it still look good after a couple days in a plane or a suitcase?

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Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.

I’ve previously spent a lot of time, and money, trying to find the best undershirt you can wear. And while I stand by my assessment that Underfit shirts are the best ones you can buy, travel undershirts are a different breed. Whereas with my daily wear undershirts I just need something which is comfortable and looks good under my shirts, with travel undershirts I need them to also be:

• Stink resistant
• Regulate my body temperature well
• Weigh as little as possible
• Dry overnight

Once you start down this path you end up looking at two types of shirts: Merino wool, or synthetic. I personally felt that synthetic must be the way to go, however after a lot of research it seemed very clear to me Merino wool was the way to go. Which sucks, because those shirts are very pricey.

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Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.

I only ever take two jackets (if any) when I travel: a rain jacket, and/or a thin down type jacket. ((The only exception here is if I need a suit, then of course I take an appropriate jacket as needed.)) If it is cold, I take the down and the rain jacket, if it is forecast to be warm then I take the rain jacket. The only time I won’t take a rain jacket is if the weather will be over 80° the entirety of my stay, as even if it rains then, my clothes will dry fast enough and it will be warm enough, I won’t need a jacket (usually).

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Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.

There are two things I hate when it comes to trying to pack toiletries light: travel toothbrushes and the idea that you can buy what you need, where you are going. Travel toothbrushes, which are too small to hold comfortably, and fold in half and thus are never great to begin with.

Just use a regular toothbrush for crying out loud.

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Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.

This might be the shortest of all these posts: I don’t buy special socks for travel. There are tons of great options out there which are Merino wool and thus fast drying, anti-stink, and more. They are good socks, and the socks I certainly should be traveling with, but I don’t.

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Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.

Packing cubes, packing rolls, field pockets, stuff sacks — every where you turn there’s no shortage of people offering smaller bags to put inside of your larger bags. The promises range from the mundane of being more organized, to the comical of offering ways to keep your clothing wrinkle free. I’ve been fortunate(?) enough to try most of these, and after that testing there’s only a handful of them I would recommend.

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Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.

Another excuse to talk about bags, most excellent. While backpacks rule the roost for me, I want to cover four different bags.

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Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.

One pair per day, right? Gone five days? Then five pairs of underwear are needed. At least that’s how I used to pack. Travel underwear? No thanks.

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