We travel roughly about twice a year, so we’ve accumulated a fair bit of traveling experiences. One of the ways that we’ve been optimizing our packing is by bringing overseas items that we don’t intend to bring back (i.e. to be thrown away overseas). There are several advantages to doing this:
- We will have more luggage space on the return leg. Good for packing and bringing back our shopping goods from overseas.
- We will have less dirty laundry to handle.
- We tidy up our house at he same time.
- It is liberating. :)
So here’s a list of things we’ve thrown overseas:
- Shoes / Slippers / Sandals – Footwear takes up a large amount of space in the luggage. Usually, I would have my covered shoes, and maybe a pair of sandals for comfort at the hotel. Depending on the situation (i.e. conference, cruise formal dining), I may need a pair of formal shoes as well. I’ve thrown away an old pair of formal shoes in France before. Dear2 have thrown away multiple pairs of sandals and flip-flops over the year (the earliest I could recall was our Bintan trip).
- Socks – For our most recent trip to Japan, we decided to get rid of our my old army socks. So I gathered all my green army socks (7 pairs in total) and pack them into our luggage. Then, at the end of each travel day, my socks would go straight into the hotel dustbin.
- Toothbrush / toothpaste – Packing the toothbrush was always a last minute item, the one that we would pack only after the final brush on the morning of travel. This meant the toothbrush was always wet, and also sometimes forgotten. Instead, just pack the old toothbrush early and start using a new toothbrush as home. On the last day of the trip, throw that old toothbrush away. Same thing for toothpaste, pack the old tube, and start using the new tube at home, then throw away the old tube at the last hotel.
- Towels – Towels are big and bulky and takes up a lot of luggage space. However, old towels becomes thin and worn and not so comfy anymore, perfect for bringing overseas. And don’t bring them back.
- Lotion / Moisturizer / Shampoo – These items frequently have non-rectangular bottles which are difficult to pack efficiently in the luggage. So, we usually bring just enough for our trip and throw away all the bottles after our last bath. This frees up lots of luggage space for our overseas shopping goodies, which usually *do* come as rectangular boxes.
- Disposable underwear / pull-up diapers – Packing dirty laundry back into the luggage is always a problem. This is because we separate the dirty laundry from the rest of the luggage by packing them into plastic bags first. This process of packing into plastic bags implies less efficient use of space within the luggage. Also, hygiene is an issue if the dirty laundry remains unwashed for longer trips. Instead, we use disposable underwear on our trips. They are lighter, smaller, and easier to pack, and they do away with the dirty laundry problem. Cotton disposable underwears are quite comfortable. For the same reasons, we let Baby2 wear pull-up diapers as her underwear even-though she is already diaper trained.
- Bottle brush – Another thing that we take the opportunity to throw and replace during a trip.
With these throwaways, we usually have more space in our luggage for shopping. Besides, it feels great to throw out the old stuffs!
-Dear1
Dear1 Dear2 