The Wandering Hart

In preparation for my most recent trip I read a ton of different blogs and other articles about what I should buy and pack to make life easier. And to be honest, some of the most-recommended items were my least used! In reality it would have been better to buy less and pack lighter, but there were a few items that I’m really glad I bought and would recommend.

1. Compression Packing Cubes

These packing cubes saved so much space for me and made it much easier to organize my clothes! I was able to have a single cube for hiking/workout clothes, a cube for street clothes, a cube for underwear and socks, and one compressible bag for laundry. The compression really did work and kept my suitcase less overloaded as well. Easily my best purchase for this trip.

2. Laundry Detergent Sheets

I knew we would need to do laundry weekly and sometimes this would mean using a washer in an AirBnB while other times this would mean doing sink laundry. This meant we would need to be prepared with our own detergent, but packing a liquid sounded risky and annoying for a number of reasons (TSA included). As an alternative, we used these laundry sheets which I was able to pack in a little ziplock and have enough for a full 6 weeks of laundry in minimal space! Additionally, I was able to cut the strips into smaller pieces so we could use less for small sink laundry loads. It ended up being such a perfect solution I’m considering continuing to use these at home as an eco-friendly alternative to my old liquid detergent!

3. Makeup Sticks

Obviously not everyone travels with makeup – including people who would sometimes wear it at home. However, I personally like to have a few basic makeup items when I travel and I’ve run into soooo many problems with this in the past. I’ve had foundation explode in my bag, I’ve had blush turn into dust, and (of course) I’ve had to deal with the basic annoyance of removing makeup from my bag for TSA. This time around I decided to buy ColourPop’s foundation and blush “stix” and I was so pleased with this decision! There was no mess at any point during the whole trip, the foundation and blush quality were good, and it made my basic set of travel makeup more compact. I’m not planning to use these consistently at home, but they’re a perfect option if you like to wear makeup while traveling.

Regretted Purchases

Finally, there were a handful of items I regretted buying (and especially regretted lugging all over!) in the end. Based on how frequently I’ve seen these or similar items recommended I’m sure they must work for some people, but they definitely didn’t work for me!

1. A big multi-purpose outlet converter: Our hotels and AirBnB’s on this trip usually had outlets already built to handle multiple types of plugs and for those that didn’t we just used a really small single-type adaptor that my husband bought. In the end this bulky adaptor was just taking up space in my bag.
2. AirFly Duo Wireless Transmitter: This item is meant to turn any headphone jack into a bluetooth audio transmitter and it allows for sharing that headphone jack across 2 bluetooth headphones! It sounded so great for the plane trips, especially for being able to use my bluetooth headphones for the plane entertainment systems. It did work really well but there just wasn’t enough occasion to need it. Most of the planes other than the really long-haul flights don’t even have entertainment systems anymore and my husband and I often spent more time watching separate media so we didn’t need the shared audio very much. For some people this might be a good one, but for me it felt like I was using it just to justify the purchase in the end.
3. trtl Neck Pillow: This may be the most controversial item on this list because I know this neck pillow has a strong following among some travelers. However, I just didn’t find it much more helpful than using the bendy parts built into most airplane headrests. Plus it’s not as compact as people say because there’s a large stiff and rounded plastic component which I found annoying to pack!

Overall I’m pretty happy with most things I’ve purchased for travel over the years, but it’s important to know that what works for one person and one trip might not work more generally! I’ll certainly be keeping that in mind as I acquire more travel gear and choose what’s worth recommending.