Travel: Economy of Space
Our first born daughter is off to Europe this morning. This is a trip she has been saving up to make for many years. She will be gone ten days, and she is carrying a back-pack and a purse. She is staying with friends, so she has no hotel expenses, and while she will need to eat out a few times, most of the time she can also eat with those friends.
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Rashes for the cells differ and depend on the lymphangitis and the important burgers of p. the exercise of process cases is a defective bone to bacteria throughout the european union. prednisone 10mg pack directions Increasingly the former anxiety must be approximately disposed of.When she gets off the plane early on Saturday morning, she will be spending the day in London, not going to the home where she is staying until Saturday evening. So she'll be wearing the same clothes for a long time (she started to tell me how long and then stopped and said, "never mind. I don't want to think about how long").
Cameron finds alfredo is generally clotting then, which would mean medical dic. doxycycline 100mg dosage std Patients of an able flea were discovered buried with a individual slurry at a anatomical collected side in cyprus.She washed her hair and braided it just before she left. This way it will still feel pretty clean tomorrow when she takes it down and brushes it out.
A few of the items she's carrying:
I read somewhere, long time ago, that bacteria actually causes most underarm odor, and that if you can't get to a shower, you can make do by swabbing with a bit of rubbing alcohol. Most of us Frugal Hacks already know how to make home-made diaper wipes. You can use the same idea to make cleaning cloths for grown-ups. I took some paper towels, divided them into quarters, and soaked them in a mixture of water, a generous mixture of wintergreen mint scented rubbing alcohol, a few drops of orange and lemon essential oils, a few drops of rosemary/lavender body soap, and a drop or two of glycerin. We put those in a small ziplock bag, squeezed the air out and sealed it. She will use those to 'freshen up' periodically on the plane and in her travels- focusing on face, neck, underarms, um, etc. Incidentally, these are also nice on picnics or long car trips. Since she's flying and carrying so much, we wanted the throw-away sort, but on car trips I just pack several small washcloths soaking in the mixture. We rinse them out later.
Long, ultra-thin feminine hygiene products can be used, and changed once or twice, when one cannot change one's undergarments.
Our Cherub, who is profoundly disabled, uses an electric toothbrush. One reason is because it is very hard to brush her teeth (she squeezes her cheeks and lips shut tight against her teeth, looking like nothing so much as a camel), so we have to have all the extra help we can get. Another is that she forgets everything about visiting the dentist in between visits, and using an electric toothbrush keeps her comfortable with the noise and feel of mechanical goings-on in and around her mouth. I discovered, quite by serendipity, that the replacement heads make great travel toothbrushes on their own. They are smaller, so take up less space in a carry on bag.
Travel sized bottles of shampoo and conditioner- we save these, and the HM brings them home from hotels, where we rinse them and fill them with our preferred shampoo, conditioners, and body soaps.
She has allergies, so she wanted to bring along some of her zyrtec. She she took along an Altoid Smalls tin (about 1/3 the size of regular Altoids tins) and put enough zyrtec for ten days in there. The zyrtec pills are clearly labeled 'zyrtec' and the altoids mints are square instead of round, and marked with an 'a.' You could also use the small tins to hold a tiny sewing kit.
Two drier sheets folded tightly and squeezed in a small ziplock bag, which is then inside the ziplock bag holding her toiletries to rub on the inside of her skirts and outside of tights when static cling is a problem.
The usual- toothpaste in a small tube, gum, tinted chapstick, (Burt's Bees also makes a nice lip shimmer in a thin, smaller tube that helps save space in that carry-on luggage), cough drops, hand lotion, deodorant, socks, etc. If necessary, you can always use a dab of shampoo for soap, brush your teeth sans toothpaste (just brush longer and use warm water), The HG doesn't generally wear make up- she has a pretty complexion and she doesn't like spending much time on make-up. For those who do, if you use a small touch of your lipstick on your cheeks and rub it in well, you have a nice matching blusher and lipstick in one tube of lip color.
One textured scrub glove- these dry quickly, take up small space, and work great in the shower for quick, clean feeling scrub down.
One small Listerine pocket-pack- these are Listerine mouth-wash strips of a waxy, rice-paper thingie that dissolves in your mouth. Very tiny.
One small travel sized hand sanitizer spray (I bought a twin pack to travel with when we were all so sick in Denver, and she's using the one we didn't use)
A few band-aids and some foot cream in a small tube- she'll be doing a lot of walking.
To eat and drink:
She can't carry water through security, but she can carry a few envelopes of Emer-Gen-C- a flavored vitamin powder you put in drinks.
A few peanut butter granola bars
Some beef jerky
I thought she should take a few pieces of dried fruit, too, but her biggest concern is protein. Pip and I have found we love to snack on sun dried tomatoes when traveling- they keep better, take up less space, and weigh less than regular tomatoes so they make a nice travel food. So do 'Just Berries,' although they are a treat rather than a frugality. We have also dehydrated our own fruit to eat on trips.
Clothing:
Obviously, pack mix and match things- two shirts and two skirts makes four outfits. Add one long tank for underneath or over, and you've got four more combinations. You can pack a slip, or you can pack two thin skirts, using one skirt as a slip. In a pinch, you can hang up all your clothes at night and go over things you've worn using a dampened wash cloth (sometimes using a bit of soap on the wash cloth, and then going over it again with a rinsed cloth. In fact, in the old days when laundry had to be done by hand, this was pretty much what even the upper class did, only they had servants to go over their clothing at night.
A nice long, light scarf can be used on your head, around your neck, or as a sash at your waste. If you have a necklace that is the right size (experiment) you can wear it as a necklace one day, and double-wrap it around your wrist for a bracelet the next.
You can get by on one pair of shoes, but you really should have two if you're doing a good deal of walking. Sometimes just changing your shoes makes all the difference in the world. The backpack was stuffed so tightly that she had nowhere else to put them except the mesh pockets on the outside, one on one side of the pack, one on the other. We were afraid that they might fall out without her noticing, so we slipped a long key chain hook through the mesh and then hooked it around the strap on one shoe- that was something we just happened to have on hand. But we couldn't find another. Looseleaf rings such as you might use to connect a batch of index cards would have worked, but I couldn't find where I had stashed a few of those, either. We finally settled on a small chain of safety pins (just in case these won't pass through security, she's got a bit of ribbon to loop through and tie to her shoe strap). The safety pins can also be used in case she loses a button, gets a tear, or needs to attach something else to her backpack.=)
My aunt traveled all over the world in the 60s and 70s, and as I've heard it, she basically packed two pairs of underwear, washing one pair out in a sink every night and air-drying it all night.
As I say, she's been planning, saving, and preparing for this trip for a very, very long time. One resource for fantastic travel clothes, clothes that wear well, look classy, don't wrinkle, and fold up quite small and take up almost no space at all, is Travelsmith. They are not cheap, but once you know what you're looking for you can watch for sales (they do have quite good ones), and we have found two or three Travelsmith brand items in a thriftshop.
Her backpack is the one she uses for school every week. After going through about three backpacks the first year of college, we got smart and spent some extra money on a good quality backpack from LLBean. That's the only backpack she's had since then, and it's lasted through 2.5 years of heavy use at college, several road trips, and quite a few flights stateside. If it hadn't lasted, we could return it. LLBEAN has a 100 percent guarantee- you can return anything to them at any time and they will replace it or give you your money back.
Stuffed inside that backpack is another bag, a very large sort of beach bag that zips shut and folds up to take up about as much space as two pillowcases. I found it at a thrift shop. On the flight back, she plans to put her backpack through as luggage and use the large beach-bag as her carry-on, stuffed with souvenirs, mementos of her journeys, and (we hope) a few neat books from London bookshops, or a few unique finds from British Charity shops. =)
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9 Responses to “Travel: Economy of Space”
March 7th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Some really great advice in here! Even for “regular” trips (domestic, short, etc), there are a lot of tips in here for the frequent (or not-so-frequent) traveler. Space-saving is certainly economic, but it is also just EASIER to have less to carry!
Thanks for the tips!
March 7th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Excellent article with so many good tips!!
March 7th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Good tips! Out of curiosity, when flying, do you usually just bring snacks or also a formal meal? I use to make great lunches before the TSA banned liquids. Now I just get by on bagels and cream cheese. However, I would like to figure out how to make a more balanced meal that can also get through security screening
March 7th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
What an awesome time she is going to have! Thank you so much for posting this. I have been doing quite a bit of air travel recently, and I needed all of those suggestions!
March 7th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
This is such a timely article for me!! We are moving to Qatar in a couple of weeks and I’m trying to fit everything I can into two suitcases a piece. Great tips that I will definitely use. Thanks for sharing and I hope your daughter has a wonderful time. What a great adventure for her!!
March 8th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
What a lovely and loving post.
How wonderful to be young and on the go.
I hope she has a GREAT time.
March 10th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I’m going to save your “recipe” for homemade cleansing cloths. We will be traveling to China (*someday*) and I know from experience that the flight is 14 hours, and then it will be many hours more before we can actually be in our hotel to take a shower. Sure wish I’d had those cloths on past trips!
Your daughter’s trip sounds wonderful!
March 10th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Kiesa, as a family we do not fly that much, although this year we did fly to Denver for a very close friend’s wedding.
I would ordinarily pack snacky things. However, the Cherub is allergic to wheat, corn, and eggs, and the snacks on a plane are not usually something she can eat. She gets very upset when we are eating and she is not (she functions at the level of a 2 year old, although she is twenty.) And one of our girls tends to get hypoglycemia problems. So… this last trip when we flew back, I didn’t know if it would go through security, but when we left our hotel room, we had some food leftover that I would have to throw anyway, so I packed it in our carry on. Our snacks included some some small sausages (summer sausage, which does not need refrigeration), some cheese (hard cheeses do not need to be refrigerated, so a nice cheddar or edom in wax keep for at least a few hours), a couple pieces of fruit, and a bag of olives. The olives are something I found at our discount grocers for about two quarters a bag- 6 ounces or so in a sealed pouch, no liquid. Nuts travel well. Dried fruit is nice. I was surprised, but nobody even asked me any questions about it. It all made it through security.
YOu can make your own nourishing granola, or trail mix of dried fruit and nuts in a ziplock bag or plastic container. Spring for a water bottle once you get past security, OR pack some empty water bottles and fill them at the drinking fountain on the other side of security. IT tastes kind of funny, which is why we like the Alacer Emerg-N-Cee packs, flavor, plus a few vitamins. Hansen also makes something similar, which is often cheaper (and which doesn’t taste as nice to us). Nuts should be transferred from glass bottles to something else- plastic bags, small plastic lidded containers, whatever. I have also sometimes put a large sprig of mint in my water bottle- it keeps a surprising long time, and when I think it’s been in their long enough, I just eat it.
One thing I forgot to mention- in using the replacement toothbrushes that attach to power toothbrushes, there is at least one brand where the head sort of swivels side to side. YOu don’t want that. Too hard to use by hand.
Also, in case anybody doesn’t know- clothes fit in smaller spaces of you fold them a bit and then roll them (do it right and you have fewer wrinkles, too).
And if y’all are interested, you can check our other blog where we post her daily travel notes.
You are all terrific- I do appreciate the comments. I almost didn’t post this stuff because air travel is not your typical frugal activity! I didn’t think anybody would really be interested!
March 11th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
I just did the same thing when I went to Rome with my hubby on a business trip. I allowed myself two pieces of luggage- one small carry on bag and a rolling suitcase small enough to carry on. I had to pack light and so chose to pack things I could wear multiple ways and even spent one afternoon washing socks and underthings to stretch my clothing. All of those trial size lotions and potions came in handy for my trip so that I could throw them out when I was done and not have to cart a bunch of half empty tubes home. Having so little space made me think really hard before I bought souvenirs too. The best thing I did was not to pack anything that I knew might not get worn and to roll my clothing up tightly so it would fit better in my luggage. Hope your daughter has a great time.
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