Sunday, July 15, 2007

Tips on Traveling Light

As I've mentioned before, my favorite tip for travel is don't overpack. It makes your trip much more enjoyable because you're not spending extraordinary efforts in lugging useless stuff. Being smart and efficient about what you pack requires a close analysis of what you'll need, and research on choosing the best multi-tasking tools.

Lifehacker led the way to Tim Ferriss' list of how he travels the world with under 10 pounds. You may agree or disagree with some of his choices, but it's a great starting point. It seems very specific to warmer climates, so if you're going to Chile this month, you might need a few more things. The same goes for traveling with kids, but...well, duh.

Much like with anything, great packing also requires a bit of organization. I like to make a master list of things to travel with, so I can pare it down as needed for any kind of trip. And we usually take an electronics bag because we are who we are. Included are a laptop, iPod, camera, various chargers, and headphones. The laptop might seem a waste, but we check in on life every now and then, book flights and hotels (safer than strange computers), have scanned images of passports and other needed documents, and we upload photos daily from our camera to see progress during our trips. On a 3-week trip to Asia a few years ago, we literally took over 1,000 shots, and it was great to see them at the end of each day as we wound down. We also use it for video clips, which results in great short clips of our wee one, eliminating our *need* for a video camera.

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