Over the years, I have honed my packing skills so that I don’t bring anything extraneous when I travel. I’m proud that my family and I have traveled internationally — sometimes for multiple weeks — with only one carry-on suitcase per person. I can’t even remember the last time I checked a suitcase.
I last wrote about packing light in Simplify Your Packing. In that post, I talked about how I minimized the amount of jewelry I traveled with. But I think I outdid myself last week when I packed for a 3-day trip to visit a friend who had rented a house in New Hampshire. We flew in on Wednesday morning, spent the rest of Wednesday and all day Thursday with him, then flew back home on Friday morning.
I have already simplified my everyday wardrobe by wearing only two colors below the waist: black or navy blue. For a typical trip, I would take shorts or pants in both colors, and then a variety of shirts to match. But since I only needed to bring two changes of clothes, I decided to wear only blue outfits.
I wore a pair of blue jeans on the plane with a blue patterned shirt, along with a striped jeans jacket and my closed shoes. I packed one pair of blue shorts and a pair of tan shoes that could be worn sockless with shorts as well as with pants. I also packed two shirts with blue patterns, and two pairs of blue socks. I wore blue earrings on the plane and didn’t bother to bring any additional jewelry.
Only two items that I packed were never worn. One was a blue sweater that I thought I might need to add under my jacket at night, but it never got that chilly. The other was a sunhat, but the activities we selected (especially on the rainy Thursday) never required it.
Deciding to stick with one color scheme made it so easy to pack, and even easier to unpack. I don’t know when I’m going to travel again (this was my first time in two years, thanks to the pandemic) but I think I’ll wear black pants next time!
My husband and me at the airport in Portland, Maine
