Our Best Travel Hacks & Must Packs

I don’t know about you, but when we are travelling there are a few things that are the first things we reach for. Obvious things are the passport and suitcase but we also like to use packing cubes inside our luggage. These make life so much easier, keeping our clothing organised and saves messing up contents when looking for one item. Remember to roll, not fold clothes and use different cubes for tops, bottoms, underwear, etc and you can allocate each family member a different colour so their clothes can be found easily.

Once we have our itinerary confirmed, we upload our itinerary, copy of passport, driver’s licence, address of hotels, maps of the areas we are travelling, insurance documents and all our booking confirmations to our phones and tablet and also email it to ourselves so it is always in the cloud in case we lose everything. 

We also ensure our housesitter and a family member has the relevant documents should it be necessary for them to urgently contact us, make a claim on our home insurance for emergency repairs, etc. Many times we have got into a taxi at the airport to advise the driver where we wanted to go and they had no idea where it was. It is so easy to show them the written details.  Having downloaded the maps we don’t need to rely on wifi to make our way around town.

Don’t forget to download your airline’s app to get latest updates on gate changes, delays, paperless boarding and access to inflight movies.

We usually pack one case each, but always make sure we have at least one complete change of clothes for each other in our luggage. This way, if one case gets misplaced we can still shower and change into fresh clothing once we reach our destination.

We always layer a few dryer sheets in the case too, this helps reduce static in our clothing and keeps it all smelling fresh. Speaking of losing luggage, take a photo on your phone so if the case doesn’t arrive with you, you have a photo to show them the case you are looking for.  Use coloured string, tags, case covers, etc to easily identify yours to make collection easier. Our luggage is secured with TSA luggage locks.

International power adapters and charger is also another must pack. When on a trip last year I left my phone charger at home and although I had three fully charged batteries, knew these would not last the full trip. We had tried to purchase a charger for my camera but it would have been an expensive purchase so we opted for a universal charger. Now we can charge our phones, cameras, tablet and anything at all that is USB, so it turned out to be a worthwhile purchase.

We also take along a travel towel made of microfiber so it dries quickly. We use this to wring excess water from our hand washing to make drying time faster and pack in the camera bag in case equipment gets wet or we get caught in a shower of rain.

The electronic gadgets which we don’t travel without are our cameras, (DSLR and point and shoot), iphone, tablet (ours is a Nexus 7) and of course not to forget our universal power adapter and charger.

We carry a small Packing Cube in our hand luggage for cables, thumb drives, chargers, adapters and spare memory cards.

We collect toiletry and make up samples by either ordering samples online or collecting from the makeup section at pharmacies and department stores.

I carry an over the shoulder carry on bag which holds ziplock with liquids, camera, phone, passport, toothbrush, face wipes, tissues/toilet paper, notebook and a small amount of make up. Don’t forget a pen to fill out custom forms to get through quicker. It will always be stuffed with a pashmina, sarong or scarf which have multiple uses when travelling.

In our case and carry on we pack several spare large ziplock bags. They can come in so handy for dirty laundry, wet washing, keep valuables dry, lots of uses when travelling.

 

Another thing that is ideal for long trips is a comfort kit made up of headphone case with sleep mask, earplugs, ipod with your favourite music or podcasts, noise cancelling headphones and a small medication kit with headache and sleeping pills.  I also recommend a small sewing kit with some pins, buttons, thread, etc.

As our next big trip will be to Europe in winter I am going to purchase some Grabber shoe and hand warmers too.

So there you have it, a few of our best travel hacks and must packs. If you can think of others that could be included please comment below.

This post was written in response to the 3 Girls and a #BlogAlong monthly link up party