Soapbox on Packing Light

Have you ever noticed that when you embark on something new a plethora of advice finds its way to your wide open ears? At no time has this been more clear than when we became parents. If I had a dollar for every piece of advice we received, I could have dressed my kids in Gucci and Armani.

We are lugging around a weighty grocery bag of travel books of late as we prepare for 2 months abroad and each one has an entire section on packing. Writers talk about the climate, modes of transport, “casual but tidy” dress decorum for each culture of the half dozen or so countries we plan to visit. Our travel experience highly motivates us to keep our packed belongings to a minimum because not doing so means more laundry, limiting carry-on convenience, the expense of paying someone to help and as we are aging (uh hem) – potential injury.

Motivation to pack light also derives from painfully observing over-burdened travellers who drag half of their possessions around like an elephant-juggling circus act.

The history of the word baggage may be derived from the verb baguer, which means to “tie up” according to the Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories. Extra baggage does tie one up. Every time we travel, we travel lighter because there are always – and I mean always – things we don’t use. If I plan to invest a good portion of our earnings and time on a trip we have expended months in planning, it’s crazy to make our lives more difficult by over-packing.

You may be thinking, “boy, she sure goes on about this stuff” and you are right. I’m off my soapbox with little more than a handbag and it feels great!