7 Smart Steps to Pack Your Suitcase (Part 2)
Image sourced by Corinne Kutz @corinnekutz
The Smart Traveler – 7 Smart Steps to Pack Your Suitcase Perfectly Every Time and Create the Perfect Packing List!
As I mentioned here, in 2017 my colleague and I travelled to London to ink a joint venture with a consulting firm based in Canary Wharf.
Since it was an important business trip, I was anxious about remembering everything I needed to pack.
Given my accounting background, ‘logical’ mind and habit of scrambling last minute to pack my suitcases, I needed a recipe – a tool to help me pack everything I needed for every type of trip every time.
So began the Travel Packing List Pak – a handy tool that lists all the items one might bring on a trip.
You can grab this valuable tool for FREE here.
Checklists take the guesswork out of a project whether it’s travel, grocery shopping, household chores, weekly errands, administration tasks or a work project.
To pack perfectly, pack smartly every time, I created an All-Encompassing list.
To get us started, let’s turn to the ‘Elimination Diet’.
Some years ago, my nutritionist friend Deborah happened to tell me about the elimination diet.
According to the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, “An elimination diet is an eating plan that omits a food or group of foods believed to cause an adverse food reaction. . . By removing certain foods for a period of time and then reintroducing them during a “challenge” period, you can learn which foods are causing symptoms or making them worse. . .”
Now, I’m not suggesting that we need to remove and add back items, but travelers do take different trips and need to pack different items for each trips. With travel, depending on the trip, some items will be more relevant and useful than others:
Business trips and business conferences
Weddings and honeymoons
Vacations, sightseeing, hiking, camping, skiing, camping, rafting, road trip and my favorite, the beach.
Family trips, with children, without children, a friends trip, a couples trip, a singles trip, college reunions, family reunions, etc.
Domestic travel vs. international travel and so on.
The point is that travelers need or want to pack certain items for every trip. And of course, different trips demand different items.
Whenever I travel, I always bring my hat, sunglasses, exercise clothes and bathing suit. You know I love a good Jacuzzi. And a good book or my Kindle.
When I travel overseas, for example London, I bring my Passport.
But, for domestic travel I don’t need my Passport.
For air travel, I want to be sure to bring my TSA Precheck Card but for travel by car, I don’t need this.
And so on. . .
Use these 7 steps to create a smart, complete packing list to help you pack perfectly every time:
List All the categories of items you may want to bring on a trip. In my case, I created an omnibus packing list that includes everything I might want to bring on any type of trip I might take.
Inside each category, list All the items you might want to bring in that category – each type of trip you might take. Go wide.
Whenever you want to pack for a trip, print out your packing list – a hard copy. Yes, old school.
Grab a pen. For this trip – like the elimination diet – cross out All the items you don’t need or don’t want to bring along this time.
Then pack the remaining items.
Cross out each item as you place it in your suitcase.
During your travel, make notes on your packing list or in your smartphone so you can update your packing list for future trips. I evolve (revise and edit) my Travel Packing List Pak whenever a new idea or item occurs to me which will make my travel better, easier or more productive.
The cross-outs help you see where you left off on the checklists easily and by process of elimination, show you what’s left to pack.
Given my busy schedule, I tend to pack my suitcases over several days. What’s more, I need some items, for example, deodorant and vitamins, until the day of the trip.
So, the cross-outs help identify the items and especially the last minute items that I still have to pack before I close my suitcase and hit the road.
This handy tool is built in Microsoft Excel so you can customize it, change it around, alphabetize it and make it your own.
As a FREE Gift to Budget and Grow Rich® subscribers, please grab our Travel Packing List for FREE! No strings attached.
Have a great trip.
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See you next week.
Arthur
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