I’ve travelled a fair bit over the last few years. Monthly trips to London, a few courses and conferences each year, and holidays to New York, Rhodes, Canada and Bulgaria. I love travelling (both the journey and the destination), but I also don’t like having to navigate trains and airports with large suitcases full of everything I might possibly need. What I’ve tried to do recently is to travel as light as I can, whilst still having access to everything I might need on the trip. This is partly about planning what I’m wearing in advance, but also about risk assessment. For example, I used to always take a spare pair of shoes with me when I travelled overnight. I don’t like having wet feet, and it seemed worth it at the time. After a few trips where wet feet didn’t feature I ditched the shoes, and accepted that I may one day need to buy a pair of shoes whilst travelling. So far I’ve not had to, but I can always use a new pair of shoes, and it makes my bag significantly lighter by not having to carry a spare all the time.
I also try and reduce the load by wearing the heaviest clothes I need (generally jeans and whatever jacket/coat suits the weather), which means my bag or case should only have lighter items in it. My holiday packing is mostly shorts and t-shirts, and my business packing is lightweight shirts and trousers, none of which are particularly heavy or bulky.
I think I’m doing quite well on the clothes front, but I still carry a larger than average collection of technology, especially when I’m travelling for work. All of my devices are as light as they can be (Macbook Air, iPad mini and iPhone), but I could probably do with carrying one less device on some trips. I could also probably do with carrying around less cables and adaptors, and I should probably accept that I won’t need to connect my laptop to a projector or a wired network when I’m on a foreign holiday.