Two Weeks In a Carry-On Bag

After my last post, I received a reply from my good friend Cheryl. She has a friend who regularly travels to exotic locations for a couple of weeks at a time, and her friend agreed to share her secrets for packing two weeks of clothing into a carry-on.

The interesting thing about this list is that it encompasses clothing for multiple occasions such as a business lunch, shopping, a board meeting, and even a visit to a tribal village! It's obviously a woman's packing list, but I'm sure my male readers can adapt it for their use:

• Black jeans (on the plane for comfort, later for hiking or outdoorsy stuff)
• Long sleeve t-shirt weight, zip-up sweater/jacket, with pockets to hold gum, room keys, etc (wear on the plane; can be crammed into a backpack, used as a tablecloth or ground cover, or to fight off air conditioning or an evening chill). Consider two or three different colors of these which can all go with (yawn) black.
• White t-shirt
• Nice(r) black pants
• Longish black skirt
• Two coordinating tops to go with black bottoms, in addition to white t-shirt above
  
• Black casual or dressy vest or jacket to go with tops and black bottoms (dressy or casual will be dictated by trip agenda)
• Dressy tennis shoes (is there such a thing??) to wear on the plane and for future hiking
• Black flats, semi-dressy
• Nice coordinating pashmina or shawl for any evening that calls for dressing up

If you manage to squeeze all of your stuff into a carry on, don't forget that your liquids and gels need to be in containers no larger than 3 oz. and they must all fit into a quart size, zip-top bag. If you have had a difficult time finding these tiny refillable containers, here is a link for an affordable little carry-on kit that includes three 3 oz. bottles, four caps (two screw-on, one atomizer, and one locking pump cap) along with a quart-size zip-top bag.

Do you have more secrets for successful packing? Please share with us at www.betterorganized.blogspot.com.