Essential Tips To Prepare For Your Next Trip
How often do you travel?
Do you find yourself pulling out your suitcases often, filling them with all of your belongings, so that you CAN survive for a week? Or is packing your least favorite part of going on a trip because you know you are bound to forget something?
My husband and I really enjoy traveling. Exploring new parts of this world, is very intriguing to us, with new explorations and sights around every corner. By all means, even though we love traveling, we do not travel as often as most people. Our traveling consists of family vacations, vacations together, and mission trips with our youth group. All of these different trips require a different system of packing and planning, but each of them has taught us something about the traveling and packing process. I had received a lovely email from a reader, asking some really good questions about our process. It wasn’t really something I ever put much thought into, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that really, packing and traveling really can add a huge stressor to the whole trip.
So…
I want to share with you some tips that I find essential when it comes to preparing for your next trip.
1. Decide where to go. Simple statement, but sometimes this is the biggest decision. For instance, if you are looking to get away with your family, there are multiple things to consider: expense of traveling there, meals, lodging, gas, activities, length of time off, etc. For my husband and I, over the past few years, we have chosen to do vacations where we can rent a condo. The idea dawned on us one day when we were looking to go to South Carolina and started to research hotels. We realized that we were going to spend a fortune in lodging, and that did not even include our meals! We decided to look at VRBO (highly recommend this website), and found a beautiful condo on the ocean, where we could prepare our own meals, have a pool to lounge by, and have the freedom of a “home” instead of feeling like we were stuck in a hotel room. By far, the best choice! We have been hooked ever since!
- So what do we look for when it comes to renting a condo?
- Room Amenities – does it have a full kitchen where we can cook our own meals? Trust me, our meals are very simple – cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and suppers (salad, pasta, even a frozen pizza here and there).
- Condo Amenities – If we are going somewhere warm, we always look for a place with a pool, condo on the water, kayaks (definitely a perk), free parking, and close to other attractions
- Price – the whole point of a condo is to save money, for us. We do not stay in elegance, but we stay in a place with a bed, kitchen, bathroom, etc. It has to be worth the price!
- Reviews – it is amazing what you can gain from the reviews of others! Everyone has a different opinion, but if most would say they would go back (considering most come from different backgrounds), you can pretty much guarantee it’s a good place
- Airlines – we watch prices for usually a month or 2. I know they say there are “ideal” times to book airline tickets, but we have found that really, they change so often, that you can’t depend on anything, except just keeping an eye out for a deal. We have found round trip tickets to Florida for $100/person, but we have also paid close to $200. Which is still a GREAT deal, but quite a difference. You can sign up on Kayak.com for email notifications when prices go down or up, so that is an option too.
- Look at different cities around the area. We recently flew into Fort Lauderdale instead of Miami, because we could save over $100. Plus, then we did not have to deal with the bigger city.
- We also pay attention to the flight schedule. Yes, we could save $50, but is it worth 12 hours vs. 6 hours of travel time?
- Look at car rental prices. A drive from Minnesota to Florida, would not be worth our time and money, considering the gas it would take to go down there! So flying is our best bet. We once made the cheap choice of renting the cheapest car out there – an economy size. Now, we both are over 6’1″, so a little Mazda 2 was interesting to say the least. We learned our lesson, that a dollar more a day, is worth the comfort of a vehicle. Next time, we rented an intermediate, but still only paid slightly over $100 for the week, for the rental itself (fees not included). Well worth it in our minds!
2. Packing
- Check the weather forecast. Yes, forecasts change dramatically at times, but you obviously wouldn’t pack your winter clothes if you were heading to the south in the fall or spring. Even if it would rain, you at least know what TYPE of clothes to bring.
- Decide what activities you might be doing. Laying on the beach and hiking require different clothes. But if you will only be hiking 1 or 2 days, that is all you need to take clothes for.
- Decide how many you need of anything, TO GET BY. Do not bring clothing items so that you have choices. Bring enough for one outfit each day – this eliminates choices and overpacking.
- I have created a personal packing list that I use for EVERY over night trip I ever go on. Some things on here I rarely take, but that means I just get to cross them off! This helps me to never forget a single thing. If it’s not on the list, it’s not coming with me. I keep it in a plastic sleeve that I keep in our home management binder, and use a vis a vis marker so that I can reuse this list at anytime. You can create your own packing list by using this printable packing list.
- Make packing something you ENJOY. Yes, you can enjoy it, by not bringing more than you need because when have you ever not packed enough? Honestly? Yes, you may have to wear a pair of shorts a few times, but who cares? I guarantee you the only person who cares is you.
When you can pack a week’s belongings into one suitcase, it begs the question – how much do we really need? There is something simple about looking at only 7 days worth of clothes and possibly even wearing the same thing twice.
How much can you live WITHOUT? How much do you own – more than you have room for? More than you would and could ever wear? What if your choices were consistently narrowed down to a suitcase each week?
Hopefully these tips help you prepare for your next trip and help ease the stress of packing for your next vacation. Then you can actually ENJOY every minute of the vacation – from beginning to end.
Thank you Kristin!
Your post makes me dream of a trip to a warm destination (we have freezing rain here today).
I had to chuckle when you mentioned the compact car with two people over 6' 1". My oldest son is 6'1/2" and counting… his experiences in the driver's ed. compact cars led us to realize that a compact car is NOT in his future 🙂 .
Your wise choices with the savings on a condo as well as with the airfare, make the idea of travel not so far out of reach.
I can't wait to hear about the first time you take your sweet little bundle of joy to Florida.
I have very fond memories of when our children were little and they could experience the freedom from bulky clothing and enjoy the sea breezes, fresh air , sights, sounds, smells…:)
Love, love, love your idea for "consistently narrowing down my choices to a suitcase each week". I've been making space in my closet by catching up on some long-overdue photo projects. Wouldn't it be fun to turn that shelf into a "virtual suitcase". "Pack" for the week, and add a few of my cute beachy- photos and décor from my Floridian friend. I think it will give me a focal-point to dream about the next adventure (whenever that may be), as well as preparing my outfits for the week will help my time-management skills. I think it may breathe some fresh life into my wardrobe! Happy trails…
Honestly, I always feel the idea of traveling is never out of reach. You may not be able to do anything extravagant, but what is the purpose of going on a trip? For us, it's often just getting away. We figure why spend a fortune on a place that we are only going to sleep in at night. Ah, the photo projects! I am actually working on the same thing! I used to put all of my photos on cds, but I am now putting them all on a jump drive so that I can store it in our safe, where it will BE safe! I say keep the dream ALIVE! Living simply on vacation and in normal everyday life can make such a difference and help you focus on what is most important to you :). Thanks for sharing as always! Loved reading this!