how to travel well

as chad and i traveled to the caribbean we decided to only bring one suitcase. yes one suitcase, we were gone for ten days. that meant that we had to be very wise in what we packed and how we packed it. i left feeling pretty proud of ourselves. we manage to fit both formal(including a suit) and casual clothes, and the bag still weighed less then fifty pounds. with that i am going to be leaving you today with a couple of travel tips, packing, at the airport, and when you land.

packing

find lots of cute tops and bottoms that you can mix and match, allowed you to have several outfits and different looks, but not taking up that much more room in your suitcase

layer. this was my key to keeping my clothes at a variety, you couldn't tell that i had wore the same piece twice.

plan out your outfits before you go, this allows you not to be scrambling through your suitcase trying to figure out what to wear. if you plan, you already know what you are going to be wearing and how to mix and match the pieces you want to. it saves you SO much space.

put formal wear ontop

we had to fit chads suit and a few of my formal dresses into our bag.

the cruise line did not provide irons

so we had to make sure we could pack with out our clothes being completely wrinkled.

alas, we came up with putting our formal wear ontop. it worked great and very few winkles overall 

wear clothing on the airplane

we wore all of our bulky clothing on the flight there. layered up on a few pieces of clothing, wore our pants, shoes, sweaters, a tank, etc. this help avoid taking up extra space in the suitcase and also allowed us to be prepared if the flight was going to be warm or cold. 

 i think flying you should be comfortable in what you are wearing, but you shouldn't be completely grubby. it takes takes up more space in your suitcase, and you just don't look as crisp. i wore these simple jeans and a loose fitting shirt, it was the perfect solution for our long day of traveling. 

carry on bag 

find a large supportive bag. i love my strawfoot bag. it is the most supportive bag i own, that allows me to fit other bags inside. i was able to put my sweater, a water bottle, books, etc. all in this nice bag. highly recommend it! 

my carry on was packed with lots of snacks, candy, and a bottle for carrying water. airports have the craziest prices and as newlyweds on a budget we made sure to pre-pack our snacks so we wouldn't have to buy them there.

reading 

i am a big reader. i do not own a kindle.

so how did i afford/bring books onto the trip?

i rented from the lovely library! i packed most of these books in the checked bag, but carried a few with me. i swapped them out on our way home and it enabled me to read a lot, with out having the burden of physically carrying the bag. 

my favorite part of renting books was renting the magazines. i used to always buy magazines before leaving on a trip, you only read them a few times before throwing them out, but this little discovery saved me ten dollars. 

well those are just a couple of tips that i have come up with from my recent travels.

 what are your travel tips? how do you efficiently pack?