What Not to Pack

The goal is simple: to visit your destination without a suitcase so stuffed that you emit strange animal sounds trying to heave it into the overhead compartment — and with plenty of clean socks and underwear. But if only it were that easy! If you’ve struggled over which clothes to bring or how many gadgets is too many, you’re certainly not alone. Packing for a trip is often a struggle to distinguish what we want to bring from what we need to bring.

When we’re forced to choose between our favorite things, we’re sometimes tempted to just bring it all and to hell with it — but overpacking can cost more than extra suitcase space and a free hand. Checking more than one bag, exceeding your airline’s weight limit or even checking a bag at all can cost you. Most airlines charge a $25 fee each way for checking one piece of luggage on domestic and some international flights, with fees climbing into the hundreds of dollars for anything beyond two checked bags.

Everyone’s packing style is different and we all have our own travel needs, so before you get upset at the idea of leaving behind your beloved toothbrush sanitizer, remember that these are only suggestions. Leave out a few of the following items on your next trip and we promise you won’t miss a thing!

For more packing help, see our Ultimate Packing List.

If you use eight different products to tame your wild curls or have an elaborate face-washing regimen down to a science, let loose a bit when you travel instead of carrying an army of beauty products with you across the globe. Trust us — you won’t look like a cave woman in your vacation pictures if you use a shampoo/conditioner combo for a few nights. If you’re adventurous enough to leave home and explore an exotic destination, we bet you can also handle leaving behind a few hair products.

Top Tips:
If you are staying at a major chain hotel that will offer complimentary toiletries — use them! Don’t bring your own 24-ounce shampoo and conditioner bottles to the hotel and then stuff the hotel ones in your suitcase to take home. If you don’t use them on the road, you’ll probably never use them at home.

There are lots of products that have multiple uses. Opt for a shampoo/conditioner combo. Bring a tinted moisturizer with SPF. Let your moisturizing body wash double as a shaving cream. Share your shampoo, soap or toothpaste with your traveling partner. Buy a makeup compact that contains more than one color, such as an eyeshadow quad.

Lose the bulky containers. Instead, try zip-top bags. We stuff and pour everything we can into them, including hair products, lotions, cotton balls and even sunscreen. (Note: Do not put large liquid-filled zip-top bags in your carry-on luggage; according to TSA regulations, liquid-filled containers may be no larger than 3.4 ounces by volume.) To prevent spills, put all of your liquid-filled baggies in a larger plastic grocery bag — and be sure not to pack it next to any fishing rods or freshly sharpened pencils.

Clothes tend to make up the bulk of most travelers’ suitcases, and reducing the number of outfits you pack can lighten your load significantly. No one wants to run out of clean underwear in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest, but it’s possible to find a comfortable balance between wearing the same stinky jeans and T-shirt the whole trip and changing your outfit three times each day like a celebrity.

Top Tips:
If you’re going on, say, a seven-day trip, spend a week before you leave keeping track of everything you wear. Make a packing list, or, if you learn better with visual aids, keep these items together in a laundry basket. Then figure out which items you can do without.

Bring clothes in neutral colors that you can mix and match, and only pack shoes that can be worn with multiple outfits.

Check the weather at your destination before you leave, and pack accordingly. If the weather deviates significantly from the forecast, you can always buy a sweater or rain poncho and keep it as a souvenir.

Many travel supply companies sell small packets of laundry detergent (you can also find these at a laundromat). It only takes a few minutes to wash your clothes in your hotel sink and hang them on a hanger to dry. When you wake up the next morning … hello, freshly washed clothes!

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Rule of thumb — if you can’t imagine living without your grandmother’s wedding ring or your expensive Movado watch, it’s best not to cart it overseas, where tourists are common targets for thieves and luggage often gets lost in transit. You may think you look like an icon of style, but to criminals and con-artists you appear as an icon of opportunity. It’s also wise not to look like a million bucks if you’re trying to bargain with the locals, and sparkly jewelry may set you apart from other folks on the street when you’re trying to fit in.

Top Tips:
If you must bring your jewelry, keep it in the hotel safe except for special occasions such as dinner in a nice restaurant, and be sure it’s covered by appropriate insurance. Most homeowners’ policies will not cover jewelry if it’s lost or stolen while traveling, so you may need to purchase a separate policy.

Pack any valuables you buy while on your trip (and any of your own that you decide to bring) in your carry-on. As we all know, checked bags sometimes disappear into the mysterious black hole of lost luggage.

This section applies to you if you’ve ever packed items such as nightlights, shoe horns, portable DVD players, book lights, coffee makers, fire-safety smoke hoods, hotel-door alarm systems, toothbrush sanitizers or electronic language translators, never to actually use them on your trip. The definition of “necessary” varies from one traveler to the next, so it’s important to ask yourself if you will really need your ocean-sound machine to get to sleep each night before you stuff it in your bursting suitcase.

Top Tips:
If you’re addicted to travel gadgets, rotate your collection. Pick one or two that you just have to have and save the others for a future trip.

Keep in mind that some gadgets may call for more room in your luggage than you’d expect; to keep them running, you may need to pack things like spare batteries, chargers or electrical adapters and converters (for overseas travel).

Yes, things you can buy at home are often more expensive overseas. This is especially true in developed parts of the world such as Japan and Western Europe, so a traveler who’s flying to such destinations may want to pack extra everything in the interest of saving money. But again — think of the luggage weight fees. Simple items that you may need but can probably live without, like aspirin, nail polish remover, extra razors or reading material for the plane, can usually be purchased at drug and convenience stores in many destinations.

Top Tips:
Remember that if you decide to buy a lot of your items abroad, you will have to create room in your suitcase to cart them back home. Buy sample-sized items if you can to save space and money.

Instead of bringing a virtual library of reading material with you, buy magazines and newspapers at the airport. Picking out what you want to read will give you something to do as you wait, and you can recycle the items (or give them to a fellow traveler) so you don’t have to lug them back with you. Better yet, invest in an e-reader.

While smartphones and tablets seem to be sending guidebooks the way of the dodo, some of us are still addicted to these little gems of information. Really, though — do you need a whole stack of them? One good, comprehensive guidebook should do the trick.

Top Tips:
If you are convinced that each of your 11 guidebooks offers unique and vital information about your destination, cart them to your office or the library and photocopy your favorite sections.

Lonely Planet offers mix-and-match guidebook chapters that can be downloaded as PDFs from its website, as well as full-length ebooks. Rough Guides also has a number of ebooks available for purchase. Carrying one gadget with all the info will save you significant weight over multiple books.

For more guidance, see 9 Things You Shouldn’t Bring on Your Next Trip.

More from SmarterTravel:

• Essential Packing Tips
• Quiz: What’s Your Packing Personality?
• How to Solve the 5 Worst Packing Problems