Packing Tips
On our last 3 trips my wife and myself each pack 1 medium size rolling suitcase each. I also will bring a small lightweight backpack to carry our most important things. See pictures below for examples of the things that I bring in my suitcase and also in the backpack. Everything I pack usually pretty lightweight clothing items. I found some thin lightweight Levi's, which was hard to find. Having clothing that is lightweight is good for a number of reasons: 1) makes your suitcase lighter... duh, which also makes sure you avoid overweight luggage charge, 2) and, there are times we are washing things in our hotel room and if the items are lightweight they will hang dry much quicker.
Packing for out 2016 trip, which will be to colder northern countries (Baltics, Scandinavian, Ireland, Scotland). We are going to be traveling for 26 days, and we'll probably do laundry 1 time during our trip. Here's what's gonna be in my suitcase: 14 underwear, 3 jeans, 1 scarf, 1 shorts, 1 swim trunks, 14 pairs of socks, 1 extra pair of shoes, 7 shirts, couple super light outer layers, couple light t-shirts, 1 light PJ bottom, toiletries, couple travel books, couple converters and then our 2 big luxury items: tube for pictures that we buy while traveling and the water boiler with coffee filters. Ok, I'll explain our luxury items: our only real souvenirs are pictures we buy while traveling (see below). The other luxury item is the water boiler (110v - 240v). We wake up early, early, and we can never get coffee when we wake up and we need our coffee. For some reason, coffee places don't open until 7:00 in a lot of places and we can't wait, so this allows us to make our own good coffee. And for both of these luxury items, we can pack stuff inside them (socks, etc.), so they don't really take up that much space.
It all fit easily and only weighed 40lbs, which is well below the 50lb limit for most US Carriers, but some of the international carriers only allow 20kgs, which is about 44lbs, so make sure to check your carriers to avoid additional charges when traveling.
This is the stuff not in my suitcase. Things to the right in the picture are clothes I will wear on the plane and the stuff to the left are the things in my backpack, along with my backpack. The stuff in my backpack is: snacks, headphones, headphone splitter, iPhone, iPad mini, power cord, converter, eye mask, neck pillow, passport, glasses, important paperwork (printed maps, reservation info, etc.), extra socks, No-JetLag pills (it seems like these have helped ... IDK, that's how we feel, but maybe it's all mental)
If you are really concerned about weight, you can avoid extra weight by removing unnecessary pages from your travel books and re-bound the book binding with tape.
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