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Packing toiletries is never an easy task.
How much of your favorite shampoo or face cream should you take on your next trip? What’s the best bag to put them in? What if they explode? These are just a few of the questions that might run through your brain when you’re packing toiletries. There’s a lot to consider
Follow these three tips for packing toiletries to help take the anxiety out of the task.
1. Pick the Right Bag
How do you know which bag is right for you? That all depends on what you want to get out of it. Some help you stay better organized, while others are simply easier to fit in your bag. Let’s look at a few basic types.
Cube
The cube is cute and compact, so you don’t have a ton of room to overfill it. And if you pack a lot of bottles, you can stand them all upright in organized rows. But if you have lots of random stuff, it gets lost in a big pile. Not to mention the cube can be clunky. If you’re planning to take just a carry-on, it likely won’t fit well inside. Most cubes are a bit too tall to fit on one side of the carry-on bag.
Pros: Compact and easy to organize bottles
Cons: Everything could end up in a pile and too tall for most carry-ons
Hanging
Hanging bags are great if you want to stay organized once you arrive at your destination. Just hang it on the towel rack, and presto! You’ve got everything you need right at your fingertips—you never need to fully unpack. But the con of a hanging bag is that it’s easy to over stuff. This makes it hard to fold up neatly for packing.
Pros: No need to unpack
Cons: Hard to roll up neatly to fit in your suitcase
Pouch
The great thing about a pouch is that it tucks neatly any to any nook and cranny. You can squish it between stacks of clothes or in the side of your bag. But it’s really impractical if you want to find anything easily. All of your toiletries get dumped into one cavernous space.
Pros: Tucks into any empty space
Cons: Difficult to organize neatly
Square
My personal favorite is the square bag, particularly the kind with two distinct sides that come together when you zip up the bag. I put all my liquids, like face creams, sunscreen, contact solution, perfume, and shampoo on one side and all my dry goods, like my comb, toothbrush, and Band-Aids on the other side. No matter how much I cram inside, it always closes up flat. And it tucks perfectly inside a carry-on bag.
Pros: Fits perfectly inside a carry-on, hard to overfill, and easy to organize
Cons: Can be a bit on the large side
2. Sample Sizes
Take only what you need with you on vacation. I know a lot of women who take a big bottle of shampoo or lotion for a weekend getaway. You simply don’t need all that stuff. Think about what you’re really going to use, and take just that.
Nowadays, you can get sample sizes of just about every kind of toiletry—soap, shampoo, hairspray, Vaseline, deodorant, and more. Head to your nearest big box department store or even a dollar store, and you’ll find a vast selection to choose from. They come in appropriate package, making a spill or explosion much less likely. I don’t take anything I can’t get in a sample size.
If you simply can’t find what you’re looking for, get a set of travel bottles and make your own samples. But again, only take what you need. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve filled an entire bottle with my favorite shampoo only to forget all about the leftovers when I got back from vacation. By the time I got around to me next holiday, it was either a goopy mess or no longer my preferred brand. The same thing goes for just about any type of lotion or potion. And that stuff’s not cheap. Don’t pour good money down the drain by taking too much.
Pro tip: Get the squishy travel bottles. With these, you can squeeze out every last bit of lotion or shampoo, unlike those hard plastic bottles. They may be a bit harder to track down and cost a few extra dollars, but you’ll waste a lot less product.
3. Don’t Unpack
If you travel a lot, have a bag pre-filled with all your favorite stuff so you don’t have to worry about packing toiletries for each trip. Just grab and go. For example, I travel at least three or four times per year. Plus I go camping 15 to 20 weekends each year. I use my toiletries so often that it’s not worth unpacking them. I have doubles of all my standard stuff.
These are just a few ideas for packing toiletries. What other ideas do you have? What’s your favorite type of toiletry bag? Do you have any tips for the best hanging toiletry bags for men? Share your ideas on the Wanderlust Wayfarer Facebook group.