Or: The Great Packing Tragedy of 2017

As long-time readers may be aware (I’m assuming you’ve also been paying attention to what you’ve been reading and have remembered it), I am a fan of keeping things to a minimum, including my belongings.

Over the past few years, I’ve donated, recycled and otherwise disposed of a lot of my worldly possessions which has resulted in some great knock-on effects including needing less storage space, therefore a smaller apartment, lower accommodation expenses. It’s also a lot less things to maintain.

Over the years I have also reduced my travel items, both clothes and accessories. For the three month trip to South America and Antarctica, one medium duffel-sized bag (I’m still a fan of the Patagonia brand and their sustainability philosophy) and a backpack laptop bag was the sum total of my baggage. Admittedly a friend brought my ball gown across to Rio for the Magic Ball and a large parka/anorak is given to everyone that goes to Antarctica (on the boat I took) so this helped to keep my packing down.

That said, I did pack snow pants, hiking gear and beachwear. And a DSLR camera. Those things are heavy.

Not this time.

This time, I have fallen off the minimalism wagon in a spectacular fashion. I haven’t just fallen, I’ve somersaulted, half-picked and twisted and have not stuck the landing. I crashed and tumbled before being run over by the wagon and rolling into the gutter with the tumbleweed, run-off water and cigarette butts. I have landed in a well-accessorised (for me) and colour-coordinated heap. Time to dust myself off and sort myself out.

It is quite upsetting. Except for the colour-coordination.

One of the upsides of traveling minimally is that it is easier to move around from Point A to Point B. It is light. Right now, I’d struggle moving out of the AirBnB in one trip.

This will change.

How have I found myself in this pickle? Poor planning.  It began with underestimating the amount of time I would need to pack. This is partly because I barely traveled last year and partly wishful thinking. I had hoped to travel with a carry-on only. This was not to be.

As I am traveling for over a year and intend to work while I travel, I have also packed things I normally wouldn’t even consider eg a laptop AND an iPad Pro (when will they have one gadget to rule them all?). I also have a microphone, a couple of cameras and lenses and books (these aren’t available on Kindle yet and are needed for the assignments I am working on).

I am also crossing different climates and as I intend to be living more like a local rather than a backpacker (like my other longer trip), I have packed more clothes (so I can have some variety and not get quite as bored as I did last time) and even a nice handbag. Again, long-term readers may recall that handbags are one of my weaknesses.

These are not things I typically consider when I’m traveling. Except for the handbag. I think briefly about that and every other time, I decide it’s not practical or really necessary.

When I checked-in at the Airport Express in HK, I had a normal sized suitcase (at 20kgs) plus an extra foldable, carry-on sized one (8kg) to check in, a laptop backpack, and a foldable, carry-on bag to take onboard. While fairly empty they were cumbersome. These things still managed to breed while I wasn’t looking.

I didn’t want to carry around all these things when I reached South Africa or for when I made my way to Europe. This saw me in the Samsonite store, located for my shopping convenience, near to the Airport Express. My plan was to put these things in a wheelie-carry-on bag instead. They fit but not neatly.

A quick call to the airline (yes, that a quick call is possible and having a frequent flyer membership helps) to see if I could check in another bag after already checking in and found it was possible though I would need to do this one from the airport and pay any excess baggage fees.

I bought a full-sized, lightweight piece of luggage, which was on sale, and threw everything else into it and took it to dinner with me and two friends. It’s first trip was into a storeroom while we ate. Clearly I’m not the only one that has taken a piece of luggage as a dining companion to this restaurant.

Turns out it was fortunate I bought this extra bag as somewhere in transit, my original one broke. Now all that remains to do is some repacking, some donating, some advance shipping of winter gear to the Northern Hemisphere and to be more aware of my own limitations next time.

I can be a bit ambitious.

While it is disappointing, I’ve learnt some useful lessons and had others reinforced:

• allow significantly more time to pack. The time needed is in inverse proportion to the amount of things I would like to take. Plan accordingly 
• colour-coordinating entire wardrobes won’t always limit the number of pieces to take traveling irrespective of weather
• I like variety so will allow for this
• having less things to choose from in my usual non-traveling ware makes it more difficult to decide what to take traveling because I like everything I have kept. Perhaps the problem is while I have less things, I could do with limiting my choices even further by removing more however I think I have downsized my clothing enough for now. This shall now be referred to as The Minimalist Traveler’s Packing Paradox, or the MTPP,  as an acronym seems appropriate for anything referring to minimalism. 

* Thanks to Asia for the title to this post. John Wetton, founder of this supergroup, died on 31 January 2017 of colon cancer.