I've been a one bag traveler for several years now and believe it or not this is how i used to pack for a long weekend trip i'm sure there are a bunch of people out there that are in a similar situation to this here so i thought it would be a fun experiment as i round out month three of being at home to take you through kind of a basic long weekend travel loadout and some easy ways to shave weight and save space so you can get started with one bag travel or pick up a few new tips and tricks if you already are so without any further ado i'm just going to kind of go category by category here and call out all the stuff i don't need so starting off with clothes as the first category this imaginary trip we're planning is for three nights and four days so think a thursday through sunday long weekend trip that's often what i do a couple times a year to go back to michigan and visit my family so assuming i'm going to have on you know a basic t-shirt jeans and a pair of shoes for the plane uh a lot of people like to pack an extra pair of shoes say you think you know maybe i want to wear something nice out one night out to dinner you probably don't need a second pair of shoes i'm just gonna get rid of this immediately try and find a pair of shoes that are going to work for a wide array of different scenarios.

Something that is going to be casual enough to wear with jeans on a t-shirt but might look nice enough if you want to go out to a nicer dinner or something and if you have to pack two pairs of shoes pack the smaller pair and wear the bigger bulkier pair on the plane so getting rid of those shoes first off easiest biggest thing you can cull out of your pack next up we have pants so we're going we need to pack for three days essentially so i have here three pairs of jeans on top of the ones i would normally wear get rid of all of them hear me out i'm someone that likes to wear my pants multiple times before washing for a number of reasons one it's gonna make your pants last a lot longer two your pants really aren't getting dirty if you're wearing underwear and bathing on a regular basis and people think they need to change their wardrobe out completely on every trip every day and sometimes even pack an extra pair of pants just in case you want to change things up i have recently started getting into some more technical and travel friendly fabrics these are the slim dungarees from outlier you don't have to have you know a fancy or pair of pants like this to wear but these are my first pair of travel pants and they're amazing these will get me through the whole trip without having to change pants so four days is totally reasonable these are stain resistant and odor resistant and even if you have a regular pair of jeans you really should be able to get four wears out of a pair of jeans and and pack one extra if you need but you know something like this i would wear on the plane with me and i wouldn't pack any other pants and then moving on from there you know say you're someone that likes to work out and you want to have a pair of sleeping pants so i have two pairs of um you know just basic gym shorts.

I don't know about you but the chances of me going to a gym and getting on a full sweaty workout while i'm on vacation is pretty slim a lot of people like to think you know i'm going to work out this trip and i'm going to pack this stuff just so i can be prepared and be healthy if you're not going to work out don't pack the stuff be realistic and honest with yourself when you're packing the other thing you know i am someone that sleeps in basketball shorts usually or has them around the house in the evenings you know maybe you can work out in these and sleep in these if you're something that's not getting very sweaty when you're working out so this is really all i need extra that i'm not going to be wearing on the plane for that short of a trip we're gonna put these back up here next thing is a sweatshirt you know it might get cold i better pack a sweatshirt wear this on the plane with you instead of packing it it's big it's bulky the nice thing with wearing it is that if you want a pillow or a blanket while you're traveling it works as a great double purpose outside of getting rid of it out of your pack so just put this on before you leave for the airport or before you load up your car if it's a road trip moving on to shirts so we have three days plus workouts plus sleeping plus you know a what if nice dinner type of shirt so you don't need very many of these either a big thing that i have recently started to get into with those more technical travel pants is merino wool merino wool is an amazing fabric it really is odor resistant and is going to last multiple wares between washes so you can really get away with probably two merino wool shirts if you have them for the entirety of the trip it's also something that's really great for insulating and staying cool or warm in different climates so the merino wool stuff if you can get your hands on it is amazing this is also from outlier they sell those together in what's called a travel pack this isn't sponsored by them but they did send me those out to test and try i've been very impressed so far but rounding back to the rest of the t-shirts here you don't need a new t-shirt for every day plus a sleep shirt plus a workout shirt plus an extra you know plan on wearing your shirts out a couple days in a row so we have you know four days i'm gonna pack one shirt and i'm gonna wear one shirt and i'm gonna pack one extra shirt to sleep in i'm gonna get rid of the workout shirt and i'm gonna get rid of the extra shirts just in case and i'm gonna be honest with myself i'm not going to want to dress up when i go out to dinner so i'm going to get rid of my button-up shirt as well so culling down here we have a sleep shirt and a day shirt you have the one on your back plus the extra it's going to be more than enough you can re-wear them twice and they'll be smelling just fine moving on from there we have socks and underwear socks again merino wool is going to wear multiple times without smelling or having any odor it's also going to be able to wash out really quickly and dry really quickly so if you do need to wash them really quickly in a sink for some reason you can these are both two different styles of smart wool socks i'm going to be packing these and getting rid of the extras you know if i'm not out backpacking i'm not going to be super cautious about socks just for normal like city traveling you know couple pairs of merino wool socks are going to do you amazingly same goes for underwear except i don't have any fancy technical travel underwear so i am going to pack one pair for each day and i'm going to get rid of the extra all the years i've been traveling i've never needed my extra pair of underwear so i'm gonna ditch this and go down to the three that i actually need.

These are from tommy john they're a micro modal from what i remember i bought these years ago they have held up incredibly and they're very comfortable but they are not that merino wool so i want to be able to wear and switch these out every day so calling down all of that clothes this is all you really need for that long weekend sort of trip it seems crazy but i promise if you give it a shot it's going to be a much more pleasant travel experience not to have to lug around all that extra stuff so it's kind of the first category there we've cold most of what we're going to call though i'm going to shift this over here and move on to the next category and that is tech i run my own business i'm on my laptop quite a bit if i'm on a really short casual trip i've been recently trying to go more with just using my phone much much easier and a lot less cumbersome than having my laptop so i'm going to bring my phone with me and i'm going to skip out on the laptop this is going to be something that's different for everyone you might not have the option but more and more as technology advances we can do more and more work on our phones so i'm gonna leave this at home as crazy as that sounds and uh just focus on this and i didn't put this in the layout here but same goes for dslrs and bigger cameras like this lately on my normal vacations you know i'm not doing a ton of photography so i've just been leaving at home and it makes it for a lot lighter more pleasant experience so i'm gonna pack this and i'm gonna need a charger for that as well and then moving on from there headphones you know people like these big noise-canceling headphones for the plane they're so big and bulky i just travel with airpods the sound quality is not quite as good being completely honest but the size difference is just insane um i just can't put myself up to wearing these out i usually edit my videos in these they're not that great of video editing headphones they're more meant for travel but they're just so big and bulky i haven't ever brought them on a trip with me they're just too big.

So i'm gonna bring these and i can also use the same charger for my phone for the headphones i'm going to bring and then outside of that you know i bring a kindle sometimes but i don't half the time end up getting the chance to read so i'm going to leave this at home too a lot of this quick side step a lot of this is about being honest with yourself you know maybe i'll wear this outfit maybe i'll get a chance to read be realistic if you're not going to use it don't bring it so leave this at home too and because of that we can leave some extra chargers i'm going to pack my external battery that's still a pretty important piece for me so we're going to downgrade the tech to these few items here instead and because of that we don't need to bring all of this extra junk so getting rid of all the extra chargers and dongles look at how much we've pulled down see how easy this is it just takes some experience and practice and you live and you learn and you kind of test and try the more trips that you go on because i moved out to portland a few years ago like i said i go on a lot of these long weekend type of trips so i've had a lot of experience for the shorter stints of travel to know what i need and don't need so next up we have dopp kit this is another one this pack here is my old toiletry dopp kit bag that i used to have i got this when i was like 12 years old but i have in here a ton of stuff i'm just going to kind of dump everything out and explain and i thought the best way to demonstrate this was just to show you my new dock kit and explain how i uh swap this out so this is all the stuff that you know a regular person might want to bring with them on a trip you know you have your toothbrush and toothpaste and deodorant i don't have shaving equipment but i have beard oil and a brush shampoo body wash sunscreen ibuprofen in case you get headaches you know allergy medicine i have really bad allergies you know just in case i get a hang nail i'd better bring my nail clippers you don't need most of this stuff grabbing my new dopp kit let me just move some of this stuff out of the way so deodorant i still have deodorant um i haven't gotten the chance to really test the dry deodorants i've tried to go without deodorant and i just can't do it i've tried the crystal deodorants and i couldn't do that either i end up just thinking too much so i still do travel with regular deodorant instead of bringing a big thing of ibuprofen and a big thing of allergy pills get one of these smaller reusable pill bottles you can put a couple of ibuprofen in here you can put a couple of vitamins if you normally travel with vitamins put some allergy meds in here this nice little tube is going to be able to house all of the pills you might need for your trip so you can ditch this stuff i'm going to pull this out as well off to the side and instead of if you're a bearded gentleman um instead of this big brush you know go with a little bit of a smaller comb here the form factor is just much easier to pack so we're gonna move that out of the way and this next one is big so this is dr bronner's this is one of those like 18 in one type of soaps and i absolutely love it for traveling because this bottle of soap here is able to replace my toothpaste my shampoo my body wash all of that stuff is gone for this one little bottle.

You know you can get these smaller containers and then you can get a big one to refill it so you're not having to buy a bunch of little plastic bottles all the time they're refillable and great moving on from there we have sunscreen i burn in like 10 minutes out in the sun so you might not need sunscreen but i am constantly worried about sunscreen when i travel instead of bringing the big bottle nalgene makes these little one in two ounce bottles that are like a dollar fifteen and uh they're much smaller you can refill them again and travel with this much lighter much easier so you can get that out of the way too toothbrush this was a newer purchase of mine several months ago that i'm just stoked on a foldable toothbrush toothbrushes are big and bulky and annoying to travel with and yeah this one's just really lightweight and foldable which is very nice beard oil is another one of those things i normally like to use this when i'm at home but realistically three or four days i can go without without any real bad repercussions i can still comb my beard and i'll just continue my oiling regimen when i get home nail clippers you don't need nail clippers for three days just skip it big toothbrush you can skip that so all of this stuff is all this extra junk that you probably don't need to pack with you so just skip all of this i'm just gonna that was really loud oh sorry to my neighbors below me so let me get this pack back up here so those are the main categories i felt like would have the biggest savings on what you can skip as you can see here it's just much easier and smaller and this is going to fit in a backpack really nicely you know this is barely anything practically you can fit a 15 liter backpack you can travel for three days with it and i am missing a few things like my water bottle but i just wanted to focus on those categories that had the biggest impact you know the less that you have with you when you travel the less burden you're going to have to deal with and the less hassle you're going to have to deal with which will allow you to travel more freely and move around more freely explore the city that you're in or explore the country that you're in and it just makes things a little bit more enjoyable it's a more extreme version of minimalism in everyday life the less that you have the less responsibility that you're going to have to deal with with having and owning those items so these are some of the ways i save weight when i travel hopefully you learned a couple of new tricks i'd love to hear though what you do down in the comments thank you so much for watching and i will talk to you next week have a good one you