whats the best way to pack light While Traveling?

Question

I'm going to italy for a few weeks, and My mom insists that I pack as light as possible. I'm not very good at it. I tend to over pack all the time. what are some ways to get around this?

Answer 1

first pick coordinated outfits so that skirts and pants and so on match with a group of tops. I doubt you need anything formal, though you might need one nice outfit. Knit fabrics survive travel best without wrinkling too much. Rolling clothes instead of folding saves more space and often creates less wrinkling. Dont take large ammounts of cosmetics and shampoo, water weighs a lot, buy your shampoo once you get there if you must. You wont need much in the way of heavy clothing in italy unless you are going to the mountains and still a sweater should be enough unless you are camping. Limit your jewelry and dont take anything really prescious to you as it is so easy to lose it or get it stolen.

Answer 2

You'll want to save a lot of room in your pack to buy clothing when you get there.
Lay out one outfit per day for 5 days, and try to get them to be interchangeable. You can do a laundry once a week and buy new outfits for the last couple of days of the week you haven't packed for.
Make sure you bring enough toothpaste, sunscreen and contact solution though, those items are expensive there.
If there's anything you don't love to wear, don't bring it, it will never get used.

Answer 3

I always found there were a couple of outfits I wanted to wear repeatedly and a whole load of stuff I never touched ......so....

Now I take limited items of clothing but make sure I have a travel wash so I can refresh stuff while I'm away.

I use Aveda Calming Body Wash as a) body wash b) shampoo and c) clothes wash. One bottle - three uses!

A few other handy tips - silk clothing is very light, stretchy stuff with lots of lycra doesn't crease.

Buy heavy bottles of suntan lotion once you arrive to save having to carry them on the flight etc.

Answer 4

You're mom is exactly right! Check out my packing hints page to learn how it's done: http://www.thetravelzine.com/friend.htm

Packing light is frequently discussed by members of our travel discussion group on Yahoo, TheTravelzine, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thetravelzine/ You can join or search the archives (messages up to June 2006 are public): http://www.thetravelzine.com/TTarchive/

Remember, when it comes to packing, less is more!

Answer 5

Don't take anything, buy what you need along the way. That's pretty light.