Packing Tips – The Luxury Item

You are drenched and cold from riding in the rain. Your bike broke down and you got lost – not in a fun way. Your last meal was something you couldn’t pronounce and it made you queasy. You have to pee.

Your hotel is cold, the sheets are dirty and the outdoor shower seems impossibly far away.

You are miles from home, you are homesick and you are done! What you wouldn’t give to have a real pillow, a piece of toast with peanut butter and an hour of TV.

When you adventure travel long enough, eventually you hit an exhaustion point. A point where your body has seen too many miles, you lack sleep and your body is craving the most bland food imaginable. You are not sure if you want to cry or scream – but you know you want a glass of wine, from a proper glass. You want to be warm – oh remember what that was like? You want a couch and a good book.

This is where your luxury item comes in. Whenever I pack, I pack as small and light as possible. It’s the most practical way to pack when you are travelling on two wheels, in and out of a new hotel/hostel/campground every day and travelling on discount airlines. You also don’t want to take anything with you that would break your heart should it go missing.

But let’s face it, we all have that one thing we just can’t live without. The one really unnecessary thing that adds too much weight, takes up too much space and isn’t really needed. But having it makes you happy. It makes you less homesick, and on those hard days – it’s possibly the one thing that can make you feel like you are back at home, curled up on the couch with a down pillow and a glass of wine.

So every time I pack, I allow myself one luxury item. And when I use this item, I stop to really enjoy it. When we go camping – my luxury item is often our Aeropress coffee maker. I love my coffee. And after an uncomfortable night on a barely there air mattress, nothing is better than a strong cup of good coffee. When we lived on a sailboat for a week, my luxury item was my favourite cotton hoody. It takes up a lot of space, and it’s not wool (which is far more practical on a sailboat), but something about that hoody makes me feel like I am at home, even in the confines of a tiny cabin with a bunch of strangers. When we motorcycled to Yellowstone National Park, my luxury item was my electric toothbrush. We were trying not to have too many electronics that needed to be charged, but I just love how clean my mouth feels after using the electric toothbrush, and so it came.

The concept of the one luxury item started as a way to avoid the eye roll from my husband. There was always one thing I had packed that would prompt him to ask “do you really need that?”. So I invented the concept of the luxury item. If I say “it’s my luxury item”, he knows that arguing with me is futile. He also knows I get just one, so everything else is fair game for an “eye roll sigh”. He also been known to pack his own luxury item and has come around to the fact that we all have that one item that may seem silly to others, but that makes us happy. And if travelling doesn’t make you happy – then what’s the point!

I would love to hear what YOUR luxury item is. Let me know in the comments below. Just try not to make them really awesome, I am only allowed one after all!

Live Life Epic and Luxurious!