How & What (Not) to Pack for a 10-Month World Trip

Unless you’re a super-resourceful ultra-minimalist, 10 months of world travel is going to require some gear. In this post, I’ll detail what we did right in packing for our trip, and what we’d change if we could do it all over again. If you’re wondering how and what to pack—and what not to pack—for an extended trip around the world with your family, our experience might come in handy!

We Overpacked, Y’all

We left Boston with three backpacks, three personal items, three large roller suitcases, one small roller suitcase, one duffel bag, and the clothes on our backs. 

And it was frankly too much stuff. Before we left, we hadn’t quite anticipated what a pain it would be to haul a bunch of bags across six countries, fourteen flights, numerous trains and taxis, more than a few long city walks, and even one steep cobblestone hill in Cercedilla, Spain.

I’ll give you a sense of how much stuff we’re talking about. This is a picture of me amidst a pile of it the night before we left Buenos Aires for Spain.

The stuff you see is probably a quarter of what we had (not including the pile to my left by the curtain, which is what we were leaving behind).

And still, and still… we left for our next stop, Málaga by way of Rome, with the same five checked bags we’d come to Argentina with—two over the airline’s limit. Ciao, Alitalia excess baggage fees!

So what exactly did we pack before we left Boston for Buenos Aires that put us in this minor predicament? What did we wish we hadn’t packed? What did we wish we had packed but didn’t? And what were we glad we’d packed regardless?

What We Packed—and Should Have Packed

The contents of our luggage fit into the following categories:

• Clothes
• Shoes
• Toiletries
• Medical supplies (first-aid and diabetes)
• Electronics (computers, phones, chargers, misc)
• Books and papers
• Miscellany

I’ll unpack our packing approach for each category, and what we would have done differently if given the chance.

I’ll even hand out scores for how well we packed in each category, from one to five suitcases, with five being the best. (Yes, that’s more suitcases for packing less. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) 

🧳 🧳 🧳 🧳 🧳

Clothes

We encountered two main issues when it came to the clothes we’d packed: quantity and kind.

On the first point, we simply packed more clothes than we needed. We could have done with a little less of pretty much everything, because clothes were easy to acquire everywhere we went (see “Thrift it!” below). 

On the second point, a lot of the clothes we packed were made of cotton. Cotton is heavy and takes a long time to dry, and in all our travels, exactly one apartment had a dryer. Synthetics and wool, on the other hand, dry more quickly. (The environmental case for synthetics is less great, plus they can get stinky if they don’t dry fully; wool, meanwhile, tends to be more expensive if you’re buying it new.) 

There were a few notable items we should have just left behind. Like bulky sweaters. (Kristen brought a couple of those and regretted it.) Lightweight layers are much better. Also formal wear—shirts, dresses, pants—that we wore only once or a few times. There just weren’t that many opportunities to get dressed up given that we weren’t attending business meetings or going to five-star dinners. Even socks and underwear add up, and are generally easy to obtain. And pajamas are overrated, especially if the weather’s nice.

Verdict: We could have cut back on clothes by 40%, and opted for more wool and synthetics.

Final score: 3 suitcases out of 5. 🧳 🧳 🧳

Shoes

We all brought multiple pairs of shoes and sandals—at least four for each of us. Here’s what each of us packed, and what we should have done instead.

• What Ray packed: Converse high tops, Xero Prios, Vibram FiveFingers, flip flops, water shoes, running shoes, leather boat shoes
• What Ray should have packed: Xeros, FiveFingers, Converse

I wore the Converse and Xeros a bunch, the running shoes and FiveFingers several times, the flip flops and water shoes never, and the boat shoes maybe twice (once for a fancy date with Kristen, where I could have gotten away with the high tops).

(I’d even ordered a pair of hiking boots that arrived just a few hours too late to pack on our day of departure. They eventually made their way to me 9 months later in Iceland, a moderately exciting saga I might detail in a future post!)

• What Kristen packed: Converse high tops (two pairs), ankle boots, sandals (three pairs), low-cut hiking boots, running shoes
• What Kristen should have packed: Low-cut sneakers, sandals, hiking boots

Once the dust had settled, Kristen realized that sneakers would have fulfilled all her walking needs, and the hiking boots all her hiking needs. The sandals got no wears, but (just one pair!) would have been a smarter choice than the ankle boots she wore exactly once but liked too much to leave behind, despite their size and weight. 

• What Flynn’s parents packed for him: Xero shoes, low-cut hiking boots, flip flops, Crocs, Keen sandals
• What Flynn’s parents should have packed: No change

Flynn gets a pass because his shoes are smaller and he got good use out of all of them. He probably didn’t need the flip flops, but they hardly took up any space. (I would have left behind the Crocs, but he loved those things for some strange reason.)

Verdict: We easily packed twice as many shoes as we needed. Oof.

Final score: 2 suitcases out of 5. 🧳 🧳

Toiletries

To be honest, I don’t remember the toiletries we packed in detail. But in retrospect, we overpacked here too.

If you’re packing for a long trip, I’d go easy with the packing of these items. If there are specific hair products and makeup items you’re attached to, you’ll probably want to pack these. But basics like toothpaste, deodorant, lotion, and shampoo should be pretty easy to get anywhere. Just pack the minimum you need for travel to your initial destination plus your first day or two, at which point you can stock up locally. And the fewer liquids/gels/aerosols you’re traveling with, the less chance for a mess in your luggage from a leaky tube or broken cap.

Verdict: Our toiletries didn’t take up that much space, but we still had more than we needed.

Final score: 3 suitcases out of 5. 🧳 🧳 🧳

Medicines

Kristen’s diabetes care involves a number of crucial supplies. The insulin itself doesn’t take up much space or weight, but she uses plastic insertion sets that have to be replaced every few days, as well as a continuous glucose monitor with a bunch of parts that have to be refreshed every 10 days.

Since we were going to be traveling for so long, we stocked way the hell up on these supplies to minimize the chance of running out.

We returned home with roughly one quarter of the diabetes gear we left with, but we were honestly happy to overshoot here. Better to have to replace a few pairs of socks than try to hunt down Medtronic MiniMed Sure-T infusion sets in [country name].

Beyond diabetes stuff, we packed a lot of basic first-aid-type supplies. I even bought a fun first-aid kit that came free with the purchase of three boxes of band-aids or something at Target because I’m a nerd. But really, why, Ray? We left the US with enough gauze to wrap a mummy, enough sterile pads to wallpaper the den, and enough Neosporin to soothe a first grade class full of bee stings, and it was definitely not necessary. Ray, why? We probably could have cut back on the first-aid kit by two-thirds.

Getting Your Rx Around the World

As for prescription medicines, thankfully, we didn’t need to carry much beyond Kristen’s insulin. But if you rely on certain prescription meds, it’s a good idea to try to stock up as much as you can at home and inquire about availability of the drugs you need in the countries you’ll be visiting. The world is a big place, and you may or may not be able to get the medicines you need where you’re going. In some countries and for some medications, it’s actually easier than in the US—you can buy meds over the counter that are Rx only here. (In Argentina, for instance, you can walk into most pharmacies and buy antibiotics without a prescription. Whether that’s a good thing is a topic for another day.) Sometimes it’s flipped: drugs that are OTC in the US are prescription-only in other countries. Do your homework beforehand with a google search of “[drug name] prescription [country].”

Verdict: I may have been a little dramatic with the first-aid kit thing—it wasn’t that bad. And we would probably pack a similar amount of diabetes supplies if we had a do-over.

Final score: 4 suitcases out of 5. 🧳 🧳 🧳 🧳

Electronics

We brought a few main electronic devices with us: a MacBook Pro, a Dell Windows laptop, a Samsung Chromebook, an iPad, two iPhones, and three Nokia dumbphones, plus a variety of associated charging cables.

They all came in handy at various points: I used the Macbook for my podcast production. Kristen used the Dell until the power supply decided to join its ancestors halfway through Spain, at which point she used the Chromebook. We all used the iPad to watch stuff, and our iPhones were useful for many forms of research and communication.

So for the most part, I’m glad we brought almost all the tech—except the Nokia phones.

About those phones. They didn’t take up that much space, but we also didn’t really need them. I’d thought we’d want to use them in place of iPhones in public because they’d be less of a target for theft, but in my brief experience using one for about a month in Spain, the downsides—barely usable for anything except phone calls and the occasional text exchange—outweighed any supposed benefits. I ended up buying a used, unlocked iPhone 7 on Facebook Marketplace that served me just fine through the end of the trip.

The other unfortunate decision in the electronics category was my (heavy) condenser microphone, plus its desk stand and pop filter, which I’d brought in case I needed them for my podcast work. In my defense, I did use them—but not enough to justify dragging them around the world, especially since there are affordable, lightweight USB mics out there that would have worked just fine.

Oh, I also brought a bunch of alkaline batteries (AA and AAA). They’re heavy and relatively easy to replace—and we didn’t even need them all.

Speaking of computers and phones, it’s probably a good idea to check the state of the batteries in these devices before you go and replace them if need be. I had my iPhone 8 Plus’s battery replaced right before we left, and I’m glad I did. That said, you should be able to find phone repair and battery replacement options most anywhere you travel. I was able to get a new back glass professionally installed for my phone for a fair price at a small shop in Buenos Aires. I also replaced my Macbook’s battery in Spain, which was definitely more of a hassle than the phone repair—a blog post for another day.

Verdict: The computers and iPhones and related accessories all came in handy and were worth the weight and space. The Nokias, microphone, and alkaline batteries, not so much.

Final score: 3 suitcases out of 5. 🧳 🧳 🧳

Thrift it!

Here’s Kristen with the details on our favorite way to find clothes (and other goodies) while traveling. Most of the clothing we picked up along the way—sometimes for the long haul, other times just for one or two legs of the trip—was used, be it from the local Salvation Army, flea markets and fripes, or national chains and one-off vintage shops (hellooo, Tokyo). Every country we visited had some combination of these options, which tend to be easier on the wallet + planet. Headed to Tokyo? This $70 MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour T-shirt may still be ripe for the thrifting! 🙃 Buying not-new also delivered this vintage cutie and other fun souvenirs (cough, Pokémon). And in Japan if we’d wanted to acquire three sleeping bags and a tent for a monthlong Iceland stint? We’d have known just where to go. (Actually we did that—but the wild winds of Ísland didn’t much care!) In short, thrifting while traveling = strong recommend!

Books and Papers

We brought a lot of books. I mean a lot, and they were the paper kind that take up space and add weight. (All paperbacks, but still.) These books fell mostly into two categories: novels and Flynn’s school books.

First, the novels. I prefer reading physical books to ebooks, and I actually finished a few that had been on my to-read list for years. (It only took selling our house, leaving our jobs, and traveling for a year!) Still, those books represented just a third of the total number I’d brought. Next hypothetical time I’ll bring two or three and pick up (and leave behind) others along the way.

As for the school books, we definitely appreciated having paper materials to work with so Flynn wasn’t stuck to a screen for all his lessons. But in retrospect, we could have purchased the digital version of the curriculum we chose and printed out lessons locally as needed—especially since we didn’t follow the curriculum exactly. It was easy enough to find print shops in most places we went.

Oh, I also packed a bunch of random articles I’d printed out at one point and meant to read. Interesting subject matter, but did I get to them? Let’s go with no. Did they weigh kind of a lot? Let’s go with yes.

Verdict: I love the printed word as much as the next guy, but this was a miss. Next time, way fewer pages.

Final score: 2 suitcases out of 5. 🧳 🧳

Miscellany

This catch-all category included things like reusable bags for grocery shopping, small tools, toys, art supplies, and mementos. We probably could have cut back here a little, but nothing stands out as an obvious miss. 

Verdict: Nothing too worrisome.

Final score: 4 suitcases out of 5. 🧳 🧳 🧳 🧳

Moments of Epiphany and Purging

There was a lot of flux when it came to our stuff over the course of the trip. We left behind and acquired clothes and odds and ends of all kinds.

After arriving at each destination, fresh from the hassle of hauling all our stuff, we started a “purge pile” like the one at the beginning of this post.

Before we left BA, we got rid of the pile of stuff you saw earlier. But because of what we’d acquired in the previous three months, we still had the same number of bags we’d arrived in Argentina with: five. We ended up paying $125 per bag for the two bags that were over the airline’s limit on our flights to Rome and then Madrid.

When we arrived in Málaga, we were ready to not deal with the cost or hassle of dragging all those bags with us to our next stop, so we got rid of another pile of stuff.

How’d we get rid of our stuff?

Several different ways and places. On a few occasions, our Airbnb hosts were amenable to our leaving things behind in the apartment, including clothing, bath products, holiday decor, and even a potted plant, some of which presumably remained in place for the next guest. (Kind of fun to imagine future tenants enjoying Flynn’s beloved Santa Stops Here sign!) A few other times we left “free piles” on the sidewalk outside our abodes, with items quickly claimed by passersby. Once, before leaving Chiang Mai, Thailand, we donated a roller suitcase + additional odds and ends to a local thrift store. Offloading in Cercedilla, Spain. The pile by the fireplace has got to go. What about mailing stuff home? As we approached the end of our time in Argentina, we looked into sending home some clothes, books, and miscellaneous items—but quickly realized it wouldn’t make financial sense. It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which this would ever make sense, to be honest.

Our next “purge point” was Cercedilla, about an hour outside Madrid—the home of the steep, cobblestone hill referenced in the intro. If you’ve ever dragged a roller suitcase up one of those, you’ll understand why we were eager to say goodbye to a fresh batch of belongings.

By the time we left Spain, we started getting into a more stable rhythm when it came to our stuff. The overall volume and weight of our luggage felt a little more manageable, and we didn’t feel the need to get rid of a big pile after arriving at our next stop, Tunisia. Starting with Tunisia, we began leaving stuff behind at the end of our stay in each country.

So… How’d We Do by the End?

As I mentioned up top, we started the trip with three backpacks, three personal items, four large roller suitcases, one duffel bag, and the clothes on our backs.

Over the course of the trip, we did acquire a fair amount of stuff—clothes, gifts, mementos, vinyl records… (The latter was my guilty pleasure, finding albums I couldn’t easily or affordably acquire back home, often by obscure local artists I’d never heard of.) But with each purge we tried to be a little ruthless, which helped us get rid of a little more than we’d taken on in that country.

As a result, we managed to return with less than we started. We ended the trip with three backpacks, three personal items, two large roller suitcases, one small roller suitcase, and the clothes on our backs. (And if one of us hadn’t picked up so much vinyl, it would have been even less than that.)

Once all was said and done, how did we feel about what we’d packed or hadn’t packed?

Things We’re Glad We Packed

Beyond the necessities (clothes, medicines, computers, phones), there weren’t too many things we would have been sad to do without. One exception was small personal items that remind us of home. Flynn brought a little photo book with pictures of friends, family, and cats that provided comfort when he was feeling lonely. It’s good to pack light, but it doesn’t have to all be bare necessities.

Also, my Sennheiser HD 4.50 BTNC noise-canceling headphones. For plane rides, audio editing, or listening to music, it’s nice to have your own little zone of silence.

Things We Wish We’d Packed

When we quizzed each other on this question, our shared answer was telling. There was really nothing we regretted not bringing with us!

Things We Wish We’d Left Unpacked

We pretty much covered this one in the first 90% of the post. A lot.

The Final Verdict

So how did we do overall? Using the highly scientific suitcases out of 5 method, we managed precisely 3 out of 5. Not terrible, but still 40% shy of our ideal packing job.

Final score: 🧳 🧳 🧳

Our Packing Tips

To summarize, here are Our 5 Tips for Packing for a Big World Trip:

1. For clothing, pack light layers, and consider going easy on the cotton.
2. Bring two or three pairs of sturdy shoes; more is probably overkill.
3. One or two novels per person, max. You can find books—even English ones in the non-English-speaking world–with a little digging. (If you prefer ebooks, more power to you.)
4. Don’t bring anything you don’t truly need and would hate to lose or have a hard time replacing while traveling.
5. Do your research. If there’s a smaller/lightweight version of something that’ll function as well as the heavier version you already own (like my microphone), consider opting for it.

Packing Your Emotions

I’ll end this long post on a bit of a different note. Packing up and leaving behind your home and to travel with your family around the world comes with a lot of—wait for it—emotional baggage.

I want to tell you that the process of deciding what to bring was a purely objective one, but the truth is that it wasn’t. It was just as much an emotional process as it was logistical. Here are the three big feeling factors that came into play for me as we filled our suitcases: 

• FOMO—”But what if I need [name of item], or I’ll just really miss it?” even if the chances are slim you’ll actually need it.
• Fun—It can be exciting going out and buying things for the trip, even if you won’t really need them (especially clothes).
• Sadness—Packing and shopping and planning in general can sometimes serve as a distraction from the challenging emotions that can come with taking such a big leap.

As with many things, it didn’t really become clear to me how much these three factors had influenced what I brought with me until after the fact—during the trip, and especially once we’d returned to the US and the dust had started to settle.

That doesn’t mean I wish I’d packed for our travels like an emotionless robot. But on our next big trip (even if it’s not as big as this one was), I’ll be a little more aware of how those emotions can guide the packing process.