Packing can be hard. Especially for a girl like me, who has a lot of stuff, and she likes to take care of herself even on trips. Thus, when I went backpacking, it was an ordeal. Not being able to take everything on the face of this planet, was excruciatingly painful. I almost had tears in my eyes. 
But once I did, once I went backpacking for a month, wearing the same clothes over and over again, having just shampoo and body wash as the two bath accessories, being really limited in space, really taught me the value of space. I can now pack for a week’s vacation, with just check-on luggage and not feel deprived. I also don’t like taking too much stuff, because then there is a possibility of losing it. If you have only carry-on luggage, there is a very low possibility of losing anything.
But it does create a problem in terms of the whole 100 ml bottles rules. Everything that is liquid or gel in your bags, has to be in 100 ml or less bottles. Finding everything, from toothpaste, to body cream, to face cream and sunscreen, in 100 ml or less bottles, is again really difficult. It is something that I went through and I didn’t want to go through again.
The good thing about taking little stuff is that, you dont have a lot of choices. You dont spend precious minutes of your vacation, thinking about what you should wear. When you only have 5 choices, you wear what you can, and then, thats all. I would take 5 choices, because wearing one outfit twice is not a big crime. It would be welcomed. In fact, you might not be targeted by the pick-pocketers because they see you and they see a poor person wearing repeated clothing. How could this poor person have any money on them? Let me go after the lady with the Chanel purse, and shoes.
Another advantage that I wanted to capture is that you are less likely to buy things, because you have no space on your checkon luggage. Where would you put it? Seriously, unless its tiny, like jewellery or lotion, there is absolutely no way you can carry a sculpture or a painting in your baggage. If you are willing to pay extra in baggage, more power to you, but for me, this removes any possibility that I would go shopping for more clothes, outside the country and bring it back, to my already overfilled closet.
I have actually started putting my clothes in little piles on teh floor of my room, because my drawer chest is too full of clothes. There is no way, I could cram more clothes in there. Thus, my floor is always filled with little, neat piles of folded clothing, ready to be worn in an instance. At least, its easy for me to get ready in the morning, just pick something up from the pile on the floor, smell it to make sure it’s the pile that has been washed, and not dirty clothing that was dropped in haste to get to bed, last night, and off we go to the Office.
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