The Best Bags and Packing Items for Travel - Traveling Overseas or for Long Term
Please note: This post may contain affiliate links. See our disclosure to learn more.
If you are planning to travel for a month or longer, you’ll need to pack differently than someone going on a week or two vacation. Additionally, you’ll want to pack smarter if you are going to be traveling for longer than a few months. For trips that are 3-6 months, 1 year, 2 years, or indefinite like our Nomadic Travels around the world, this is a list of items to consider for your trip.
This list should be perfect for minimalist travel; However, if you are a fashion influencer, a videographer, or one of many other professions that require additional equipment - please understand that you will also require your certain “specialist items” in addition to what is on this list. Here is what we’ve found has been most useful for us over the last 19 months straight of traveling (our recommendations are displayed as bullet points).
The Best Bags & Packing Items for Travel
1. Carry-on Sized Backpack
A backpack, or other carry-on luggage, is going to be your best choice for travel - and is better to have than checked luggage in almost every situation. The three main reasons are that: carry-ons almost never cost extra to bring on board the airplane, you don’t have to wait for a carry-on to arrive at baggage claim when you arrive in a new location, and there is little or no worry that someone will steal something from your carry-on because it is near you during your entire flight. Additionally, a backpack is easy to carry onto an airplane and easy to carry around with you anywhere you go when you arrive. Here are our best travel backpack recommendations:
2. Day Pack
If you intend to rent a vehicle when you arrive at your destination, a day pack may not be necessary as you could keep essentials in the vehicle. However, if you intend to use public transportation or intend to be away from your vehicle for long periods of time (i.e. on a longer hike), then a day pack will come in very handy. We each carry a day pack, especially because we need to carry items for our infant. Here are the day packs that we recommend:
3. Packing Cubes, Laundry Bag, and Shoe Bag
While not completely essential, having packing cubes to keep your items organized is a huge benefit when you travel often. This is because it is much easier to find the things that you need while moving through airports and your accommodations. Keeping your dirty laundry separate from your clean laundry is mostly important if you are traveling to multiple locations - that is to say that if you are just going to one location you could just place dirty clothes on the floor and then pack it with your clean clothes before you return (as you’ll likely wash all of it upon return home). If you are traveling to multiple locations, you will want clean clothes to wear when you arrive, so keeping dirty clothes and dirty shoes separate from them is vital. These bags will do the trick:
4. Airplane Bag (small sized for quick access items: Tissues, Lotion, Pen for Customs Forms, Earphones)
We don’t use these bags for carrying shampoos and soaps (actually we put those either in a checked bag or simply don’t bring any along with us as they are easy to find at any store if our accommodations haven’t provided enough). However, we have found these to be super useful for all those little essentials that you need while on an airplane. Grab a tiny bag, put your must-have items during flight in there, and keep this bag in an easily accessible spot in your carry-on. When you board the airplane and stow away your carry-on in the overhead bin, quickly grab your small airplane bag and bring it to your seat. Congratulations, you have everything you need for your flight!
5. Ziploc Bags (10-20)
Ziploc bags are usable for just about everything from waterproofing certain items, to keeping other items from leaking out. Actually we've used them for sealing up leftover food items and frequently for storing small items.
6. Portable Digital Bag Scale (so you don’t get hit with extra baggage fees)
This is a really cheap, small, lightweight thing that makes sense to carry with you. We've checked our luggage every time that we've packed prior to a flight, and we've had to rearrange about 40 percent of the time. The fact is, they always check the weight of your checked luggage. So, if you have checked luggage you will need one of these.
7. Carry-on Suitcase (optional)
Ok, so if you pack a lot of electronics (like us) you will find out quickly that they add a lot of weight to your carry-on. We don't like to pack them in our checked luggage as the chances of them getting stolen greatly increase in checked luggage - plus, batteries are not allowed in checked luggage. Additionally, you may end up needing a carry-on and a checked bag due to weight or space. This carry-on sized luggage actually works great for either situation, and we like it so much that we'll be writing a review specifically for it soon. Check it out here:
Thank you VERY much for reading our article. We actually created this website to help people reach financial independence. Did you know that by having a remote job and traveling endlessly, or living in a country that has low costs of living, you can actually reach retirement quicker? Plus, retirement abroad is up to 75 percent cheaper as well! Learn more by exploring our website: EatWanderExplore and REmotiFIRE.
See our Thank You page to sign up for our free weekly newsletter - you’ll receive only 1 email per week letting you know about our latest travel articles, remote-work life, and amazingly affordable destinations!
Found this post useful? Buy us a coffee to help support this site’s running costs OR share this article with a friend.
