By Susan Govern
As I’ve written in other essays, I’ve traveled a lot in my life. First were my vacations with my parents then with my husband and kids over the years. My being responsible for packing for a trip became a part of our travel experiences from the time Tim and I were going on our Honeymoon. Tim could have packed for himself, but I wanted to be sure we had everything we might need so I took on the chore, and it stuck.
As the kids came along and we traveled as a family it fell to me to be sure our suitcases were packed for every possible type of weather or event – something I became extremely O.C.D. about.
The experts say put out everything you think you might need for a trip, then only pack half of that. To me when we were taking a trip with the kids, that idea was utter nonsense. Kids spill things, they get into stuff and get dirty, and when they are still in the potty-training phase, they have accidents. Only packing everything, except the proverbial kitchen sink, made sense if you were going away for any length of time with little kids.
So our suitcases, and our mini-van, were usually packed for a week long trip as though we were going to be gone for a month. I left nothing to chance – not for them or for us.
Which brings us to when the kids were already elementary school age and we took all of Tim’s vacation time in one lump to drive cross country and back. We would be gone about a month.
The way I packed, you would have thought we were moving to the other side of the moon. The settlers that trekked across our country by way of oxen-pulled wagons took with them all they thought they would need. Because there were no Wal-Marts in those times, they had important life supplies with them. I took a page out of history and did the same.
There was an advantage to being so well prepared. I had purchased items from the Dollar Store before leaving, and most lasted us almost all the way back home before we had to spend money to restock our toiletries. Even if we were hot and our clothes got sweaty, I had packed enough that I wasn’t spending every other day of vacation looking for a laundry-mat to do washing.
As time moves forward, we are back to just the two of us traveling and packing for trips. My O.C.D. about taking everything has taken a big hit. We have flown several times in the last few years to get to our destination which means being cost-conscience about luggage fees.
You can imagine how horrified I was this past February when my husband said “We’re just going to share a suitcase, so pack only what you absolutely need.”
SHARE A SUITCASE?! Who did he think he was talking to? Now I can manage to pack one suitcase efficiently for a trip by plane, but to share a suitcase – how does one even do that?!
I tried the experts’ advice about putting out everything I wanted to take and trimming it down to half. I stood there staring at my piles of clothes and his the night before we were to leave. As I began to take away items, I soon found I just might be capable of making this work.
An hour later, I had a couple of stacks of clothes ready to be packed. As I started to put things in the suitcase, it dawned on me – I had divided my husband’s amount of clothes not by half, but pared it down to a quarter of what he had picked out, and somehow I had actually added to my stack. Starting over, I finally (several hours later) had things sorted, organized and packed. The struggle had been real and caused me to go to bed way later than planned considering we had an early flight the next day, and when my alarm went off, I wasn’t a happy camper.
I’ve got to admit, I was pretty proud of myself for actually making it work. Of course, my one carry-on bag was stuffed with some overflow clothing, but we were able to get the suitcase closed without one of us having to sit on it.
We are going to the ocean for a week’s vacation this summer. We will be driving. Our son is going with us and will be riding in our JEEP Cherokee. Taking our suitcases, beach chairs, umbrella, cooler and some supplies for the condo we are renting – all of this is going to be filling up the cargo space rather quickly. My husband has informed me that we should plan on taking only one suitcase and sharing it again.
Does he not remember how he almost ended up with only two changes of clothes and some underwear the last time we shared?!
One suitcase for the two of us – indeed!
You’d think he’d know better by now.
