Lightweight Travel Tip #13: Take smaller quantities of tape

In this Lightweight Travel Tip I show how I carry small amounts of medical tape and duck tape. Both items are extremely useful and I use a bit almost every trip. But, there's no need to carry full rolls. My hands are quite large and most pens are quite small for me to hold, so I make the pen more ergonomic by wrapping some tape around it. I deliberately chose a high quality art pen because these last for ages and remain reliable and because they have long-straight bodies. If the pen-stem was too curved then it makes wrapping the tape harder.

You could wrap tape around almost anything, including itself. However, I have a low success rate with getting tidy rolls if I wrap the tape to itself and those small units of tape are just more items floating around loose in my luggage. So, I prefer to wrap to a pen.

Lightweight Travel Tips is a series of short videos where I showcase the lightweight travel philosophy by discussing specific situations. The individual tips are gateways to the lightweight travel mindset.

I can recall my first trip overseas with overweight suitcases full of things I never used. Even though I have larger baggage allowances than ever, I take less. Less luggage makes it easier to move around, and I'm less likely to lose an item because I have fewer items to track. It's easier to move through crowds and over imperfect ground.

Lightweight travel tips combine my experience in travel and the outdoors to examine what I carry and if I could do without it. I'm not an ultra-light backpacking gram weeny - my outdoors philosophy is more informed by bushcraft, where I learned to make the most out of whatever I carry while keeping necessities and local conditions in mind. So, lightweight travel is a mindset of efficiency - that each item must be helpful or it should be left behind.

At the core of my philosophy is: Passport, Credit card, Phone - everything else is a solvable problem or a luxury item.

This isn't to say you shouldn't carry anything - decide what balances weight, size, convenience and comfort for yourself and where you're going! Figure out what is available where you're going - both free at your accommodation or what you can easily buy.

How do I start thinking through a pack list? First, learn about the trip: what about the weather when I am there? What activities do I expect to do? What can I obtain at the destination if I need it? What equipment must I take? These questions are the genesis of thinking through what to bring.

And the biggest tip: Start with a small bag. If you can't make your load-out fit, it's easier to get a larger bag rather than the other way around. People tend to think in terms of bag size: it's the airlines that make us weigh everything!

Do you have some lightweight travel tips of your own? Please share in the comments.

Until next time.

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