The Five Most Useless Things I Brought With Me On My Last Big Trip
I’ll say it, I suck at packing. I’m all good at packing for a couple of nights or a week away but anymore than that and that funny thing called common sense seems to slip away from me. To a chronic degree, I am an over-packer and my last trip of four and a half months was no exception. Here are the five most useless things I brought with me.
Rash Vest
Very sun smart but I hardly got a chance to swim and even then, once I got to the Italian Riviera I didn’t even wear it because I like the feeling of the salt water on my skin. I used it months later when swimming in my cousins pool at Singapore, mostly because I felt insecure after four months of a holiday diet.
Add to this the fact that I forgot to pack my boardies and we have an item I could have gone without.
Daily Planner
It was a working trip, four to five hours of writing, emails and zooms every day before knocking off to explore, so I thought a daily planner would be good. It wasn’t. Being constantly on the move is a decent enough reminder of where you’re going and what you’ve got on. Took up a decent enough chunk of room in my suitcase that it got tossed at the fifth stop.
A Microphone
Hours before leaving Katie and I got offered a very generous investment into the series we would be shooting during the trip. Aside from financial help, the production company asked if we needed any gear. Very excited I asked for lapel mics and a free standing microphone for any in-depth interviews. The lapel mics we used in 11/12 shoots but I only used the table-top mic once, which was to record myself doing a joke rap on a chill arvo.
As it was property of production I couldn’t throw it away so it mostly stayed wrapped in a couple of socks in my suitcase, adding to the weight that would eventually melt two of my wheels.
500 Business Cards
What was I honestly thinking? We were away for 130 odd days, did I really think I was going to give away about four business cards a day?
The stupid thing was I had two boxes of business cards, each with 250. I could have just taken one box and yet I insisted that I needed two. Couldn’t throw them away, I paid for them. Gave away as many as I could and still returned with two mostly full boxes.
A Few Fancy Shirts
I hardly wear these shirts at home so I have no idea why I even bought them to Europe. I think it’s because I thought I could take a few nice photos where I look a bit like a privately educated person who does frequent European summers so yeah, I’ll take the sparkling water please. So many of the places we stayed didn’t even have an iron (or they had one but no ironing board) so most of the time they were unwearable anyway and by halfway through the trip I didn’t even fit into most of them.
Did manage once good photo of a shirt I can’t fit into anymore, along with the guilty culprit.
Worth. It.
This all feels a lot like me ranting about my suitcase and Europe weight gain so feel free to remedy it by reading about the three most useful things I brought with me on my last big trip which will be coming out whenever I can decide what numbers 2 and 3 are.
