It’s hard to believe that in 2 weeks, we’ll be leaving for our Round the World (RTW) Nature Adventure.
The kitties are going to Grandma’s house, so now we’ve turned our attention to finalizing packing – both our luggage and the house!
How does one pack for a 6 month adventure on the road? A big part is choosing your itinerary carefully. That means no skiing or wintery places that require heavy coats and boots.
We will be in warm to hot and humid countries for the most part, so our packing includes lots of clothing made from bamboo-derived material (viscose). For my husband, it’s to help him cope with humidity; for me, it’s to avoid synthetic fibers. I already live in viscose leggings, so this isn’t a huge change from my normal wardrobe.
We are basically packing for 9 days on the road, assuming we’ll do laundry once a week. We have a few long-sleeve tops and pants for when we visit the Borneo rainforest and need to protect ourselves from mosquitoes. The rest is warm-weather wear. Footwear consists of a pair of running shoes and a pair of flip flops each (Crocs didn’t make the cut!)
Each girl has their own lightweight backpack with activity books, magazines, etc., for the trains, planes and automobiles. We will be taking Kindles and iPads for books/movies/games, as well as a few travel games.
For luggage, we decided to go with a wheeled duffel – 32” for my husband and I and 25″ for the girls. We used packing cubes so that each person can pull out their cubes and stick them in a drawer at the various places we’ll be staying.
Unfortunately, taking only 2 pieces of luggage was a bit ambitious, so we’ve added a carry-on for the math books, prescriptions and other toiletries. We also plan to mail a ‘care package’ to ourselves in Australia, so we don’t need to carry 6 months of prescriptions.
We’ll know in short-order whether we could have gone with even less or whether we should have gone with one piece of luggage per person!
Our Luggage
The wheeled duffel comes with equipment hooks so that we can strap our wet snorkel gear to the outside, when needed.
With packing cubes
Packing cubes help keep everything organized…I’m all about organization!
The Girls’ Luggage
The luggage is expandable, but also comes with lots of compression straps. The front zippered parts are ‘laundry chutes’ to separate dirty clothes from clean.
Each girl gets a different color packing cube so their clothes don’t get mixed up.
UberPak lightweight backpack that folds up into a pouch for storing
The girls have already packed their backpacks!
You can read more packing tips from other traveling families here.
I love the idea of packing cubes. I’m curious. Was there a specific set of reasons why you selected a duffle bag style over the more traditional rectangle style of suitecase?
Hi Krista,
Weight is the primary reason. A duffel is minimum 3lbs lighter than a traditional suitcase. Given that we’re packing for 6 months and don’t want to be over the airline weight limits, we wanted more weight available for our things and less weight allocated to our luggage.
The duffel Is less bulky and easier to strap other things to. It also costs less…another important factor.
Even though we’re not ‘roughing it’ for the most part, we will be camping with Koalas in Australia, so a duffel seems better to bring in a tent then a traditional suitcase.