Explore.Dream.Discover.: Packing... from Nancy's perspective

How do you even begin to start packing for a year-long trip? For this reason I was able to justify procrastinating the dreaded task of figuring out what my favorite 100 pounds of clothes were (my luggage allowance) until just a few days before our departure…

Once I finally realized that it was TIME, I scoured the internet for packing suggestions – items that we should definitely bring with us, such as prescriptions, a warm jacket (which I would end up wearing on the plane, uncomfortable when it was 90* when we were leaving Atlanta), and other basic clothing that would be good for layering; versus items that would be cheaper and more logical to leave behind and buy in Europe, a blow drier, “cute heels” – Todd was adamant that I had to leave all of my “fun” shoes behind, and big heavy items like lotion/shampoo/conditioner, etc. I went through a few rounds of cuts (it kind-of felt like rush) and enlisted the willing help of my mom to help me choose between “this dress OR that one.” Once my piles of clothes on the floor (see pictures below) started to shrink, I decided it was time to go ahead and start packing… I’ve always heard rolling your clothes is the best way for them to travel, not only to save space, but to also cut down on wrinkles, weird, I know! So I started rolling… and quickly realized one thing it wouldn’t help with was the weight of my bag. Todd and I were flying on British Airways and we were each given 1 bag included in the price of our flight. But, it’s amazing how quickly one bag fills up. We decided (Todd begrudgingly) that it made sense to pay for an additional bag as well (60 Euro apiece – this was the first “ugh!” when we thought about the conversion rate $1.40=1 Euro). I started to panic a little after I filled up my BIG suitcase, with only my big backpack and carry-on to go… I still had a lot of stuff to pack, which brought me to yet another round of cuts. Once I finally squeezed everything into my bags, I started to feel a little better… until I tried to put on my backpack realizing that actually putting on my bag would require a little bit of Todd’s help (which he wasn’t happy about, “you need to learn to put it on like a true backpacker, Nancy” (insert Todd voice) but I think he felt bad when we weighed it and it weighed close to half my weight – see picture below).

At this point it’s Sunday afternoon, and we started to stress a little bit about the weight of our bags, especially since we were leaving in just a few hours Since my parents don’t own a scale we asked Todd’s parents to bring a scale with them to our “last dinner” in the States so we could get an idea of how much our bags weighed before the dreaded check-in where you’re unpacking your bag at the counter with people waiting, and muttering under their breath behind you, as you rearrange jeans/shoes from one bag to another to make sure you’re not so much as a ½ pound over the weight limit.

So… in the parking lot of Coldbrew Sports Bar & Grill in Roswell we weighed our bags one-by-one. We were shocked when they all weighed in the 35-55 range (which turned out to be surprising accurate and close to the airport’s scales), and we definitely felt relieved to know that we could do a little bit of juggling to get everything to fit within the proper weight limit.

It was sad to say goodbye to all of our friends and family, as we know that we’ll miss you all so much during our time abroad, but we are thankful for technology to help us keep in touch with everyone via e-mail/Facebook/Skype/FaceTime/ and our blog, and more importantly we hope to have enough visitors to continually remind us of home.