Now, this is a hard one to talk about. I am unsure if I made five packing mistakes that ruined my trip. Let’s read on to see what I come up with.

Packing

You are leaving for a trip you have been planning for a while. You are excited to get there, so you pack your stuff up.

You leave, and when you get to the place and you are unpacking, you are like, Holy Crap, what did I do? Where in the heck is that at? Let me look again. What the crap!! Where is it? What am I going to do?

Mistake Number One

In 2015, I was going to Alaska aboard the Crown Princess, and I thought, you know, I was only going to do a carry-on and a personal bag. I was pretty confident I could fit everything in it. But I am an overpacker. I took things out and reorganized stuff several times.

I realized I was missing some stuff. I was mad at myself for forgetting, but Princess Cruise ships have a lunary room, so I could do some lunary. It was almost ruined, but I had other options.

Mistake Number Two

I think this is a mistake many people make, and it is just a simple thing: overpacking. How did overpacking almost ruin my trip? Well, there was just too much luggage to carry around. If you have a carry-on, personal bag, and two checked bags per person, that is a lot of stuff to carry around. You don’t keep all that stuff.

Mistake Number Three

This one is just the opposite of the one above, which is under packing—thinking that you don’t need all those clothes. But it turns out that you need more formal wear. Not everything is a casual situation. Luckily, there was a store that we could go to and get a white shirt and a tie. I didn’t think we needed that, but they changed the dress code when we arrived. I know it was not my mistake, but always be prepared.

Mistake Number Four

Not packing a carry-on. I thought I would pack a checked bag and we would call it good. Well, that didn’t go too well. My bag was slow to come off the belt. I mean, like dead last. I was getting nervous thinking, will I be just totally screwed?

If I had a carry-on, I would have some stuff. But luckily, my bag showed up. Thank goodness.

Mistake Number Five

Weight is mistake number 5. No, not my weight, but the weight of the suitcase. I was over the 50-lb mark by a few pounds. Now they were freaking out. I had to repack and pack again and again at the airport. Still, I was over the weight limit. So I took out a collapsible bag and put stuff in it, and bam, it was under weight, and we went on our way.

We made the extra bag work.

Ruined my trip

Now, did all these ruin my trip? No, they didn’t. They could have, but I didn’t let that ruin the trip. Yes, it was a disaster, but it was doable. I adapted to what was wrong and moved on.

Look back

Looking back on these mistakes has made me more concerned about making sure I had everything I checked on the dress and that I had stuff just in case I lost my checked bag. I always make sure that I have something like this.

Yes, a digital weight scale.

Next Week

I will be talking about a hidden Gem. You will have to come back for that experience.

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