Got back last night from a 10-day trip (Boston to Phoenix to Newark and back to Boston) with just the one bag.  Hotel laundry is super easy in Arizona - everything's dry in a couple of hours. 

I was a bit nervous last night boarding in Group 5 (the last group to get on the plane) but did find overhead space for the bag.  As I mention in the book, the great thing about this way of traveling is that if you absolutely must, you can stash the bag under the seat in front of you. Not a lot of room for your feet but it can be done.

So check it out - cool pic of oranges in a coffee shop in Jerome, AZ, a shot of Arcosanti (architect/philosopher Paolo Soleri's weird and cool acid-dream habitat vision), and the outstanding peak of the trip - a hike up Bear Mountain near Sedona. 

An altruistic motivation for 1-bag travel

One of my favorite flights was a business shuttle between Washington DC and Boston several years ago. The flight was almost entirely businessmen who carried nothing but a thin valise and a folded copy of the Financial Times.  They lined up dutifully and orderly as their boarding zones were called, slipped onto the plane gracefully and quickly, and took their seats quietly.

On the other hand, some of my least favorite flights included great numbers of first-time or infrequent air travelers, including many families returning from vacations with bulging carry-on bags, sombreros, stuffed animals, boxes of lobsters and bags of cookies.  Traveling to and from college towns, I’ve endured long waits while the crew assisted students with bags of (apparently dirty) laundry, overstuffed computer bags, and musical instruments. In my book "A Guy's Guide to 1-Bag Packing: Minimalist Travel Secrets That Save You Time and Money," I review several motivations for you to consider minimalist one-bag travel. Saving you time, saving you money, and increasing your travel options if you need to make last-minute changes, for example.

But there is an altruistic motivation for packing light as well. When you’ve planned carefully and packed efficiently, you’ll be lightning fast getting on and off the plane, in and out of your seat, and in and out of the overhead. So, do it for yourself, or do it for the guy in front of you or the family behind you.

The Magic of Making Up

Hotel "hacks" - how minimalist travelers get the most out of their hotel room

Hotel room “hacks” is a life hack genre all to itself.  Here, I’ll share my favorites:

• Use a binder clip to create a hotel room blackout for sleeping in late.
• Use the Scientific 7 Minute Workout I mentioned above for a no excuses quick workout requiring no equipment.
• If you practice yoga, you may have struggled with squeezing a yoga mat, even a “travel mat”, into your bag. This mat is amazingly thin - folds up to the size of a Newsweek magazine. Because it is so thin, you’ll need to use it on carpet rather than hard surfaces.
• When my sisters and I were kids, we thought hotel swimming pools were awesome. And we were right! Take advantage of this great low-impact cardio workout (I travel with goggles and this only slightly ridiculous swimsuit. I admit I wouldn’t wear it around anybody that I actually know, but it adds almost zero weight to my bag and it’s perfect for this purpose). Jumping in the pool even briefly is also a chance to disconnect and literally wash off the stress of traveling for out-of-town business. Check out this Huffington Post blog about our “blue mind” - the mental health benefits of being in or near the water.
• For shorter trips, like a week or so, use the hotel room laundry method I sketched out earlier. If you’re traveling longer than 2 weeks, take advantage of hotel laundry service at least once; this is available in nicer hotels and sometimes you can even get a 12 hour turnaround.
• Dump everything from your pockets into a collapsible bowl or the Tom Bihn Travel Tray - I have used both and have found that the bowl packs a bit flatter and lighter. The point here is to have one place, one container, where coins and hotel room key and phone and other easily misplaced items can be scooped up quickly when you are packing up.
• Snatch those awesome plastic laundry bags from the hotel room closet – great for separating dirty clothes from clean, or for transporting wet stuff back from the beach, or for safeguarding fruit or food items that might spill out in your bag.
• Your hotel ice bucket provides a nice mini fridge for keeping yogurt and hummus fresh overnight. According to this quasi-scientific investigation (and my own experience), a bit of water and ice in the bucket provides a quick solution to chill beer (or the little free bottles of water some hotels provide).
• Hotel room keys which use NFC technology (these are the cards you tap in order to unlock the room, not the ones which you swipe like a credit card) can be rewritten with Android phones, and assigned tasks specific to your typical hotel room stay. Then, simply tapping the hotel card to your phone will automatically set an alarm, turn on Wi-Fi, dim your screen, or any other tasks you might assign it.
• I was initially hopeful that my tiny little Chrome Cast device would allow me to access Netflix and other video content on my hotel television; my experience thus far has been that I simply cannot connect the device to the hotel Wi-Fi in order to communicate to my phone or tablet. But because I use the Samsung All Share hub to display PowerPoint slides from my phone to an LCD projector, the device is always handy (smaller than a deck of cards, and lighter) for streaming content from my phone to the hotel television. Many of you will pack an iPad or thin laptop, and find it agreeable to simply watch movies with that device.
• Increasingly, hotels are providing decent (if not free) internet access. But I do pack a tiny mini router which has proven useful on a couple of occasions to boost a weak hotel Wi-Fi signal. This device requires an Ethernet connection, something which some newer hotels no longer offer.
• Rather than purchasing Wi-Fi access for multiple devices, pop in a wireless USB adapter to create a hotspot from your laptop or other USB enabled device.
•  As another incentive to get down to the hotel gym, note that many decent hotels offer free fresh fruit in their workout facility. No need to eat crap when you travel.
• Most hotel rooms provide an iron and a junky ironing board - but you can avoid ironing altogether by taking advantage of that usually super steamy hotel bathroom. Before you start your shower, bring wrinkled clothing into the bathroom on a clothes hanger, then shut the door while you shower and shave; most wrinkles will fall out with the heat and humidity.
• At their worst, hotels can be noisy strange places that smell funny. At their best, they can provide a mini retreat – an occasion to pull back from your daily routine, reconnect with yourself, rest, and renew. Without any of the typical trappings of home around you – yard and garage and things to do – your hotel can actually be a quiet sanctuary. Personally and professionally I have a huge booster of journaling. Sketching out experiences and thoughts you’ve had over the course of the day, checking in at a deeper level regarding your goals and your values, thinking about next steps and plans, noting where you are in your most important relationships at work and home and community. You don’t actually need a paper journal to do the work of “journaling” (I do a lot of my journaling in Evernote), but if you agree that there is something organic and raw about putting actual pen to actual paper, a great travel journal is one of these super thin Moleskine cashier journals. I’ve always got one handy when I travel. I have also been known to put my thoughts out onto hotel stationery, then stuff it in my bag and pull it out later only to wonder “when was I in Lawrence Kansas?”
• I have no idea where you could possibly buy one of those tiny little sewing kits they provide in some hotel rooms. The next time you’re staying in a decent hotel which provides these little kits, go ahead and snag one and make it part of your regular travel gear.
• If you stay in different hotels over several days, you’ll eventually find that you have completely forgotten your room number. A simple solution here is to use your phone to take a photo of the room number. A somewhat more complicated solution – because you first have to master this strategy – is to use a system like Ron White’s “skeleton mnemonic” which assigns the numbers zero through 9 to a location on the human body and allows users of the mnemonic to remember sequences of numbers. 
•  A small roll of duct tape may be a worthwhile investment of space and weight in your one-bag travel system – it fixes everything, or at least holds it together until you get back home
• The hotel lost and found box has been a lifesaver for me on more than one occasion when I’ve misplaced a phone or laptop charger. Stop by the front desk and tell them what you’re looking for and ask if you could take a look through the stuff that previous guests have left behind.

So there you go, a list of my favorite hotel room hacks and travel tips.  

Get more like this at Amazon in my book 

A Guy's Guide to 1-Bag Packing: Minimalist Travel Secrets That Save You Time and Money.

My "1 weird trick" to keep protein in my on-the-road diet

As a rule, food is heavy and bulky and generally a ridiculous thing on which to waste precious ounces and cubic centimeters. However, as I confess in my "Guy's Guide to 1-Bag Packing: Minimalist Travel Secrets That Save You Time and Money,"  I routinely travel with coffee and a bit of powdered milk, in addition to trail mix or granola bar for in-flight nourishment. 

And one more food item that I include every time I travel is peanut butter. But peanut butter is heavy, right? And you’re limited to 3 ounces or less in airports that still hold to the whole liquid and gel rules right? 

Right and right. That’s why I pack the very weird, and slightly controversial among nutritionists, product known as powdered peanut butter. I toss a couple of ounces of the stuff into a zippered plastic bag and use it for nutritional emergencies – remarkably frequent occurrence when traveling. An example of a nutritional emergency is an urge to order in-room pizza at 10 PM. Or expensive hotel breakfast at any hour. 

Just mix the powdered peanut butter with a bit of water (careful with the proportions) and you have a reasonable facsimile of an all-purpose high-protein food which, when combined with banana or whole-wheat tortilla or whatever else you can get your hands on, makes for a decent meal in a pinch.

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Stuff to avoid packing

Hairdryer - I don’t remember the last time I was in a hotel room that didn’t have one, and many guys maintain a short haircut which really doesn’t require this huge unnecessary device.

Shampoo – If you don’t mind hotel room toiletries, you can skip packing soap and shampoo.

Coffee press or water heaters – at this point even low-end hotel rooms are equipped with what is admittedly pretty low-end coffee, but if you’re not too picky you might just go with what they offer rather than weighing yourself down with your own supplies. For me, coffee is pretty essential, so just to be confident I pack along a few Starbucks instant coffee packets. Easily the best instant coffee out there, and works for hot or iced coffee in a pinch. I also pack Ziploc with about a quarter cup of powdered whole milk. I didn’t know this stuff existed until my first trip to Australia a few years ago, and it’s so much better than the powdered coffee “whiteners” provided in many hotel rooms.

Camera – unless you are a professional or devoted amateur photographer, the awesome camera in your smart phone is probably plenty good for most of your photography purposes. My phone actually has a campus about 10 times as crisp as my first digital camera which I thought was so awesome at the time.

Books – I used to imagine that during my traveling I would plow through three or four dense books, and would typically return with 8 pounds of books that I packed and never once opened. Just load up your Kindle – or even better, Kindle app on your phone – in advance with zero extra weight. Maybe my guide to 1-bag travel is a good place to start!

Computer – before you reflexively pack a laptop, ask yourself whether all of your tasks for this trip can be managed with just your phone. I can do a PowerPoint presentation, respond to emails, and even do some light word processing using just my phone.

Laundry Bag - the dry sack that I’m recommending for your hotel room laundry also works great, on the way home, as an airtight dirty laundry bag. Alternatively, use one of the plastic laundry bags in the hotel room for this purpose.

Workout equipment – I have traveled with my exercise bands and TRX equipment, both of which provide great hotel room workouts without taking up a lot of space. I have also done a few in room workouts using the ValSlide - it’s an idea which seems great on paper, these things pack light, and are versatile enough for upper and lower body exercises. But I can’t say I really ever loved it enough to make it a regular part of my travel workout. And anyway most hotels have decent, although not great, workout facilities where the creative guest can put together a decent full body or cardio workout. 

A jump rope takes up almost no space, and dedicated runners will probably get in their workouts outdoors (ask the hotel concierge or other staff recommendations for jogging routes to the hotel). 

The “Scientific 7 Minute Workout” was kind of a craze a couple of years back, but fads aside it is actually a really good bodyweight workout requiring no equipment (and which actually takes about 8 minutes to complete). 

With any luck at all, you’ll have the hotel pool completely to yourself – on occasion, let your workout be a few quick laps. Even with one-bag packing, I find that it’s easy enough to always have a pair of swim goggles handy.

Gifts and souvenirs - I see a lot of tourists boarding flights with bags full of gifts and trinkets from places they’ve visited. It’s really nice to think of others on the road, and it feels good to bring home something special from an exotic location. But most of this stuff can be purchased online during your travels, or immediately upon your return home. A lot of the really cool cheaper souvenirs I have seen in my Australian travels were actually, according to the fine print, manufactured in China. Purchasing those gift items in Australia, and packing them back home with me, seemed like a remarkable carbon footprint when you think about the journey from China to Australia and back home to central Massachusetts.

It’s easier to simply have it drop shipped from the source. And you can still present these gifts with comments like “they eat this stuff at every meal over there and I thought it was weird at first but I really came to like it, so I thought you might like to try it as well.” Or “I always think of you when I see snow globes, and this Louvre snow globe might look great on your piano.”

However, if you run across a really singular or handmade item that strikes you as the perfect gift for someone-bag home, ask the vendor if they can mail the item for you so you don’t have to pack it. Alternatively, pop into the local post office and mail it home yourself. Having mailed about 10 pounds of gift items (and an extra pair of jeans which I never should’ve packed in the first place) from Australia to the US, I can warn you that this option is not cheap and should be reserved for those really special items. At the time I was convinced my nephews really needed those boomerangs.

You know what makes a really light souvenir? Remembering that the word “souvenir” is actually a French verb meaning “to remember,” a postcard sent back to friends or loved ones from your travel destination is affordable, pretty easy to locate in almost any locale, and adds no weight to your one-bag minimalist travel system. If you will be traveling within your home country, pack stamps in advance to save time during your travels - just drop the postcard off at your hotel to make it super easy.

And if you’re thinking of purchasing an item for yourself, consider this: research described by Harvard Business School’s Michael Norton and University of British Columbia professor Elizabeth Dunn indicates that, for the purposes of personal happiness and well-being, our money is better spent on experiences than on material goods.

Get more awesome travel tips and 1-bag packing ideas by checking out my 

"Guy's Guide to 1-Bag Packing: Minimalist Travel Secrets That Save You Time and Money."

How do 1-bag travelers manage plugs and chargers?

This is a category where many guys could likely shave off a pound or two. I think it was during my third trip to Australia that I realized I didn’t actually need that heavy voltage converter.  Voltage transformers are heavy, plug adapters are light and if you’re only going to one country you’ll just need that one type adapter. Many laptop chargers have the transformer already built-in (and as will note in the next chapter, you might not need a laptop anyway). 

Travelers with electric hairdryers may well need a power transformer, but as I will recommend in the next chapter, a hairdryer should be the very first thing you remove from your packing list. Before you toss in that weighty power transformer for an international trip, take a look at the electronics you’ll be packing and read up on the voltage in your destination country to be sure you’ll actually need it.

But do pack a plug adapter if your destination country uses differently shaped wall outlets than those used in your home country. You can buy these in advance - they pack really light - or you can pick them up cheaply once you arrive to your destination.

Take a look at your various electronics, and if two or more use the fairly universal micro USB adapter, you don’t need redundant and heavy chargers. And remember that most television sets in hotel rooms have USB plugs somewhere along the side or back of the device, and these can be used for charging in a pinch. 

More than a few one-bag experts recommend packing a travel surge protector - it takes up a bit of space so use your judgment on this one. It is not essential, but I do pack this light travel strip which also includes USB outlets, and at times it has proven convenient in older hotel rooms with insufficient outlets.

For years, I carried one of those immersible water heaters for boiling water in hotel rooms. I stopped packing this doodad when eventually I realized that almost every hotel room has a coffee pot which does the same thing.

How about you?  How do you stay connected while keeping it light on the road?  Share your ideas and tips here, and go check out my 

Guy's Guide to 1-Bag Packing: Minimalist Travel Secrets That Save You Time and Money - it's at Amazon.