How To Fit Your Life Into Two Suitcases.

Okay, two suitcases, one carry on, and a ginormous purse.

With just two days left until I leave for China I have finally managed to get my packing done. Let me just start off by saying IT WAS NOT EASY. I like clothes. I have a lot of them. I have spent the past year or so working at J. Crew amassing a fabulous wardrobe of blazers, cardigans, chinos, boots, jewelry, etc. I would have liked to bring it all with me. 

And for all you haters out there, this isn’t a two-week vacation that I’m over-packing for. I’m going for a year. 365 days.  If you had to move your entire life to another country in two suitcases that can’t weigh over 50 lbs, you’d have a tough time too. I also realize that China has stores that sell all the clothing I could ever need, it just feels a bit wasteful to plan on re-buying stuff that I already have in abundance…

So, after packing and repacking at least three times, I finally have it down. Here are my secrets:

1.    Space bags. Both good and evil. Pros: compresses things into amazingly tiny bricks of clothing. Cons: clothing bricks weigh more than actual bricks.

2.    Fold things neatly. It REALLY helps. (That rolling your stuff trick doesn’t do anything for me) Thankfully working retail has made me an expert.

3.    Sticking to one color scheme. Earth tones and navy it is.

4.    Facing some harsh realities. Though I own 19,283,429,384,923 navy and white striped shirts, I cannot bring them all. I can’t even bring 5.

5.    Packing cubes to stay organized.

6.    Ditching most of my toiletries.

7.    Accepting that I’m going to have to become an outfit repeater. 

I took my bags to Publix and weighed them on their big scale. After some masterful reallocation of weight (and the removal of a few items here and there) I have whittled my bags down to 50 lbs each. I’m praying that the scale was accurate so I don’t have problems at the airport.