The best thing I’ve ever done for my travelling self.
I am a firm believer that the small things we do add up greatly and can make enormous differences to our lives. Sometimes it’s the small actions that make an indelible improvement to our lives.
I, as many of us thankfully have, returned to travelling this summer. As the world returns to normal I have been hugely in favour of finding things to do that help this feeling along while staying safe, of course. Things like going out for dinner with friends, concerts and events and most of all, travelling. It’s what I moved to this country to do. Beyond the obvious like seeing and being with friends and family, it has been the thing I have missed the most through this COVID period.
When it comes to travelling, I like to think that I am pretty organised. I have a system. I have appropriate bags for different kinds of trips and I have all of the necessary things to go in those bags for all the different kinds of trips that I take.
One thing that I have never done nor really applied any thought too is organising my toiletry bag. I just dump all of the things I will need for my ablutions into the toiletry bag I have been using for the last 15 plus years and then just sling it into my main bag and go. Until now it seemed like a reasonably good system; take things I need, put them in a small bag that goes in my main bag to prevent the things in the small bag from just rolling around my main bag and leaking everywhere. There isn’t an inherent flaw in that. However, I had a small epiphany two weeks ago on my current trip. On a down day while I was just relaxing in my accommodation I emerged from a doom scroll. As the typical shame that comes from the realisation that I had absolutely no concept of how long I had been staring at my phone gave way to that ever familiar feeling of motivation to do and achieve something real I found myself staring at my toiletry bag from across the room.
I still cannot tell you exactly what possessed me to organise my toiletry bag but I can tell you that something did and so I pulled open the ever ageing bag that I had bought as a child, I think, for the numerous camping trips I was going on with my local scout group and emptied it. I initially had the intention of going through it getting rid of anything I didn’t need or at least vowing to not ever bring it with me again. But as I turned the bag back over, I saw the series of elastic loops that run along the side of the bag that I for years, just ignored and thought useless (or more likely, was just always too lazy to use). The result of this was me finding that there was a loop that perfectly fit almost everything I had in my toiletry bag that could stand upright. This left the main part of the bag for all of the things that were either too long to stand upright in the bag and needed to be laid down, or were too wide to be put through a loop.
This might all sound elementary to many of you reading this, I may be the minority here. But the simple act of organising my toilet bag has changed my life. Not seismically, obviously. But it has prevented me from rummaging in my toilet bag and has, in its own small way, made the following two weeks of this trip better and less stressful. This is a teeny tiny thing and I know that. But, this small thing has made a big impact. It has made my time in the bathroom much more like being at home, where everything has a place and I know where it is. This has made my current trip (a month long jaunt taking me the full north to south length of Croatia’s coastline), to some extent at least, easier. It might be trivial and everyone may already have their toilet bags organised because that is the reasonable and mature thing to do. But…if you happen to be like me and you have a toilet bag that is reminiscent of that drawer in your parents house that no one really talks about, then please listen to me and do something about it. Find some method of order that is sustainable, even if it means getting a new toiletry bag.
It will make you a happier person.
