Are we going to be able to get everything
into this bag?
Yea.
I'm — this is already looking a little daunting.
You feel good?
I feel great.
Okay.
Um, do I feel great, Freddie?
What's the construction?
Hey, I'm Elise Hu, host of NPR's Life Kit
Guide to Travel.
We're going to actually show you some of the
packing hacks from the episode, and today
I have help from Ally Betker.
She is the editorial director for the luggage company Away.
Hey Ally!
Hi! How are ya?
So the first tip doesn't actually require
us packing at all because the first tip is
you don't need as much stuff as you think.
Yea, so I actually will make a list on my
phone app before I even start packing that
maps out days and anything big that's happening
that day that I might need a specific outfit
for, so that I am not bringing any additional
things that I'm not actually going to wear.
Got it.
Shoes are one of the easiest things you actually
pare back on.
I bring three pairs of shoes on a trip, 
and that, I think, is less than most people bring,
but I do not go over, because guess what?
You don't end up wearing them.
So the second tip in order to get everything we need
for a long trip into one bag is to stay organized.
Um, a lot of folks talk to us about having
bags inside bags. — Yes!
What does that mean?
We love bags inside bags.
We have packing cubes.
Especially if it is a trip where you're going
from one destination to another you can actually
organize your clothes by day or by trip.
And we should mention that expert travelers —
they sort of agree to disagree on their method
of how to actually pack the packing cubes,
so there's some people who use the roll method.
There's some people who use the Marie Kondo
method.
I noticed you — you just put your clothes in there.
I just put them right in.
Yea, and it's just good because you're kind
of like restricted from the beginning right?
If you, like, only have this much space to
pack workout clothes, you're not going to
pack any more.
Whereas if you were just piling things on
it's like, "Well, maybe I need ten yoga pants."
So packing cubes give you limits.
Okay the third tip is to reduce the weight
with multiuse items.
So one example is that I always bring a kind of 
blanket-scarf situation.
I think bulky sweaters, um, tend to add a lot of
weight so something like this — super small,
super thin, packs up really nicely and serves
the same function as a big sweatshirt.
And it's so multi-purpose that it actually
has a multi-purpose name.
It's a "blarf."
It is a "blarf," blanket-scarf.
See what we did there?
Okay.
Amazing.
We could zip this up, but at the end of every
Life Kit episode we get one random tip, so
Ally what's your one random travel tip for us?
Yea, so I actually have one random travel
product that I'm going to grab for you.
Um, and it's this que Bottle that is actually
collapsible, so it's great for travel, because
water bottles also very bulky, also take up
a lot of space, and this, when you're like chugging
the water before you go through TSA as we
all do, you can do that.
Do this.
And then, it's super lightweight.
You just pop it in your purse.
And you just pop it in your bag.
Okay. Thanks.
So we just went through some key tips on packing,
but there's also planning in this episode,
so you can listen to the whole NPR Life Kit episode
 at npr.org/lifekit, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Thank you Ally.
Thank you.
