I'm spending this summer at a national lab doing a nuclear chemistry summer school. I know. It's fancy. Drink it in. Six weeks of learning all the awesome applications of nuclear science? Sign me up. Of course, after I was signed up, I had to fly up here. And that meant packing. For 6 weeks. Including stuff for a dorm and a kitchen. Not to mention the fact that our labs have pretty strict clothing requirements, and the laundry is expensive to do. Needless to say, it definitely presented a challenge. Want to know how I did it? Extreme amounts of luck and some favor from God, probably... but here's my tutorial on packing 6 weeks of clothes [including lab appropriate ones, beach appropriate ones, athletic clothes, and clothes for networking lunches with the foremost experts in this field] in one bag that you can check, under the weight limit of 50 pounds, and completely manage in the airport.
First, you need a good, big, versatile bag. Mine is like this except blue. It was an awesome gift from my mother for Christmas last year, initially intended for my trip to Italy, but it ended up being used for this.
Next, you have to decide about those clothes... I admittedly brought probably a bit more than I needed, but I would rather have everything up here and not get kicked out of lab.
On that note, we're required to wear long pants pretty much every day [ugh] so I brought 9 pairs, including basic skinny and bootcut jeans, dress pants, colored and patterned jeans, and sweats.
I'm a big fan of packing by rolling, so that's how they went in. Next came blazers, jackets, and cardigans. It gets pretty cold at night here sometimes..
Next were some shorts, T shirts, athletic clothes, and dresses that ranged from beachy to appropriate for nice dinners. I had to start building into the top clothes section of the bag for this. You'll see why that's so awesome in a minute.
I also added two swimsuits, pajamas, and a few more tops for normal to dressed up days.
All cozy in there...
In that top compartment with the zippered flap, I put a couple of trash bags over the opening and got all my normal shoes [athletic shoes, flip flops, nice sandals, and some canvas slip-ons] along with my "sturdy, closed-toed shoes" for lab nice and happy in there. Then it was super easy to zip up and make sure everything was nice and safe for the flight. And it all came in at under 45 pounds.
There was also a box of beauty supplies that went in.
For some reason, I didn't get a picture of the thing fully packed, but it was super manageable. I had a second checked bag with all of the things for my room up here [I'll spare you the saga of wrapping my Keurig in bath towels and praying for the whole flight that it made it here safely], but it was just as easy to deal with.
Basically, the goal with packing is to manage the space in your bag as wisely as you can. Having good luggage really helps with that. My bag has lots of ways to get at the stuff inside and lots of ways to carry it. It's a good little guy and I highly recommend it.
