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Travel Toiletries and Baby Doc

[This is a guest post by Kent Annan.]

With Baby Doc arriving back in Haiti, it seems like a perfect time to write about travel toiletries. I don’t know the connection between these two things, but nobody knows what Baby Doc being back means either, so we’ll go with it.

I travel a lot and my biggest breakthrough came about three years ago when I fully stocked my travel toiletries bag. I can’t believe it took me so long. And I’m a little embarrassed how happy it makes me.

Seriously, the other day while packing I thought: I can’t wait to tell my daughter and son as soon as they’re old enough. They’re five and one years old.

I had a few things in my travel kit, but I’d always transferred toothbrush, toothpaste, razor, floss, Tylenol, et al, over for each trip. Then I’d chose what I needed for that particular trip based on duration and whether I was going to rural Haiti or to New York City with a 24-hour CVS on every corner.

Though I hate packing, now I love throwing my fully stocked toiletries bag in my suitcase, even if it’s unnecessarily bulky for some trips. It’s unlikely I’ll contract malaria in Holland, Michigan, and need to start on chloroquine immediately.

The past few years (since having kids, I think) I keep choosing to reduce, well, choices wherever I can. For this reason, I don’t mind the extra travel bulk. Or, I’ll sign up for a “cash rewards” credit card instead of anything with “points” because even if I lose out on discounts at least I’ll keep my sanity.

We all value some kinds of efficiency over others. These values often shift over time. Except the efficiency of mind from having a fully stocked, redundant travel toiletries case: this is a universal worth passing down from generation to generation.

Kent Annan is author of After Shock (January 2011) and codirector of Haiti Partners. And, indeed, he’s on twitter and a blog.

2 Responses

  1. Thanks Mr. Annan. This was a great post. Having a travel kit ready to go is something I’ve been doing since my second big trip overseas. It takes some of the stress out of packing for a major trip. And even helps with the minor ones. To cut down on bulk, I pack everything travel size in a quart zip-lock. This way if I am going on a short trip and want to do carry on, the travel kit is ready to go. And it saves space in the luggage on longer trips.

  2. Great post … I’ve found less mental clutter/decisions/etc makes life so much better.
    Especially love this line “Or, I’ll sign up for a “cash rewards” credit card instead of anything with “points” because even if I lose out on discounts at least I’ll keep my sanity.” I have friends who spend hours stressing and trying to figure out how to make the alloted ‘free’ air miles flights work for their vacations.

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