I take roughly one round trip flight a month domestically. Five international trips a year. Almost all of it with Walter – a twenty-one pound French Bulldog who is an official service dog & has stronger airport game than most humans I know.
All of this requires a system. Not suggestions. Not a packing list you found on Pinterest. A system – built over time, refined through lost bags & delayed flights & that one international connection where everything went wrong & I was prepared for all of it.
My brain requires order to function at its best. Not as a preference. As a necessity. The system is what keeps the trip from becoming an anxiety spiral before I even get to the gate. When everything has a place, I can breathe. When I am searching for things, I cannot. So, everything has a place.
Let me walk you through it.
The carry-on. Everything has a place.
I keep a dedicated section of my wellness room closet for travel items only. Not half unpacked from the last trip. Not scattered across three rooms. One place. Always ready. When it is time to go, I am not searching for anything.
Here is what lives in my carry-on without exception:
A collapsible water bottle. Airport water is expensive & airplane air is dehydrating in ways that can take two days to recover from. Fill it after security. Keep it full. More on this bottle in a moment.
A snack container – I use an old bento box or a lidded Tupperware – packed with my favorite snacks & maybe a small sandwich for longer flights. Airplane food is a gamble I stopped taking years ago. My snacks are not.
A small fabric zipper bag with wired earphones, earphone adaptors for seatback screens, charger, & external charger. Everything together. Never searching.
A Nodpod – a weighted sleep mask that goes around your neck – & my Turtl neck pillow, before I even board. I do not wait until I am in the air to get comfortable. I start the process early. The weight of the Nodpod is calming. The Turtl supports my neck so I actually sleep. The blackout is non-negotiable.
A foot hammock that attaches to the tray table. My feet do not touch airplane floors & they do not dangle in the air for eight hours either. The hammock hooks onto the tray table in front of me & my feet rest at a comfortable height for the entire flight. Paired with my compression socks – this becomes a serious in-flight wellness system. Circulation supported. Feet elevated. Legs happy when we land. Game changer. Non-negotiable.
My Rumpl blanket or a light-weight jacket/sweater because I am always cold & airplane temperature is decided by someone who has never been cold in their life.
A comfy but cute travel outfit. I wear the same outfit round trip – just clean the second time. Same formula every time – cute enough to be seen, comfortable enough to survive eight hours in the air. No decisions. No stress.
Two pairs of glasses. Sunglasses & regular. Both in the bag. Always.
Super thick Dove travel hand cream with a drop of castor oil mixed in. Airplane air destroys dry skin & my lil family has elephant skin – the driest known to humanity – & Walter inherited every bit of it. I apply after every single bathroom visit without exception. This is not optional. This is a requirement.
Lip balm. Same reason.
Two computers – one work, one personal – & a seventeen-inch tablet for movies. Yes, all three. No, I am not apologizing.
Walter’s section of the carry-on.
Walter is a twenty-one-pound French Bulldog & an official service dog which means he flies in cabin with me & he has his own travel protocol that is as non-negotiable as mine.
His medications are in my carry-on. Always. Never checked. Never separated from me.
His doggie blanket goes across my lap the moment we are seated. It keeps his hair off my clothes & wraps him up so he stays separate from whoever is in the next seat. Nobody needs Walter hair on their person & Walter does not need a stranger’s energy on his flight.
Before every single flight Walter gets properly moisturized from head to stubby tail. As previously established, our family has elephant skin & Walter did not escape that particular genetic lottery. A Frenchie with dry skin on a pressurized airplane with recycled air is a whole dermatological situation waiting to happen. We address it on the ground before it becomes airborne. He absolutely loves the pampering – the coconut oil, the gentle rubbing, being told repeatedly how pretty he is, how calm, how distinguished. He leans into every bit of it. The moisturizer is the price of admission. He pays it enthusiastically & with great dignity.
In a ziploc in my bag – a damp wipe for any spot cleaning around his eyes. Frenchies get eye boogers. It happens. Walter believes in keeping himself neat for his public, after all.
Walter travels like he owns the place because his Momma built the system that allows him to.
I will tell you this about Walter. When it is travel time, he already knows. His blanket & service vest goes on the floor by the front door. He goes & sits on the blanket & waits patiently. Twenty-one pounds of French Bulldog fully prepared & waiting on me.
He is always ready before I am.
The checked bag. Because I am not a carry-on girlie.
I check at least one bag every single trip. Every trip. I believe in checked bags the way I believe in sleep & hydration – as a non-negotiable component of a functional life. Trying to fit everything into a carry-on is a form of self-punishment I opted out of years ago.
Every checked bag gets an Apple AirTag before it goes on the belt. I have had a bag lost & delayed on a few occasions. When I reported it to the staff I told them exactly where the bag was. I received it back in record time. The AirTag paid for itself that day & I have never traveled without one since that first experience. Even Walter has an AirTag- I’m committed.
My suitcase is packed over time – not the night before, not the morning of. As pieces are ready, they go in- I’m always going somewhere, so it becomes habit. This is how anxiety stays low. Last minute packing is a chaos tax & I do not pay it.
Here is the organization system inside the bag:
A roll-up jewelry bag. Everything together, nothing tangled, nothing lost.
A zipper bag for underwear, boob tape, & bras. Its own contained universe.
Shoe bags for every pair of shoes. Nothing touching the clothes.
All clothing rolled – not folded, rolled – by category. Shirts together. Pants together. Dresses together. Rolling keeps things compact & wrinkle-resistant. I also pack a hanging cubby thingy- I don’t use dressers when I travel- bed bug central. Spend the $10 on a hanging cubby- less than ½ pound and collapsible- hang it in your closet and put your foldables in it- easy peasy. When I arrive, I can hang/compartmentalize everything by category immediately. No digging. No chaos. Just a suitcase that unpacks itself in about four minutes.
Bathroom items in a small hanging tote with outside pockets for shampoos, oils, liquids, makeup, & hair products. Everything I need to look & feel like myself from the first morning. I can pick that tote up & stand it in a hotel bathroom & it is immediately operational. It does not get unpacked. It is ready. I leave & it comes with me exactly as it arrived.
The coffee situation. Because hotel coffee is not coffee.
You may have seen that TikTok where the girl admitted to washing her undergarments in the hotel room kettle. I saw it. & I have never looked at a hotel kettle the same way since- that’s nassie. Which is why I travel with my own compact hot water kettle. What did you expect? I have standards & a very specific morning routine & neither of them can be compromised by someone else’s laundering decisions or their need to give me mouth herpes. Yes, I said it.
I travel with four small screw top bottles of already mixed concentrate – coffee, canned milk, a little powdered cocoa, & simple syrup all pre-combined before I leave the house. Shake & pour into hot water from my own kettle for a latte. Shake & pour over ice with water from my collapsed water bottle for an iced latte. Anywhere in the world. At any hour. Thirty seconds. Done. No overpriced airport coffee. No mystery hotel single serve situation that tastes like it was brewed in 2019. Just my latte exactly the way I like it from the first morning.
I’m an occasional coffee drinker, but I drink multiple mugs of tea daily. I travel with a Ziploc of pre-prepared bags of loose-leaf tea – my own carefully curated blends, not whatever dusty commercial tea bag the hotel left on the nightstand next to the decaf & the Bible. Commercial tea is a suggestion & I am not taking suggestions. My varietals change depending on my mood & what my body is asking for that particular trip. Hot water is available everywhere in the world. The discernment I bring with me.
The diffuser/humidifier. Because everywhere should smell like home.
I travel with a diffuser/humidifier – dual purpose, the size of a deck of cards, takes up almost no space in the bag. No plug required. It charges like a phone before I leave the house & the wireless component is great- I can place it anywhere in my temporary bedroom. I fill a traditional water bottle with water & my water-based fragrance – not oil, water-based so it works in the device without residue or staining – set it up & within twenty minutes of checking in, wherever I am sleeping smells like my space.
A hotel room across the world. An Airbnb in MN. It does not matter. The scent is familiar. The nervous system settles. The trip can begin.
This is not a luxury item. For someone whose brain needs environmental cues to feel safe & settled, this is infrastructure.
A separate Ziploc bag with my own cleaning products for hotel rooms & Airbnbs rounds out the setup. Because my yardstick is high & hotel housekeeping & I do not always share the same vision of clean.
Why the system is the point.
I know what you are thinking. This sounds like a lot- what sounds neurotic to some is a safe and calming place for me… My carry-on items weigh no more than three pounds combined & take up very little space. The rest lives in the checked bag where it belongs. The whole system is so integrated into my routine that packing feels less like preparation & more like muscle memory.
The real travel principle underneath all of it is this – only pack what actively adds to your comfort or your life. Not what you might need. Not what you packed last time out of habit. Not what looks good in the bag. What actually serves you. Everything I have described earns its place on every single trip. Nothing is in there for show.
I travel because the world is too big & too beautiful to stay in one place. I travel with a Frenchie & two computers & a diffuser & my own kettle because I have learned exactly what I need to feel like myself wherever I land.
The system is not about perfection. It is about removing the decisions that drain you before the trip even begins. When everything is already packed, already organized, already in its place – all that is left is to go.
Walter is already at the door.
I am right behind him.
What is your non-negotiable travel item – the thing that never leaves the bag no matter what? Drop it in the comments. Check out “The Finds” on the website if you’re interested in getting any of the items I use.
