Don't Forget Ziploc Bags! ~ Travel and Leisure

I find packing as exciting as watching a slideshow of my grandfather's white shirt collection. For me, the thrills of impending travel and the reveries of camel safaris, gondola rides and hill tribes do not manifest through packing. I would have more fun observing someone write a thesis on the importance of flies.

After decades of soccer tournaments, expeditions with friends, and fanatical family vacations substantially involving Dad shouting because we didn't pack money or a camera, my life has established essential tenets and components to packing. Aside from the primitive facets that primates could conceive of, like shirts, socks, shoes, underwear, toiletries, access to money, camera, and guidebook, below I bestow some of the miniscule wisdom I know.

To preserve suitcase space, I roll all clothes and unceremoniously shove them into large Ziploc bags. This minimizes wrinkles, maximizes organization - all socks, underclothes, bathing suits, and work-out clothes in one bag, all shirts and pajamas in another - and diminishes damage in the case of the next Noah's Ark flood or Hurricane Katrina. If you are more disposed to disarray and disorder, plastic bags assist in assembling foreign purchases, congregating dirty laundry, or as barriers against mud marinated shoes or a pigeon-pooped-on shirt.

Laundry can add unnecessary cost. If you're like me and squander five dollars on a wooden frog as aesthetic as the world's ugliest cat but can't justify eight dollars to clean all of your clothes, carry a virtually weightless collapsible plastic box with you. Every few nights, situate soiled clothes in the box with laundry detergent, let soak overnight, and rinse and hang the next morning. Traveling with laundry clips can be useful, but as a concrete floor or baby chair are suitable for laying out clothes, clips are not necessary.

Unless you stay in a five-star hotel abroad or most anywhere in America, your room will probably not have a clock. In South America and Southeast Asia, your room will more likely have a stray cat than a timepiece. In Europe, clocks in hotel rooms are as implausible as my eight-year-old breasts growing into a size C-cup. A watch might not matter in India, where trains leave three hours past schedule and ten minutes means anywhere from a half hour to half a day. However, watches are dependable.

Additionally, a Swiss Army knife and sewing kit repeatedly surface as valuable as Mother Teresa. A Swiss Army knife or a variation of one befit practicality, as they can be used for opening alcohol bottles, clipping toenail hair, picking food from your teeth, and essentially every other bodily undertaking. They're as versatile as Gumby. I once used a petite sewing kit when I bent over in a restaurant to retrieve my book and split the crotch of my pants. Worldwide, a needle and thread are more transferable than American dollars.

Most items can be purchased at your destination. I generally acquire adaptors, flashlights, and a slew of other articles while abroad. Finding the pieces can be as complicated as quantum mechanics, though, so it's usually better to be prepared.