An Introduction to Packing

Foe women in warm weather

The following items (chosen with the help of a female adviser) seem sufficient for women traveling to warm-weather destinations, on any sort of trip other than a cruise:

For women in winter

Winter means special packing problems. It can be cold where you'e going, and you must be prepared with heavy, sturdy, woolen clothing. And that means that you must be even more stern with yourself. Because your bulky winter clothes will weigh far more, you must take far less. You simply cannot afford to fill your suitcase with any inessential item. Here are my suggestions, again aided by outside advice:

Packing miscellany 

Whenever possible, carry all liquids in plastic bottles. They are flexible, provide more room, and prevent accidents. If you must take along a glass container, such as a perfume bottle, avoid spillage by sealing the cap of the bottle with a layer of wax.

Roll into scroll-like shapes whatever is rollable: underwear, slips, bras and so forth--all the items that don't have to be wrinkle-free. In that manner, these items can be placed along the sides of your suitcase easily, or into the most unusual cracks and crevices (which you'll discover while packing). For items that do wrinkle, a layer of tissue paper placed above and below the garment will prove to be a surprising wrinkle-preventer.

Finally, conserve space. Don't let anything go to waste. A hand-bag should be jammed with small articles, shoes jammed with socks, and so on.

Since you will probably be doing your own laundry, take at least one plastic bag, with a zipper, for carrying wet clothes or wash cloths from town to town. Also recommended is Woolite, the cold water soap. Take as many packets as you think you'll need--one packet will do for a full washbowl of laundry. Since many foreign hotels do not provide soap, you'll need to carry it along. Towels, however, are provided everywhere. Avoid bringing the clothing that requires a fancy cleaning-and-pressing job. Unless you do, you'll spend substantial sums for cleaning and laundry, you'll be continually inconvenienced, and you'll end up--in our worst nightmare--lugging a suitcase full of useless, dirty clothes.

The suitcase itself

For carrying these clothes, you'll want to buy the lightest suitcase available: one made of fabric. Cloth luggage is really quite durable, comes in several varying sizes, and is feather light. Equally important, they're the cheapest on the market and yet offer the greatest amount of space. You'll value the expandable nature of a fabric suitcase when you start to cram in all the "odds and ends" you couldn't resist picking up along the way. Try, too, to be a one-suitcase traveler. If you've a couple and feel that one suitcase per person just will not do, then, instead of getting another valise, buy a "valpac" (a fold-over, portable wardrobe) as your third piece of luggage. With a valpac, you simply hang up your clothes inside, and instantly have a suitcase with a convenient carrying handle. Most valpacs also contain extra inner pockets for shoes, underwear, or other soft goods, and they have a great deal of useful extra space on the bottom and along the sides.