5 Things To Leave Behind When Traveling

I wrote before about how I’m making an aggressive effort to eliminate material things I do not need. This has a two-fold importance when applied to traveling: first, you eliminate the mental baggage associated with ownership. Second, you remove the physical baggage you dig through your bag at the end of everyday.

Basically, I hate carrying extra crap, no matter how inconsequential it may seem. Here’s a quick list of said crap I should have left home:

1. Cell Phone – I didn’t realize how silly it was to bring my cell phone until I arrived in Argentina. I barely use it back in the States – most days, I leave the damned thing off. Why did I think that’d change in Argentina? Would I suddenly become more popular now that I knew no one in a foreign country, and was unable to communicate basic desires, like food and shelter?

International phone cards, on the other hand, cost 10 pesos a pop and give you 80 minutes of talk time. If I need to call home, I’ll use that. When I fly back into Newark or Albany, and need to tell people I’m alive, it’d be simple to borrow a cell.

Plus, if I left the phone, I could have also left the charger.

2. Extra SD Cards – I have a one gigabyte SD card for my camera, which you could argue is not enough for six weeks worth of travel. However, the card also turns into a USB drive, which makes browsing my photos easy peasy. I can decide which photos to delete, and which to store on the web, making one gig more than enough space.

3. Extra Sleeping Clothes – I made a last minute decision to bring an extra wife beater and pair of shorts for sleeping purposes. This is proving silly for a few reasons: one, the wife beater is white and cotton. Hand washing makes it smell fresh and clean, but won’t remove stains. And cotton dries slower than… something that dries very, very slowly.

I brought sleeping shorts because I thought I’d show some decency at hostels by covering up. Not many people are concerned with this, though, and I would fit in better with my skivvies.

4. A poncho – This seemed like a “must have” when I first started packing for the trip. No one wants to get caught in the rain, right? Right? Well, haven’t taken it out once, and now I realize how uncessary it is. You could argue I got lucky with the weather, but for several reasons, I could have done without it:

• My pack has a rain cover, so all my gear is always protected from water.
• I knew I was staying in Cordoba for a long period, and when it rains, I could just stay inside.
• They sell umbrellas everywhere. In fact, the man outside my window selling cell phone covers switches his merchandise to umbrellas when there’s a chance of rain. I know; he wakes me up every morning.

5. Charger for the AlphaSmart Dana – This is a huge charger, and for some reason it decided to stop working in Argentina. Which is why I lost all my work went when I was playing around with the battery. I should have brought the cable for the computer, which is smaller, and hopefully, functioning. Yes, I know hindsignt is 20/20 – but making up 40 hours of work is a real bitch, too.

What material things that serve zero purpose could you remove from your travels/life?