Packing a small suitcase

How do you pack a small suitcase and travel with enough clothes for all weather?

Dressing For All Weather
You are supposed to dress for your destination. Very funny, when you are going to a hot country staying by the beach, and you are setting off in pouring rain. You don't really want to wear wet sandals for fourteen hours, not even four hours, not even forty minutes. No good adding socks because you just get wet socks.

For clothes, the secret is to dress in layers. Two layers when you leave in the cold. A camisole which doubles as a sun top. A bikini or beach shorts instead of underwear. Then if your luggage is lost or delayed you can race for the beach and swim before dinner, go down to the pool whilst the luggage from your group of 100 is being delivered.

Rain?As a last resort, you may have to wear overshoes. The sort you are given at some gyms with pools.

Bag Pockets
The user of a computer suitcase told me it did not hold a lot apart from the computers and flat papers. It has several zips and compartments so you can organise - or lose - your papers. A place for everything and everything in its place.

Date Order Pockets
You could keep everything in date order, whatever you need first in the front pocket. Or the heaviest item at the back by the handle to balance the suitcase and stop it tipping forward.

Keys
I have several organiser bags which have so many pockets that I keep losing things. I used to lose my keys at the bottom of a bag. Until I attached them to a key ring attached to a ribbon attached by a safety pin to the bag. If you are handy you could sew into every bag and suitcase a ribbon. If you prefer, a secure chain. Even if you attach the ribbon or chain to the back or bottom of the bag or in a pocket out of sight, you can remember it is always on the right, or feel for the end of the ribbon and then locate the keys wherever they have hidden themselves.

Tickets
Your vital tickets should always go in the same pocket, with nothing else in the way of anything like a train pass which you need to press against a station card reader, unobscured by anything which could fall in front and block the card.

Protecting Food
If you are likely to save a half eaten sandwich, a box or neatly folded plastic bag, perhaps kept small by a rubber band, is handy.

Drinks
As a precaution, try to keep food and drinks, or liquids which might spill, separate from papers. In fact separate from a new treasured suitcase. I have been called onto a delayed plane in a hurry, taken along my yogurt, ended up with packed underwear,  packed bikini, diary, comb, and the inside of the tote bag covered with strawberry smelling pink yogurt. I try to keep all food and drink separate in another bag.

Linking A Second Bag
Some people check whether a small wheel on suitcase will support their second bag which is either a tote bag or a handbag, or just an airline bag or plastic bag.
You might like to link the handles of the two bags so you don't leave your drinks on the plane, your sandwich on the train, or your conference papers in the conference hall.

Books
If you are a visiting author at a conference selling a book or promoting yourself, always have one copy of your book in your pocket. You can show it to an acquaintance or new friend in the queue or during a delay or long train journey or long flight. Use it to rehearse your reading or speech.

If you haven't written a book, read your favourite. For example, a book on business. Motivation. A classic work you haven't read. Teach yourself French, Spanish, Chinese. Take a book such as Chicken Soup for the Soul to keep you calm in case of delays.

Take a diary or travel book and research restaurants or hotels or museum opening times at the destination. Take a list of conference organisers or those attending or the first night speaker. Learn their names. Remember who they are likely to know.

If you do meet colleagues/groups at the airport, or in the shuttle bus to your conference hotel, it's easier to remember them and start a conversation, 'you are the conference organiser, Mr/Mrs Smith/Patel/Ali, I've read so much about you. Do you know Mr/Mrs/Lee well?'

If you can't remember what they do, and are shy to admit it, you can ask about somebody else on the committee. Have you met so and so (the organiser/speaker)?

I've found asking about their suitcase or their techniques for packing is also a good, neutral subject.
I recently bought a small light Karabar four wheel suitcase through eBay for about £20 including postage (see previous posts).

Angela Lansbury BA Honours, author, travel writer, speaker.