Planning a holiday is exciting, especially when it involves getting out of St Francis Bay during the depths of winter. Holiday packing, on the other hand, is an entirely different discipline. Somewhere between deciding what to take and trying to zip the suitcase shut, otherwise sensible people begin making some extraordinary decisions. We stop packing for the holiday we’re actually taking and start packing for the holiday we imagine we’ll have.
That’s when things become interesting.
Holiday Packing For The Person You Hope To Become
Holiday packing has very little to do with the destination. Instead, it reflects our optimism. We pack for the fitter, more organised and more adventurous version of ourselves that seems certain to emerge the moment we arrive. A week at the coast suddenly requires hiking boots, running shoes and enough exercise clothing to train for a marathon, despite the fact that the nearest we’ll get to cardio is walking to the coffee shop.
Books are another reliable giveaway. Many of us pack three, convinced we’ll finally find time to read. The reality is rather different. One book is opened, a few chapters are read, and then it spends the rest of the holiday acting as a bookmark for the bedside table.
Then there are the chargers. Nobody really knows what half of them belong to anymore, but leaving one behind feels strangely irresponsible. Add an extension cord because holiday accommodation never has enough plug points, a rain jacket “just in case”, and a jersey for those cool evenings that rarely materialise, and the suitcase begins to take on a life of its own.
The Holiday Packing Reality
Eventually the holiday comes to an end and the unpacking begins. That’s when the evidence is impossible to ignore. The formal shirt never left its hanger. The emergency jacket stayed folded. The hiking boots enjoyed a relaxing break at the bottom of the suitcase, while the expensive running shoes returned home looking suspiciously new.
The holiday photographs tell the real story. In almost every picture, we’re wearing the same three T-shirts we packed first. They were comfortable, familiar and exactly right from the beginning.
Perhaps that’s the real lesson about holiday packing. We don’t pack for the people we are. We pack for the people we’d quite like to be for a week. Somehow that version of ourselves always seems just one more holiday away.
The strange thing is that none of this changes our behaviour. Next time we’ll still pack the extra book, the backup jacket and the mysterious charger that probably belongs to a phone we no longer own. Because hope, it turns out, takes up surprisingly little room in a suitcase.
Want to pack for your next trip? Check in with St Francis Bay Travel Agency The Travel Collective
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