October 2, 2011 Making The Most of the 3-1-1 bag
Reader Janet A. sent me this article she wrote on “Making the most of the 3-1-1 bag” It is geared mainly towards women:
Making the most of a 3-1-1 bag:
A lot of advice on packing light skips lightly over the restrictions that a 3-1-1 bag imposes on daily grooming needs. If it’s considered at all, the advice is usually an airy “Just leave your cosmetics at home!” That advice clearly works well for some—when I took my first month long international trip as a college student, my health and beauty aids consisted of a tube of toothpaste and a bar of soap, which I used on body, hair, and clothing. (And I wondered why my hair was so unmanageable after a while!) Today, though, I travel a lot, and often for extended periods of time, and I value being able to adhere to a less minimalist grooming routine. When I’m abroad on business, I need to look polished, which given my sense of style, includes some makeup. Even when I’m urban-hiking on my own time, I prefer a look which includes the use of multiple skincare and grooming aids. (No reflection on those who don’t need or want them. Just that, for some of us, ‘leaving it all home’ isn’t a preferred option.)
So, how do I manage with the stingy little 3-1-1 kippie bag allowed these days in carry-on? By careful planning and a little ingenuity. Here are my suggestions:
First, figure out what you really need. Try keeping a list of all of the liquids and gels products that you use during the time period you are planning for—a week, a month, or whatever. Then ask yourself which are essentials, which are ‘nice to haves,’ and which you can live without while traveling. For me, I choose to eliminate nail polish (and the remover needed to take it off), weekly deep-conditioner for my hair, and sugar body scrub. I also look to my cosmetic liquids and gels and try to reduce color options down to a couple that coordinate with my travel wardrobe. But, remember, the idea here is take the things that you, personally, find indispensable, so make your own choices about which items that can stay home this time.
Second, think about substituting dry/solid items that don’t have to be in your baggie for liquids and gels that do. It’s amazing how many of these things you can find out there. For example, lip gloss can be replaced by a sheer, shiny tube lipstick. Eyeliner comes in dry cake form that you reconstitute by dipping your eyeliner brush in a bit of water. Shampoo and conditioner in solid bar form are sold by outfits like LUSH. Toothpaste can be replaced by toothpowder (available at health foods stores and Whole Foods); powdered mineral makeup can replace liquid foundation; stick or crystal deodorant substitutes for roll-on or gel ones; solid lip balms for tubes of balms; soap ‘leaves’ or powdered soap for liquid clothes soap; solid perfumes for liquid or aerosol scents, etc. Liquid impregnated wipes don’t count as liquids and gels, so you can bring packets of wipes in your main bag for such uses as nail polish removal, makeup removal, hand sanitizing, and insect repelling. Just try out any replacement candidates before your trip to make sure you are satisfied with the replacements. Remember, everything you replace is one less thing competing for space in that baggie!
Third, and probably most crucial, miniaturize your stash. It’s very unlikely that you will need three ounces of most of the things you might want to take with you. After all, three ounces of eye drops or vitamin C serum will last you until the next presidential election. So just bring what you are going to need and you can get lots and lots of items into that 3-1-1 baggie. What are some miniaturization strategies? Try these:
Buy travel sized items. Almost any drugstore or Target/Walmart style emporium will have a special section of travel-sized items. It’s true that they are an expensive way to buy products compared to buying their full versions, but convenience is worth something, and some products—toothpaste and small aerosols, for instance—are much more practical to transport in small purpose-built containers. (Incidentally, travel sized toothpastes can be refilled from a full-sized tube simply be holding them opening-to-opening and squeezing from the full tube in to the empty travel-sized one.) Another source of ready-made travel sized items are hotels that provide little bottles of shampoo, conditioner, mouthwash, etc. for guests—items that are generally replaced daily even if you haven’t used more than a fraction out of the originally supplied bottles. Nowadays, the amenities in some hotels are really pretty nice, so scoop up unopened bottles and take them home after a hotel stay, ready for your next trip.
Sample sized items are perfect for your 3-1-1 baggie, and often come packaged as little sealed packets, eliminating the risk that some of your liquids will leak during your journey. You can get them from brick and mortar specialty retailers like Kiehl’s (particularly generous with sample packets) and Sephora, as well as e-tailers and high end department stores. You just have to ask. Department stores can be a bit hit or miss—some of the staffers are more generous than others. My strategy to get sample packets is this: dress up a bit so that it looks like you are likely to be a customer for high end products. Be honest and say that you are looking for packets to travel with, and if it is true, that you are giving them a whirl as a potential replacement for what you are using now. I never buy any cosmetics at a department store without leaving with a selection of packets—be insistent but polite, and suggest that a substitute brand is just fine with you. Remember, those staffers are on commission, and if not getting samples is a deal breaker for your buying a lipstick, they’ll usually cave. And if a particular staffer doesn’t cooperate, walk away and let them know you’ll be buying from somebody else some other time.
Once you are ready to use your sample packet on the road, keep in mind that they often contain enough product for several days use, or even more. Keeping the product from drying up and oxidizing is important if you intend to use the packet for multiple days. What I do is carefully poke a hole in one of the corner areas of the packet—ideally through only one of the two surfaces—with a pin, needle, or a sharp tweezer end. Then I squeeze out a drop or two of the stuff inside and apply. Afterwards, just push the remaining product to the unopened end of the packet and it’s safe as can be till the next usage. I once used a large packet of eyecream for a month that way. Really.
Repackage your product into smaller containers. If you can’t get a sample or travel-sized product that you need, or you prefer to use the products you ordinarily use at home, you can just decant a small amount of product into a small container and take that. Most so-called ‘travel bottles’ are a bit larger than you will likely need, so don’t limit yourself to purpose-sold travel bottles. I save tiny jars and bottles that many product samples come in and re-use them. I also love plastic clamshell containers—Nordstrom will often make up a makeup or skincare sample in one of these if they are out of sample packets, and you can reuse them later for creamy and gel-like products. (Tiny little containers are also available online and in stores that specialize in storage and containers.) I use these miniature containers for face cream, hair gel, and gel deodorant—a plastic clamshell container about the size of a fifty cent piece and a half inch high easily holds two weeks’ worth of gel deodorant and takes up practically no space in the baggie. Another kind of tiny container that is cheap and versatile is the tiny bottle designed for holding soy sauce in Japanese lunch boxes—they hold one to two teaspoons of liquid, close with tiny little screw tops, and can hold a month’s worth of facial serum, liquid foundation, or eyedrops. And some of them are shaped like little pigs or whales—stylish as well as practical! You can buy a bag of twenty or so for a buck or two at your local Asian grocery.
Last of all, consider buying what you need when you get there. There are both advantages and disadvantages to this approach. On the plus side, you keep items out of your luggage entirely that way, lightening your overall load as well as your 3-1-1 baggie. You also have the ability to buy skincare and beauty products that you might not be able to easily find here in the US. I mean, when was the last time you saw Finnish shampoo or Bulgarian toothpaste in your local megamart? Leftovers make unique and memorable souvenirs when you get back home. In addition, shopping for daily use items takes you out of the tourist circuit, since you’ll need to shop where the locals shop for their hand cream and conditioner.
There are, however, some down sides to this strategy. Maybe you aren’t looking forward to toiletry shopping once you hit the ground on arrival. You might not know what kind of shop sells sunscreen or toothpaste, and in many parts of the world, products that Americans would expect to find in the same retail establishment won’t be sold that way. If your foreign language skills aren’t top notch, you might be unsure of exactly what you’re buying—both toothpaste and hemorrhoid cream come in tubes, but they are not interchangeable! And, even if you know what kind of product you’re getting, you may be unsure of its ingredients—whether it contains products you are sensitive to, whether you will find its formulation agreeable, whether it contains things you prefer to avoid like artificial preservatives or animal tested ingredients, etc. If you prefer to stick with things you know you like, you might not want to take pot luck on arrival. One final consideration is that you may not be able to find small travel-sized products when you shop on arrival—they are often available, but you may not know exactly where to find them. And, if you buy larger sized items and you will be traveling between points, you might be stuck with dragging large bottles along during your travels, which undermines the goal of traveling light (as well as being impossible if you are one-bagging it on a plane as part of your travel itinerary.)
My own choice in this regard is to bring most of what I need in my 3-1-1 baggie but to buy two kinds of products abroad: those that I will be using more than 3 ounces of, like body lotion and sunscreen, and those that come in superior versions outside the US, like sunscreen. I do bring a small amount of such products in my 3-1-1 baggie so that I’m not desperate to shop while jetlagged and can postpone my toiletry expedition for a day or two. Two reasons I like to buy sunscreen abroad is that if I’m doing it right—a shot glass full for a whole body application—I’m going to be using a lot more than three ounces of it while on the road. And second, European sunscreen is just plain better than sunscreen available in the US—tinosorb and mexoryl are vastly better UVA blockers than the ones that are used here. (UVA are the sun’s rays that cause skin damage like premature aging and skin cancer, whereas UVB rays are the ones that cause sunburns. SPF factors only measure a sunscreen’s UVB protection, so picking an SPF 50 or 60 sunscreen is no guarantee that it is a good UVA blocker.) Frankly, for me, European sunscreen is so much superior to what I can buy at home that my 3-1-1 baggie is filled with two or three extra tubes of it on my way home. Since the rest of my liquids and gels have been used up by the end of my trip, I have plenty of space left for extra sunscreens. Or maybe a really pretty lipgloss from a Parisian department store.
Two final tips: If you are traveling with a little bottle or pot that is not factory sealed, there is always a chance of leakage due to pressure changes while traveling. It is recommended that you leave a half inch or so of room in the container and squeeze out the air before sealing it closed. That usually works fine, but slippery and thin stuff sometimes works its way out even with those precautions. I isolate the likely offending containers in advance and put them in a snack-sized ziplock and then put the snack-bag into the 3-1-1 baggie. An ounce of prevention is worth an hour of wiping conditioner off every little bottle and packet in your main kippie bag.
Last of all: not every 1 quart baggie is created equal. Those that close with a plastic zipper device on the top are better than those that close with a press-and-seal track. It can be hard to see if the track-seal is really fully sealed, and you lose a bit of potential space in the bag to boot. Also, some 1 quart bags have a slight triangular bottom as opposed to simply two flat surfaces—more room inside for goodies.
With these ideas and some planning, it’s possible to travel with plenty of skincare and makeup and still avoid having to check your bag.
