After the trip thoughts - packing

So I decided I wanted to keep posting for a little bit on some of the tips and tricks we learned, and what we did that worked or didn't ... when we were preparing for our trip I scoured the internet for blogs from "normal" people for their packing tips, especially for packing light in small carry on backpacks for those budget airlines.

For the 2 people that read this who aren't my family, I thought I'd share about our packing. 

I packed in a 38 liter Gregory Jade pack. EasyJet's carry on requirement was 50x40x20cm, just barely under the "normal" carry on size we are used to in the U.S. The other issue is that they only allow 1 bag per person. Not 1 bag and a purse, but ONE BAG. And they checked. So when packing, I had to be sure everything fit in my backpack, but that it also had room to squish my purse in it last minute before boarding. The plus with a backpack - they were a little more lenient if they saw you carrying a reasonable sized backpack. They didn't question us, but we did see people with slightly larger, more packed out backpacks get stopped and checked for size.

 The above photo shows my full backpack, with the outfit I wore on the plane - heaviest/bulkiest clothing. It worked well to carry my coats over my arm, if I needed a little extra room in my bag.

 These pictures detail everything I packed for our 3 week trip. Our trip was in the fall, and the weather was much colder than expected, so I was very happy with all the layers I brought.

Clothing:
2 tanktops
2 t-shirts (quick dry)
1 longsleeved t-shirt
1 sweater
1 warmer baselayer
1 flannel
1 pair Lululemon cropped tights
1 pair shorts
1 skirt
1 pair of skinny-ish jeans
1 pair hiking pants
3 short smartwool socks
1 long smartwool sock
4 pairs quick dry undies
1 sports bra
1 regular bra
2 scarves
1 hat
1 pair gloves
1 belt
*All of this, I fit into 2 small packing cubes. ROLL all of your clothes, as tightly as possible. Those packing cubes can hold more than you think, and when packing in a backpack are invaluable. You don't want to have to take out all of your clothes one item at a time when finding something at the bottom of your bag.

Shoes:
Keen low hikers
Born leather boots
Toms (wore twice)
Chacos (wore once)

Jackets:
1 rain jacket
1 warmer fleece jacket
1 lightweight down jacket

Extras:
1 pack towel (helpful for squeezing out extra water from clothes when doing laundry)
1 travel-sized brush
glasses case, glasses
1 quart-sized bag of liquids (including packets of Woolite for doing laundry in the sink, and 1 pair of extra contacts! With all the trains/planes, my contacts dried out super fast!)
1 small makeup bag (necessities only!)
1 necklace, 1 extra pair of earrings
travel sized package of face wipes (a MUST for waking up after a night train...)
1 small bag of electronics (phone charger, camera charger + batteries, multi-country plug adapter)
camera
Kindle
Small purse
(I did not bring the water bottle shown)

Jeff brought our travel clothesline (which didn't really work), extra chargers, the iPad, the Surface, which we were going to use to offload pics onto (which didn't work), and his own clothing, etc.

Things I would have packed differently:
Underwear - definitely a must to have quick-dry undies, but would have been nice to have 1 or 2 cotton pairs for variety
Pants - would have liked one more pair of pants, jeans or otherwise, but space-wise, might have been hard to fit.
Shoes - didn't wear Toms or Chacos like I thought - our hostel showers were spotless, since we were in private rooms, and it was much colder than we planned, so another pair of nicer walking shoes would have been nice.

Overall, all 4 of us were happy with what we brought, and maybe would only change a couple things about what we packed. We had to get creative with mixing and matching... we were sick of our clothes by the end of our trip, but so glad we packed light!!