So you’re flying hand luggage only – what are your must have travel items?
These days, travelling with just cabin bags for shorter breaks is the best option and whilst it can seem limiting at first, you’d be surprised at just how much you can take with you. Plan out your clothing and outfits, take just one or two pairs of shoes and fill the rest up with your essential travel accessories.
Here’s some of my top travel accessories for travelling hand luggage only to add to your ultimate travel packing list.
Practical Travel Accessories
Something that I can’t travel without is packing cubes. They’re useful for separating different types of clothing out and they help to keep your suitcase or bag neat and organised. Plus, at the end of your trip, you can put all dirty washing into one packing cube and clean clothing in another. If everything needs a wash, you can organise them by colour to make sorting them out once back even easier!
Taking a reusable bottle is also worthwhile, as it means you can buy big bottles of water and simply refill your own bottle when needed. I particularly like the Chillys bottles as they keep the liquid inside hot or cold for hours. Many airports will have a water fountain that you can use once through security – well worth doing instead of paying the airport pricing for plastic bottles!
Staying in an apartment rather than a hotel or trying to stick to low budget travel? It might seem a little strange, but take some tupperware boxes! This gives you the option to create lunches and take snacks with you on day trips without having to buy something to wrap food in. You can also make use of the boxes and stuff them whilst packing, so no space is wasted.
Find the items:
- Packing cubes
- Re-usable drinks bottle
- Foldable water bottle (save even more space!)
- Tupperware
Toiletries & Beauty Essentials
With the rules surrounding the number of liquids allowed in hand luggage, reusable 100ml bottles are something that will save money for regular travellers. These are available in a screw top, pumps, sprays and pots, and can be hard plastic, silicone or pouch style. Fill these with anything from shampoo and conditioner, shower gel, sun cream and more.
Similarly, you can get reusable perfume bottles so you don’t have to take those big, often awkwardly shaped and heavy bottles with you! To fill them, you simply stick the bottom on your perfume spray and press down a few times. Very easy! Ideal for any time you need perfume on the go.
To save even more space though solid shampoo, conditioner and soap bars are perfect for travel. When travelling with hand luggage only, you’re obviously limited to how many liquids you can take onto the plane. You free up a lot of liquid space by using solid bars where possible! Another bonus is that these bars are generally better for the environment. I recently started using Wild, which is a reusable deodorant with a range of refills you can purchase. Vegan, cruelty-free and they plant trees when you buy from them. The scents on offer are fab too and change regularly!
Find the items:
- Refillable Perfume Bottles, 3 pack
- Silicon Travel Bottles 90ml, 6 pack
- Wild Refillable Solid Deodorant
- On-the-go travel kit (includes shampoo, conditioner, soap, washcloth and arrives in a useful tin!)
- Single-use soap
Travel Accessories
I don’t think I’d ever travel without a power bank. When travelling in a new place, your phone becomes quite an important piece of kit. Whether you’re using it to take photos or videos, using maps to help with directions, looking up translations, finding restaurants or attractions. That battery will drain. I’ve always used Anker power banks and found they hold plenty of charge to give your phone a daily battery top up over the course of a trip.
A flexible travel tripod is useful if you’re someone who is either wants to get photos whilst travelling solo or if you want couple photos that aren’t awkwardly taken by a passer-by! I find the short, flexible ones the best because you can place them in so many different locations with ease. The bendy legs can wrap around things and be used for grip. Most will come with a screw top fixing for cameras, and the addition of a phone holder or action camera fixing.
Like to read but don’t want to be lugging around paperbacks? Kindle‘s are great for this, and perfect for any downtime you get. Easy access to so many books, and the battery lasts a good while too. Worth looking at around Black Friday as they often go on offer!
Find the items:
- Anker Powerbank
- Flexible Travel Tripod (with screw, phone and action camera attachments)
- Kindle Paperwhite
Hand Luggage Options
There are both advantages and disadvantages to only travelling with hand luggage. Taking hand luggage only means what you’re transporting is smaller, so it’s easier to whizz through the Airport and get to your accommodation on the other side. However, because it’s smaller, you are also more limited to what you can travel with.
Hand luggage allowance will differ between airlines and you will always need to check what they allow before flying. With most airlines, your hand luggage includes a cabin bag up to the dimensions of 55x40x20cm and usually around 8-10kg weight. Alongside that, you’re often allowed a personal item.
On Easyjet you can only have one cabin bag up to 45x36x20cm and Ryanair is even more restrictive only allowing a small bag up to 40x20x25cm as hand luggage.
A recent find for me has been the Travel Hack luggage range from Cabin Max. The backpack has so much space, yet is still suitable for daily use whilst travelling. The padded straps and back make it so comfortable – honestly the best backpack I’ve used whilst travelling, and walking around a lot.
It doesn’t look like it, but the cabin case is Ryanair suitable – ideal for budget travel. The best thing about this case is that there are two sections – the top one makes it easy to grab things you need quickly and the bottom section is roomy enough for all your clothes/shoes.
