Autistic Traveler Interviews: How To Avoid Overpacking
Welcome to this series with fellow autistic adults. Some will be guest posts and others will be interviews on the highs and lows of autistic travel and everything in between.
This first post features Aneisha, who is late-diagnosed autistic/ADHD. Aneisha is on a healing journey and shares observations about learning on the way.
I’ve been interested in travel for as long as I can remember.
I’ve consumed many articles, blogs, YouTube videos, and books about travel. I didn’t think I could be autistic because most people don’t view travel as an autistic-friendly activity. Of course, each autistic person is different. Some don’t like it, yes, but I’ve found other autistic people who love to travel, too.
Travel isn’t easy. And packing is one of the hardest parts of travel. I’m a budget traveler and travel carry-on only for flights. Before the pandemic, I honed my packing skills and took only a backpack and a carry-on suitcase for a month-long stay in Ecuador.
But like so many others, my packing skills atrophied during the pandemic.
My packing skills needed help! I started overpacking for weekend trips. And airline baggage rules became more restrictive post-pandemic. Fewer coach-class tickets included overhead baggage, so carry-on only meant less baggage space. If I wanted to travel internationally again, I needed to improve my packing.
So I researched packing again. Many travel articles and vlogs assured me that we often overpack. They advised to leave those “just in case” items at home.
But I already knew not to overpack, and reminders weren’t enough to help.
I needed something more.
And I accidentally found that “something more” on a trip to Arkansas.
In December 2021, my husband and I drove 4 hours to vacation in a little Airbnb cabin in Mount Ida, Arkansas. It was a 4 day trip so I didn’t need that much but somehow I found myself packing a lot of “just-in-case” items! Especially clothes. I couldn’t stop myself.
I jealously eyed my husband’s smaller pile of clothes. Why was my pile bigger? I wanted to find out. I needed concrete evidence. But how could I get it?
How To Avoid Overpacking: A Travel Journal
Well, I like to journal. Maybe I could just keep notes during the trip? I downloaded an Evernote journal template to my phone and copied the daily template 4 times, one for each day of the trip.
And then I hoped I would remember to check-in each day and write in the journal.
Thankfully, I did. Every day during the trip, I wrote a brief description of the clothes I wore and observations about what I wished I packed.
Day 1
I noted that Airbnbs “never have a good soup ladle” because I made chili and had to go to the store to buy one so we could spoon the food into our bowls.
Day 2
I noted that I “should’ve brought a tea strainer for loose-leaf tea.”
Day 3
I “wished I had lemons for hot water” for my daily morning hot lemon water.
Day 4
I also wished “I had extra mesh/storage zipper bags to use” to organize items better.
I noticed a pattern.
Most of my entries were about food or packing organization, not clothes.
Interesting.
I didn’t realize it then, but this was the first version of my travel journal.
When we got home, I took a picture of the clothes we wore during the trip (not including underwear, outerwear, and shoes).
For our next weekend trip, I kept a journal again and realized I didn’t use almost half the packed clothes. I was overpacking even more than I suspected! And my journal notes were about non-clothes items, like snacks, which indicated a need to update my packing list.
My travel journal reduced my overpacking. Taking photos gave me the concrete evidence I needed to confidently leave behind “just in case” clothes. I knew that no, I never wear those 2 extra shirts I always bring. Just 1 extra shirt was plenty.
My travel journal also revealed little things to make travel easier. For example, in one Airbnb I used a small decorative cup to store my toothbrush and toothpaste upright on the bathroom sink instead of laying it down in the toothbrush travel case. The small change was super handy in the mornings; just grab and brush, and now I do this wherever we stay. Writing this observation down made me remember it for future trips.
My travel journal also helps me pack for future trips. After each trip, I update my travel checklist template and add or delete things to pack.
A helpful note if you want to try this yourself: I noticed that journaling works best for the first 2 or 3 days of a trip. After that, I get busy and forget, or I just don’t want to update my journal anymore.
Do you have a similar travel journal? And if not, would you try this? If you’re interested in using my travel journal, let me (and Rose) know in the comments. It’s still a work in progress so I’d love to know if this helps you out too.
