How many times have you forgotten something important at home while travelling? Or how many times has a bottle of shampoo leaked and ruined all the clothes in your suitcase during a trip? Well, if you are prone to such accidents, it’s about time you take control of things to stay organized while travelling.
Of course, planning a trip can be quite stressful. The same goes for travelling, especially if you have a bit of a spontaneous streak and a tendency to not plan ahead. However, if you plan things ahead and make a few checklists, you can spend less time trying to find things and more time enjoying your vacations.
7 Essential Tips on How to Become an Organized Traveler
What is one of the most important things you need to do while travelling? Well, the answer is to relax, obviously, and the only way you can do that is if you have everything planned out perfectly.
Here are a few tips that will teach you how to get organized for travel.
- Use a travel planning checklist
- Create a detailed itinerary
- Save your plans offline
- Make copies of your travel documents
- Pack light but smart
- Outline a daily budget
- Bring a travel journal
Just follow these simple steps to become an organized traveller and enjoy your trip to the fullest.
Use a travel planning checklist
Some people love making lists. Others find them nerve-wracking. If you belong to this second group of people, you’re in for a surprise.
Making a checklist can eliminate almost all of your travel woes, provided you do it right. Regardless of how long or short your journey may be, it never hurts to plan ahead of the time. This will ensure you don’t forget anything crucial before leaving your home.
Depending on how much time you’ve left before your trip, you must make a list and check things off as you take care of them. From contacting a travel agent to booking a flight and from cancelling your newspaper subscription to buying new batteries for your camera, you can add anything to this travel planning checklist. This will help you become an organized traveller by keeping things in order.
Create a detailed itinerary
While you can start working on your travel planning checklist months in advance, you can only create an itinerary once you all the information pertaining to your trip. This is yet another important tip on how to be an organized traveller.
To start things off, many people think of creating an itinerary as a waste of time or something trivial that can be ignored without a second thought. However, this cannot be further from the truth.
Here are a few things you need to include in your travel itinerary if you want to learn how to stay organized while travelling:
- Flight numbers and timings
- Hotel reservations and addresses
- All of your day trip details and bookings
- Contact numbers of travel agents, hotels, rental car companies and airlines
- If you’re travelling abroad, the contact details of your country’s embassy
While you should create a digital itinerary and email it to yourself along with uploading it on DropBox, you should always have a few hard copy/printouts as well in case your smartphone dies or you don’t have access to WiFi.
Moreover, it is suggested that you leave a copy of your detailed itinerary with a trusted family member or a friend before going on a trip.
Save your plans offline
When you’re travelling, there is a very good chance you might not have access to the internet in certain places. Therefore, in order to become an organized traveller, you need to save all your data offline as well.
For instance, if you are planning to use Google Maps on your journey, download all the routes and take screenshots if necessary to make things easier for yourself. In addition, you can even write down important information such as bus routes and important landmarks so you don’t end up getting lost in case your phone runs out of battery.
Once you create an itinerary, store it in different places in a different format so you don’t have any trouble accessing your information during your trip. This is also one of the most productive tips to stay organized while travelling.
Make copies of your travel documents
It’s not enough for you to just organize travel documents, you also need to make a few hard and soft copies before making your way to the airport – especially if you are travelling to another country. This is yet one of the other important things you need to do while travelling to ensure you have a hassle-free time.
Always make a few copies of your passport, particularly the pages with visa stamps, and store them in your luggage, carry one and handbag. If you want to become an organized traveller, you should scan such documents, including your flight tickets or bus passes. Store the soft copies on your phone along with emailing them to yourself in order to stay organized while travelling.
Pack light but smart
Before we discuss how to pack a suitcase for organized travel or how to organize luggage for travel, we need to talk about the type of luggage you should take along while going on a trip. It’s natural for you to want to be comfortable during your journey by having easy access to most of your personal belongings. However, travelling with a lot of bags is only going to make your trip more difficult.
Whether you are travelling for three days or a month, always try to pack light but smart. At most, you should have a standard sized rolling suitcase and a backpack with some carry-on essentials for travel, such as chargers, headphones, sunglasses etc.
Furthermore, one of the best packing hacks for staying organized while travelling is to bring along a few complimenting pieces that you can layer up for formal or casual looks. Also, you should try rolling up your clothes for more compact packing.
If you want to learn more about organized luggage and ingenious packing hacks, here’s a detailed guide on how to pack a suitcase for organized travel.
Outline a daily budget
Now that you are done with your travel planning checklist and have learned how to organize your suitcase, here is the next step in your quest to become an organized traveller: budgeting.
One of the most frequent travel tips people generally receive is to outline a rough daily budget before you reach your destination. While it may seem like a hard thing to do, especially if you are more of an impulse buyer, you must have an idea of how much you are going to spend throughout your trip. Moreover, if you really want to be an organized traveller, you should also learn how to control your expenses to avoid buyer’s remorse.
In addition, it’s suggested to keep some emergency tucked away safely in a money belt or a secret pocket to avoid being pickpocketed and losing all your cash. Here are a few more tips on how to keep your money safe while travelling that might come in handy during your next vacation.
Bring a travel journal
To clarify things a little, it’s not necessary to carry a physical journal while travelling. You can even make notes on your phone or record little voice messages. The only purpose of this exercise is to keep track of everything you have done so far. This travel tip will not only help you organize your thoughts but also capture those little moments on your journey that you might later forget.
If you want to become an organized traveller, consider documenting your travel experiences. From stumbling upon a brilliant local restaurant to buying small souvenirs from a gift shop, recording these memorable instances either in your writing or in a digital form will keep them alive for a long time. Moreover, taking notes of things you did or could not do on your journey would also help you plan your next trip accordingly.
For more information on the places you must visit this summer along with some useful travel and packing organization tips, head over to Zameen Blog, the top lifestyle blog in Pakistan.
