We’ve bought, packed and ditched more travel gear than I can count. Most of it sounded good and then broke, took up too much room, or sat untouched while we reached for the same few things over and over.
This page is those few things.
Matt and I have traveled full time for nearly a decade, across close to 100 countries, almost always carry-on only. I keep this page current rather than rewriting it once a year, so if something’s here it’s because it’s still in the bag. The whole system is in my free guide Lisa’s Carry-On Only System.
Some of these links earn us a commission. That doesn’t change what’s on the list.
The five safety items I carry every trip
These come from the safety guide, and they’re the ones I’d defend hardest. What each one does and doesn’t do is in my free guide Travel Safety Gear: What’s Worth Buying and What Isn’t, because every one of them has a limit worth knowing before you buy.
A personal safety alarm. The one product I’ll recommend without hesitation to every woman who travels. Small, loud, pull a pin and it screams, and it has a flashlight I use instead of my phone’s on a dark street. It lives in an outer pocket where I can reach it, which is the only place it’s any use.
A quality anti-theft crossbody bag. My most-used travel safety item by a mile, and honestly less a safety product than a smarter way to carry things. Zips securely, sits close, hard to open without me noticing. Phone, cards, cash and passport stay attached to me.
A portable door lock. Braces the door from the inside, so even a working key or keycard won’t open it. Ten seconds to install. It won’t fit every door, though, so I carry a door wedge as well and use whichever the room allows.
A backup credit card, stored separately. Not a gadget and not really a safety product, but it’s the item that’s saved me most concretely. One extra card that isn’t in my wallet and isn’t connected to Apple Pay or Google Pay, tucked into a hidden pocket in my personal item. It costs nothing to carry and it turns a crisis into an inconvenience.
A quality portable charger. A dead phone can’t call for help, open a map, confirm a booking or reach anyone. Mine charges my phone at least twice over, fits in the crossbody, and has the cables built in so there’s nothing to hunt for. This isn’t optional for me. Ever.
The bag and what goes in it
The 22-inch Osprey Sojourn Shuttle. This is the bag. It’s a wheeled duffel rather than a hard suitcase, and there isn’t an airline that’ll reject it on size.
A foldable daypack. Packs down to nothing and comes out as a real bag for a beach day or wandering a new city.
Packing cubes. These are the ones we use now. Everything has a place, so nothing is a rummage. Compression versions exist and they’re a bonus rather than the reason.
A BAGSMART electronics organizer. Every cable, adapter and cord in one zip case instead of a jumble at the bottom of a bag.
The tech that earned a permanent place
These six have survived every cull, and the charger above makes seven.
The AirFly SE Bluetooth audio transmitter. Plugs into the seat-back screen and pairs with your own headphones, so no more airline earbuds. Worth knowing before you buy: older aircraft have a two-hole seat jack, and a single-plug transmitter won’t seat properly in one. A two-prong adapter solves that for a few dollars, and it lives in the same pouch.
Noise-canceling headphones. Used every day we travel. Planes, trains, cafés where we’re working, apartments near construction. We’ve tried the cheap ones. The good ones are worth it.
An e-reader. Thousands of books, weeks of battery, works offline once things are downloaded. Ideal for a long flight or a bed at the end of a travel day when the hotel wifi is sketchy, which it always is.
A mini power strip. One working outlet, two people, six devices. Older buildings put sockets in strange places and this fixes it instantly. Once you use one you won’t go back.
A portable fan. Yes, really. Stuffy apartments with no airflow, hot overnight trains, and rooms where the AC just needs a few minutes and never delivers. Tiny and USB rechargeable.
A waterproof Bluetooth speaker. Music while unpacking, podcasts while getting ready, and some life in a very quiet apartment. It once produced a dance party on a rooftop in Lisbon, which is a true story.
Two more that stayed: a cable that charges four devices at once, Apple Watch included, and a folding wireless charger.
The small things
Ethique shampoo and conditioner bars. Solid, so they’re not liquids, they can’t leak, and one conditioner bar is the equivalent of about three big bottles. If you make one switch off this page, make it this one.
Travel soap sheets. No liquid, no leak, no security question, no space.
Silicone bottle covers. If you decant your own toiletries, these are cheap insurance against opening your bag to a mess.
Sink detergent. Weighs nothing, and washing a few things is what lets you pack for a week instead of a month.
A stuffable travel pillow. Packs flat, stuffs with a layer you’re already carrying.
EarPlanes. For ear pressure and pain on descent.
A foldable kettle. For apartments and hotel rooms that don’t have one.
A LifeStraw bottle. Filters as you drink, so tap water stops being a question.
A phone stand. Props the phone up on a tray table.
Wax earplugs, a small white noise machine and No Jet Lag all live in the bag too. Sleep is the difference between a good trip and a long one. The rest of what we do is in my free guide How We Avoid Jet Lag.
Matt’s picks
Not mine, but they get asked about constantly, so here they are.
Ray-Ban Meta glasses. Matt wears his every day. The thing he’d tell you is that being able to capture something without stopping and digging out a phone gets you the candid moments that would otherwise be gone by the time you were ready.
Foster Grant fold-flat readers. They fold to nothing and live in a pocket, which means they’re actually with you when the menu turns out to be in tiny type.
A silicone wedding band. I gave Matt a platinum band when we got married and there was never any chance it was traveling the world with us. He wears a silicone one instead. He bought the seven-pack, and he has since lost six of them, which tells you everything about why the platinum one stays home.
The apps I actually open
None of these are the ones every travel blog lists.
ATM Fee Saver. Finds fee-free ATMs, banks with higher withdrawal limits, and real-time fee estimates for your card in that country. We check it every time we land somewhere new and it’s saved us hundreds.
Flush. Finds the nearest public bathroom, tells you whether it’s free or paid, and works offline. Sounds silly until you’ve spent three hours walking around Paris on nothing but espresso and croissants.
AutoSlash. You give it your rental car booking once and it watches the price. If it drops, it emails you to rebook. We’ve saved hundreds this way, especially in the US, and it’s free, because they’re paid through Priceline partnerships rather than by you.
LoungeReview. Shows which airport lounges you can get into with a day pass, a card perk, or paid entry. One time in Lima we paid thirty-five dollars for a lounge pass and ate like royalty for four hours while our gate was chaos.
The services we use
Airalo, for data. An eSIM means affordable global data without swapping SIM cards. How they work and which one to buy is in my free guide Travel eSIMs Explained: Working Data the Minute You Land.
World Nomads, for insurance. We always travel with insurance because things happen, and we’ve had several successful claims, including after spinal surgery in Vienna.
NordVPN. Keeps our connection secure on public wifi, and lets us watch American TV while traveling. Whether you actually need one is in my free guide Do You Need a VPN for Travel?.
Discover Cars and Auto Europe, for rental cars. We’ve saved thousands of dollars, and we often find cars for hundreds less than booking direct with the rental company. How to book one is in my free guide Why I Use and Recommend Discover Cars (And Exactly How It Works).
Trusted House Sitters. You look after someone’s pets and you stay in their home. We spent two weeks in a gorgeous Chicago apartment with two sweet cats and paid nothing.
Daily Drop Pro, for flights. It finds award availability across multiple programs and alerts you to cheap fares. It makes scoring a good coach or business class deal feel like magic. How I set that up is in my free guide Let the Flight Deals Come to You.
Get Your Guide, for tours and tickets. Skip-the-line entries, food tours, hikes, boat trips. It’s where we book experiences everywhere we go.
There’s more than fits on one page
Everything else I recommend is in one place.
The full lists live on my picks page, sorted by what you’re shopping for: what to wear, bags and gear, getting there, and once you’re there. That’s where the small things end up, the ones that aren’t worth a paragraph here.
Getting it all into one bag
Knowing what to buy is the easy half. Fitting it in a carry-on is the other one.
The Ready Jet Roam Packing Guide is eleven pages on exactly that: choosing the bag, the cube system, the clothes that do double duty, the shoe rule, and what to leave behind. Free.
Send me the free Packing Guide
Or let the packing app build the list for your specific trip. Also free, no signup, and it walks you through building a travel color palette.
The bottom line
The best travel gear isn’t the cleverest, it’s whatever’s still in the bag after a lot of very long days.
If you’re starting from nothing, start with the alarm, the crossbody and the bag. Everything else can wait until you know what you actually miss.
Frequently asked questions
Do you get paid for these? Some of them, yes. If you buy through a link here we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It doesn’t change what’s on the list.
Where should I start? The safety alarm and the crossbody bag, because they’re the two I’d carry if I could only carry two. After that, the bag, the cubes and the power bank.
Do your links work if I’m not in the US? Yes. Amazon redirects readers in nine other countries to their own store automatically, and you’ll get the same item or the closest match. Australia isn’t on that list yet.
Can I save this list somewhere? Bookmark this page, and bookmark my picks page, which has every product I recommend sorted into lists.
Do I really need a mini power strip? You’ll find out the first night in an older building with one reachable outlet and more things to charge than that. It’s the item people are most skeptical about beforehand.
Isn’t a portable fan a bit much for a carry-on? That’s what we thought too. Then came the stuffy apartments and the overnight trains.
What about everything that isn’t here? It’s either in the storefront or it didn’t survive. We’ve bought plenty of gear that sounded brilliant and then broke, took up too much room, or sat untouched.
How often does this change? Whenever something does. This is a living page rather than a review from a particular year, which is why nothing here has a price on it.
Subscribe to my newsletter!
I send one email a week. Real stories, what worked, what didn’t, and the practical things I only figure out by doing them. Plus my free packing guide and international travel checklist when you sign up.
2 comments
Comments are closed.