Traveling is a stressful and exhausting experience but there is a way to make it stress-free and easy, how? By organizing your trip from start to finish. We’re all familiar by the challenges we face when traveling like missing your flight, losing important paperwork or your charger, spending too much money, and more.
We’ve put together a list of tips that have been proven to make any trip, whether it’s work or pleasure, one week or a month, a pleasurable experience.
What are the ways to stay organized while traveling?
- Organize your itinerary:
Prepare everything before the trip so you don’t waste time researching the best transportation and restaurants or worrying about directions there. This should include your flights, hotel bookings, car rentals or transportation, directions, maps, or anything else you may need.
You can do this by notebook or the preferred way, download an itinerary app, like TripIt. Forward your hotel bookings, flight confirmations, and destinations to the app and it’ll organize your whole trip. It also works without an internet connection which would be great if you’re on a plane or traveling internationally.
- Use enterprise apps for work:
Keeping track of your work and employees is difficult when you’re overseas or stuck on a plane or airport. This is especially harder for frequent travelers but there are many apps that can help you follow up on tasks, supervise employees, and ensure a smooth workflow.
For example, you can use a time tracking app to supervise employees’ working hours and absences. You can also use project management apps to follow up on tasks, set deadlines, and more. As for your business mail, you can use a mail forwarding service to get your mail to you wherever you are in the world. As for staying connected, Slack, Skype, and Google Hangout are all great ways to reach your team.
- Set a travel budget:
One of the biggest problems we face with traveling is overspending and regretting it badly when we get home. Set a list of all the things that you’ll spend money on like transportation, entertainment, food expenses, etc. to calculate an estimated budget for your trip.
Setting a budget will ensure you don’t overspend and you won’t get surprised by any unexpected costs.
- Make a packing list:
Don’t you just hate it when you reach your destination and then find out you forgot your headphones or prescription medicine? You need to start working on your packing list before you even start packing. Creating a list is the only way to guarantee you don’t forget anything and have all your belongings.
You can make this list on your phone using the notepad (there are apps for lists too). This will help you settle on the things to bring and what can be left behind. It’s always advised to travel light and only bring the necessities, use this list when you’re repacking too before leaving.
Use packing aids:
There are multiple ways to organize your packing and help you save space, you can use packing cubes, compression bags, pouches, and other organizers. Packing cubes can be used for your clothes, separating your clothes in sections and tech organizers can be used to keep all your electronics and gadgets in place. This organizer has rubber elastic bands that will keep your electronics protected; it’ll avoid breaking or damaging anything. It can be used for your chargers, hard drive, headphones, power bank, or anything else. You can also get a toiletries organizer to store all your lotions, toothbrush, and other needs.
For any liquids (medicine, conditioner, etc.) you can use Ziploc bags to avoid any messes in case something breaks. Organizing your belongings will prevent losing anything, it’ll be easy to unpack and pack again.
- Carry a travel purse/ wallet:
Most importantly, all your paperwork like your boarding pass and ticket, ID, passport, cash, credit cards, cellphone, charger, etc. need to be somewhere you can easily reach, at all times. You need a purse/ wallet with many pockets and zippered compartments. Some wallets like RFID wallets will protect your credit cards from theft in addition to being spacious.
Be sure to find out from the airline the luggage policies, how many bags you can board with and what’s the weight limit.
- Unpack at arrival:
Don’t struggle with untangling cords or wrinkled clothes; unpack once you reach your destination. It may not be the most relaxing thing to do when you arrive, but it is necessary. Place our toiletries in the bathroom, hang your suit or dress, and arrange your shoes. It’ll be easier to find everything you need, save yourself the time of digging for things in your suitcase and unpack.
With these few tips, you’ll have more organized and relaxing travel experience. Traveling doesn’t need to be stressful or waste your time and money, enjoy the experience instead!
