The Art of Packing Light

So on this the eve of the eve of my departure to foreign lands I am consumed with jealousy. Jealousy? You may ask. Why would one who is about to venture off into the paradise formerly known as Italy have cause to be jealous? And well I see your point. My life is about to be pretty dang awesome. However, I am utterly filled with envy towards Mary Poppins and Hermione Granger. What I wouldn't give to have the ability to expand my bag and stuff all of the contents of my life into it and yet simultaneously suspend them in a state of weightlessness.

Packing geniuses! 

Lets just say packing has not been easy.

One suitcase. 50 pounds. The next 3 months of my life. Mission impossible.

After carefully shopping for every possible thing I could need and laundering every single item of clothing (some I didn't even know I owned) I began to sort it all out. 3 piles: definitely Italy, maybe Italy, and heck no! that stays in the states. After fitting all of the definitely pile into my suitcase I realized that I still had a significant amount of room for the maybe pile. So after deciding that my orange pants should were worthy of the voyage to Europe I began to fill my bag to the brim. After sitting on it my belongings were crushed to the point that I could safely close the zipper. Then came the weighing. And gosh darn it my bag was 5 pounds too heavy.

What to do? What to do? The answer: sacrifice my back. My carry-on backpack is now about twice as fat as I am and almost as heavy. So If I return from Italy looking like a hunched over 100 year old grandma you will know why.

P.S. Hope you like the new more travel-esque look of my blog.