Kelly Hales Travel
What's actually in our bags
Everything we own and actually travel with, with the reasons attached.
Some of the links below are affiliate links, and I may earn a small commission if you buy through them, at no cost to you. A few of these items were sent to me by the brand, and I've said so where that's the case. Everything here is something we own and actually travel with.
We fly a lot. My daughter is eight, almost nine, and she has been on more long-haul flights than most adults I know. So this isn't a list of things that look good in a flat lay. It's what survived.
Everything below fits in a carry-on, because on a short trip we don't check bags. That's the whole constraint, and it's why this list is shorter than most.
The suitcase
All three of us travel with the same one, in three different colors. Mine's the darker pink from the Wicked collaboration, which sold out. My daughter has the light pink. My husband has the beige.
That's not coordination for its own sake. Three identical suitcases in three colors means nobody grabs the wrong one out of the overhead bin, off the carousel, or out of a hotel hallway at 6am.
And the color isn't decoration either. Stand at any baggage claim and count the black rolling bags. Then try to pick yours out from thirty feet while a stranger walks off with one that looks exactly like it.
lululemon Everywhere Backpack, 22L
ShopMyThat's my daughter's, on the back of her suitcase in the photo above. It's her personal item and she carries it herself.
It holds far more than it looks like it will. Her laptop if we're traveling during term and she needs it for school, the iPad, the Switch, her headphones. There's a water bottle pocket on the outside too.
Hers is the lavender, which is sold out. Same principle as the suitcases though: pick the color your kid will recognize from across a gate area and buy that one. There are plenty of others.
I'm unapologetically a pink person. I buy things in pink because I love pink, and that's reason enough. But the advice here isn't buy pink. It's find the color you actually love and buy your things in that one. My husband's beige does exactly the same job. The point was never pink. The point is not black.
It has a pocket for an AirTag, which brings me to the next thing.
The tracker, and the part nobody mentions
Just buy the four-pack. You'll use them. One in each checked bag, one in the carry-on, and the fourth on your car keys. Ours has rescued more weekday mornings at home than it ever has at an airport.
Here's where I'd go against most of the advice you'll read: ours go inside the suitcase, not in a luggage tag hanging off the handle.
A checked bag goes down a belt, through a chute, and into a hold. Anything dangling on the outside is the first thing to get torn off, and now you've lost the tag and you still can't find the bag. Put the tracker where the bag is, not where the bag's handle is.
The BEIS has a little pouch inside made for exactly this. That isn't an accident.
Stouchi passport organizer, RFID blocking
Amazon · taggedI buy these as client gifts. It takes an AirTag, which is the whole point. Your passport is the one thing on the trip you genuinely cannot replace on a Sunday, and this puts a tracker on it.
It also blocks RFID, and the card wallet detaches and sticks magnetically to the back of your phone, so you can leave the passport in the bag and still have a card on you.
The tote, and the problem with nice leather
Cuyana Classic Easy Zipper Tote
ShopMyThis is the one I actually carry. I use the top-zip version, though some people would rather have it open. It fits a 16-inch laptop and the Cuyana pouches snap straight in, which is what keeps it from turning into a pit.
And here's the thing about a beautiful leather tote: it has no luggage sleeve. It won't ride your suitcase handle. So you're carrying it on your shoulder through the whole terminal, and then it goes in an X-ray bin that a hundred people have put their shoes in, and then it sits on the floor of the airplane.
The band straps it to your suitcase handle. Mine's black, which is fine here. Black is a bad idea for a suitcase because you can't spot it. It's a perfectly good idea for a functional strap nobody needs to identify. They're machine washable, which matters more than it sounds like it should.
Longchamp Le Foulonné small crossbody
ShopMyThe purse I travel with most, and it's flat, which is the entire reason.
Airlines count you at two bags: a carry-on and a personal item. A handbag on your shoulder is a third one, and that's how people get stopped at the gate and made to repack in front of a queue. This one lies flat enough to go inside the tote and come out again when you land.
The rest of it is why I kept it. Real leather, crossbody so your hands are free with a passport and a kid, and it deceptively holds a lot for something that packs flat. It also looks like it cost considerably more than it did.
Mine's the tan. The black and the darker brown work just as well, and this is the one place I'll allow black, because a bag on your body is never the thing you're trying to spot from thirty feet.
I own nicer handbags than this one. I don't travel with them. That isn't modesty, it's that I don't want to spend a trip worrying about a bag. A scarf can come, because a scarf sits in your lap. A bag gets shoved under a seat, set down on a wet café floor and crushed into an overhead bin by someone else's carry-on, and I would much rather that happened to this one. I still care about it. I just don't have to care as much, and on a trip that's worth more than the nicer bag would be.
Power
We have a rule in our house. ABC: always be charging. It goes double overnight in a hotel room, because you don't know what tomorrow actually looks like or when you'll next be near an outlet.
Which is why this looks like a lot of gear and isn't. It's one of each thing you need, and each piece does a job none of the others do.
- The travel adapter makes your plug fit a foreign wall. It supplies no power of its own.
- The wall charger is what actually delivers the power.
- The three-device charger plugs into that and handles the phone, the watch and the earbuds together.
- The cable connects a device to a charger.
- The power bank is for when there's no wall at all.
People buy two of one and none of another, then stand in a hotel room wondering why nothing is charging.
And we each carry the whole set. That sounds like overkill until you've watched three people negotiate over two outlets at 11pm. Nobody fights over charging anything, nobody's unplugging someone else's phone to plug in their own, and nobody wakes up at 4 percent because a watch got priority overnight.
This is the one I actually travel with. All the cables in the world don't help if you can't get into the wall.
Don't count on the dual-voltage outlet in your hotel room either. Some properties have one, some put it only in the bathroom, and some that list it in the room description don't have it in the room you were actually given. That's a small problem to solve before you leave and a real one at 11pm in a city where everything's shut.
Two USB-C ports in something small enough to disappear into the tech bag, and it folds flat, which matters more in a packed bag than it sounds like it should. This is the plug the three-device charger runs off, and it handles a phone and a laptop on its own.
One thing that catches people every time: the cable isn't included. It never is with Anker. You'll unbox it, pack it feeling organized, and arrive with nothing to connect it to your phone. Which is why the next thing on this list matters.
Anker charger, three devices at once
Amazon · taggedPhone, watch and earbuds all charging at the same time off a single plug. This is the piece that makes always-be-charging possible in a room with two outlets.
Count the outlets in your next hotel room. Then count them again, ignoring the ones behind the bed and the one the lamp is using. Three people sharing what's left doesn't work, and we stopped pretending it did.
Anker MagGo Power Bank, 10,000mAh
Amazon · taggedIt's Qi2, so it snaps magnetically onto the back of the phone and charges with no cable at all. Comes in a few colors, pick whichever you like. This is for the airport and the long day out, not the hotel room.
My husband carries this one. It's orange, which sounds like a trivial detail until you're feeling around the bottom of a big bag for something black.
Same 10,000mAh as the Anker, so it holds the same charge. The difference is that it'll charge a watch, which the Anker won't, and at 20W it fills things faster. That's why we don't both carry the same one.
Two rules worth knowing before you pack any battery, because this is where people get stopped at security. It goes in your carry-on, never in a checked bag. That's an FAA rule, not an airline preference. A lithium fire in the cabin is a problem somebody can deal with. In the hold it isn't.
And check your airline before you fly. Carriers set their own limits on how big a battery you can bring and whether you're allowed to use it in the air, those rules have been changing, and the airlines that have them do enforce them. It takes two minutes on their site, and it's the difference between carrying your battery on and handing it over at the gate.
I've watched people land in London with four devices, three cables, and no way to charge any of them. Hotels will sometimes lend you an adapter from a drawer of things other guests left behind. Sometimes they won't.
Get the six foot cable. You'll need it. The outlet in a hotel room is never where you want it, and a three foot cord means charging your phone on the floor behind the nightstand instead of on top of it.
Two per person. One for the iPad or the laptop, one for the phone, watch and AirPods. At 240W the same cable handles all of it, so you're buying quantity, not variety.
They come in a few colors, so give everyone their own. Blue for my husband, lavender for me, purple for my daughter, because those are our favorite colors. Nobody argues about whose cable is whose, and nobody packs the wrong one.
Same reason our suitcases are three different colors. In a bag of black cables, the one you can actually find is the one you'll use.
Keeping the bag from becoming a bag of loose things
Away Insider Packing Cubes, set of six
ShopMyAway's, even though the suitcase is BEIS. They fit the BEIS bags well so I'm not giving up any space, and Away makes them in six colors where most brands offer you black and maybe grey. Mine are blush pink.
The set is six different sizes rather than six of the same, and that's the part that actually matters. The large one swallows bulky things, and the slim ones take everything that would otherwise end up loose in the bottom of the bag.
Whatever brand you land on, check the cubes fit your suitcase before you commit. Ones that don't leave gaps around the edges you can't pack anything into, and over a week that costs you a cube's worth of room.
Every charging cable, dongle, adapter and spare battery lives in one bag instead of six different pockets. It sounds like a small thing. Then you're at security with a kid, an agent asks you to pull out the electronics, and you either know exactly where everything is or you're unpacking the whole carry-on onto a metal table while the line builds behind you.
Pink, of course. It comes with a keychain attachment that I've never once used, but the case gives me something to actually grab. AirPods on their own are small and smooth and always at the very bottom of the bag.
My husband has lost an AirPod on an airplane. That's not a hypothetical I'm using to sell you something, it actually happened.
The risk isn't your bag, it's the floor. One drops, you lean over to look, and it's under three rows of seats behind somebody else's carry-on. You're not getting it back until the cabin is empty, and by then neither is anyone else.
This clips them to you instead. It works.
When I'm not wearing them it lives in a little jewelry bag inside the tech organizer, which is what keeps a thin gold chain from becoming a knot at the bottom of a bag.
Skin, on a plane
Cabin air is drier than most deserts. Nobody tells you this until your face is peeling on day two of a trip you planned for a year.
La Roche-Posay Cicaplast Balm B5
ShopMyYou get dry skin on the planes. It's not the product, it's the air. This is what fixes it.
Best I've found for dry lips. I keep one everywhere around the house, including in my travel bag.
Toiletries that don't eat the bag
Best way to carry toiletries. Easy to refill, they take up less space than those big bottles, and they still hold a lot. If you're flying carry-on only, this is the single change that buys you the most room.
The capsules solve your liquids. They don't solve a hairbrush.
This is the case I actually carry, and it takes both: the capsules, plus the things that were never going to fit in one. Brush, comb, whatever else ends up loose otherwise. Mine is the merlot large parcel, with a medium in pink and my own capsules alongside it.
We've split the system three ways, same as everything else. My daughter has the lavender capsules, a large parcel in Pebble and a small one in Rose. My husband has the small trio and a small parcel. Nobody is rummaging through anyone else's toiletries at 6am, and nobody packs the wrong one.
Cadence sent me a set of these: the parcels and a lavender capsule set. I'd been buying and using their capsules for a while before that, and the gifted capsules went to my daughter.
I'd never use a hotel razor unless I'd lost mine or broken it.
I use Flamingo because they're made for women, and the travel one comes in its own little case with a couple of extra cartridges already in it. It packs flat, the blade isn't loose in your bag, and you're not improvising with whatever's in the bathroom drawer.
Shoes
Bring two pairs. This is where I disagree with most packing advice.
If there's a lot of walking on your trip, and there usually is, you'll want to alternate. Three straight days in the same shoes is how people end up limping through the back half of a trip they spent a year planning.
The first pair is whatever you walk in all day.
These are my go-to for walking around the city. Mine are the white marsala natural, and they go with everything else I pack.
The second pair earns its place at dinner. Not heels. Something you can still walk in, a nice loafer or a pair of flats. In New York you want something other than sneakers to walk into a restaurant, and you still have to walk there and back.
These are the ones that travel best, because you can squish them down to lie flatter in a bag. I've had them in other colors for a while and finally added black last October. Buying the same shoe again is the only shoe review that means anything.
Mine are the dark brown suede. They're what I walk in through a cold city, and they keep your feet warm doing it. I also have the Burberry Chelsea boots in black, which do the same job for a good deal more money.
One thing before you pack them: waterproof the suede. They're suede. Winter in most of the places you'd wear them involves water, and treating them takes ten minutes at home and is impossible to do on the road.
A note on the shoes I love and wouldn't take
I bought the platform lug sole loafers on the same trip as the ballet ones, and I own them in black and wear them constantly at home. They're still too bulky for a carry-on. If you're choosing a loafer to travel in, go lower profile, because a chunky sole eats the space two other pairs would have used.
The scarf
A big scarf earns its space the same way the second pair of shoes does, by doing two jobs instead of one.
On the plane it's a blanket. You'll want one. Cabin temperature isn't something anyone controls, and the airline blanket is thin if it turns up at all.
On the ground it changes an outfit. The same dress reads differently with a scarf over it, and that's how five days fits into a carry-on without anyone noticing you've worn the same thing twice.
Mine is an Hermès, which I'm not going to pretend is a normal packing list purchase. I've had it for years and it comes on every trip, so I've long since stopped counting the cost per wear.
But the label isn't the part that matters. What matters is that it's big enough to actually cover you on a plane and good enough that you'd wear it to dinner.
Most of mine are from Ann Taylor. They're inexpensive, the patterns are pretty, and they go with a lot of different things, which is exactly what you want when you're building a week of outfits out of five days of clothes.
And if you tend to wear a lot of the same color, get the big scarf in that color. Everything you packed already goes with it, which is the whole trick.
The larger option, if you want something that genuinely covers you rather than something you keep rearranging. It reads as part of an outfit when you land instead of a blanket you're still carrying.
What I don't pack
Anything I'm packing because a list told me to. Including this one.
If you've flown twice without it, leave it at home. The things above earned their place by surviving trips, not by appearing on somebody's roundup, and half of what makes a bag heavy is stuff bought for a version of the trip that never happens.
See everything else we actually use
The honest bit
None of this is why you'd hire me. The reason I write it down is that I get asked constantly, and it's easier to point at a page than answer the same question in fifteen separate DMs.
If you're planning something bigger than a packing question, a school break that needs booking now, or the kind of trip where the hotel matters, that's the actual job. Hotels pay me. You don't.
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