For those traveling, the process of packing can be a bit overwhelming especially when flying. Be your destination one which requires a large bag or a small one, one thing seems to always be consistent, a personal item will always hold your life in a small vessel while flying.
While other bags are stowed tightly away under the plane or in overhead bins, accessing your most important items is something which can make even the longest of flights a bit more tolerable. For me this is the make or break of a how a flight will go when traveling for more than an hour in the friendly skies.
Keeping your personal items near by can turn your flight into your workspace when needed, your own personal theater when you just wish to tune out the world or a place of relaxation when you simply want to unplug if only for a moment. Maintaining order in your personal item and keeping items to a minimum allows for quick navigation and minimum disruption to other passengers along the way.
I have found that my personal item bag tends to be a last resort for those pesky items I over-packed in my check bag. I always keep a bit of room open just in case but otherwise the items inside are pretty basic items that need to be easily accessed when traveling through TSA checkpoint lines. It never fails that if I don’t focus my attention on this bag in the packing process I miss something then get on the flight looking and digging.
I recall a flight to Baltimore, just after I purchased my Iphone7. The headphone port differs from a typical port and somehow I forgot this thus making for an extremely long and quiet flight for me since I hadn’t yet put music on my device and did not bring the converter for my ear buds to plug into the in flight movie. Simply checking my personal item bag with a quick run through could have saved me. Now to date, I always make sure to bring not only headphones or ear buds but also the connector jack and an additional charging device.
Traveling can be made simplistic with remembering your personal item is your access to the world while nestled amongst strangers. How you pack it can improve your flying experience from the lines at TSA to the trip to baggage claim post flight.