6.5 YEARS OF FULL-TIME TRAVEL (Everything We Pack & Own)


we are finally doing it today we are going to show you everything that’s in our suitcases which we have lived out of for six and a half years also a portion of this video spawns right next to gina but more on that later before we dive into things quick story time on january 11 2016 we packed up a carry-on suitcase and boarded a one-way flight to tokyo for our one-year trip around the world six and a half years later we are still living out of suitcases but we have never made a packing video we had come up with every excuse there is for why it was a bad idea like for the longest time i didn’t feel like i knew anything that everybody else did like i was still figuring things out and they started like mine it just seemed like a really boring video but then like a lot of other people traveling europe this summer our bags got lost on a flight pretty much everything we own is in these bags and no one seemed to know where in the world they were and we couldn’t even find anybody who cares what they say literally nothing no one knows anything it’s such a mess i had fully prepared myself to never see this bag again so when we finally got the call so they are at the airport yeah yeah they are at the airport reunited at last it really gave us a whole new appreciation for our stuff so almost losing these bags is what finally inspired us to make this video so let’s start with the basics is so weird we each have one overstuffed suitcase on wheels with majority of our belongings and one extremely heavy electronics backpack some version of this has pretty much been our setup since day one first we’ll show you what’s in our suitcases and we’ll get to the backpacks later we’re doing our first packing video mate very strategic way i have to open this so nothing falls out drives me nuts they literally build this bag so you don’t have to worry about that see it’s broken this is it and it’s not okay okay that was only because i’m carrying half of your stuff there’s already a lot of finger pointing going on here i want to start with the newest thing that i’ve added to this bag and it has been an absolute game changer this came about because of the baggage loss but this is an apple air tag what did we ever do without it it’s 30 and it’s like the best travel insurance you could ever buy for yourself you can literally see where your bag is at all times you could be in a completely different country and know where your bag is and that’s exactly what happened to us but we didn’t have this and wasted so much time at the airport going to check and see if our bag was there we didn’t know they’d been sent back to tennessee had i had an air tag in my bag i would have known that my bag was still in germany when we were in finland okay good start i feel like if you take nothing else away from this video we had a good start with my legs crossed like this oh no it hurts okay great the thought of making this video was a bit overwhelming because if you added up every individual thing in our bags we have like 5 000 things so i asked instagram for some questions and we’re just going to start by answering as many as possible until we just get warmed up we’ll go rapid fire give you a lot of good stuff at the very beginning okay here are our questions question number one how much do your bags weigh the answer to kara’s is the maximum amount i think 22 kg is the max and i hover around that oh only five pounds over sweet that’s not good no it’s not mine is somewhere between 30 and 35 keep in mind i’m carrying lots of nate’s stuff no i think you’re carrying one of my things are you kidding oh those shoes don’t count what do you mean do you want a house where do you keep all of your belongings up until a few months ago we had storage unit where we had a bunch of junk that we never wanted to see again we have recently opened the storage unit and sold all of that in a big garage sale and now we only own what is in the suitcases and the few things that are left in our van that is sitting in my parents driveway this is the lightest i’ve ever felt and we don’t have a home we have a van but we have parents without do you wear wedding rings when you travel no kind of i’ve replaced my wedding ring with like a smart fitness tracking yeah to me it just wasn’t worth worrying about my diamond precious right in the beginning carrie didn’t wear her wedding ring because we felt like it would make us a target but then we realized that we’re carrying around thousands and thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment making ourselves a huge target anyway i don’t think it matters it’s just it’s less to worry about if she’s not wearing do you mask with perfumes no are you implying that you think we sting essential oils is everything wrinkly all the time pretty much you go first my strategy is i try to think about what i’m gonna wear the next day and then i lay that shirt out so hopefully it unwrinkles a little bit over the years i’ve finally just stopped buying clothes that wrinkle cotton anything this is cotton yeah and you have a big crease down the middle of it like this whole outfit doesn’t wrinkle it does get dirty though we haven’t gotten into our bags at all i thought this would like allow us to start like travel pillow yes or no no no we carried a travel pillow the first year and i look back and i’m like what were we doing always sleeping i’m just really good at sleeping and so all it takes for me is just like a shirt and it does the same thing you just only have so much space and if you don’t sleep on a flight that’s not the end of the world where do you pack your clothes we each have handy dandy very close bags but it’s not your typical dirty clothes bag this is only like what i would consider soil this is like it’s so gross it can’t touch anything else in my suitcase or that’s disgusting who has more clothes i bet i have triple with the amount of clothes that you have literally surprised me for if you count all of your underwear how much underwear do you buy 15 pairs i count it for this video okay and that’s the most underwear i’ve ever carried i did not realize i had that much well you had to buy someone in our bags for long and show the world your underwear the thing about underwear is that’s the one thing you can’t go without i can re-wear pants i can re-wear shirts but as soon as i run out of clean underwear we have to do laundry so having a lot of pairs of underwear allows you to go longer without having to do laundry kara takes this to the absolute extreme 23. i only have 24. 24. you can literally go a month without washing clothes i do all the time i don’t know what you do this is kind of disgusting but if i’m doing a workout like if i’m in a consistent running routine i might re-wear the same dirty pair of underwear knowing that i’m just going to go get it i mean we do that with our workout clothes too like i pretty much have a designated gross outfit for a second when you put it on it’s like oh this is disgusting then you’re working out you’re sweating in it and it would’ve been gross anyway favorite leggings i have tried every legging on the planet and i’ve landed on two pairs of lulu something you pack that you don’t use i just never take the time to do it this is a medicine kit it’s actually an old airplane humidity kit that now has medicine in it and i would say this is all pretty much just in case you have a medicine kit yeah why don’t you both carry because family ruined me okay what’s the oddest most surprising thing you travel with no that’s a necessity this ziploc bag is our coffee kit i carry it but it’s really because cara has a problem so inside of the coffee kit is this little collapsible pour over you can buy these little filters all over the world so we just keep some of those in stock and then we have any leftover coffee and we’re moving from place to place it also goes in this bag guarantees that we always have a way to make a coffee while we travel it looks so gross in this bag but omg kara i love all of your black crop tops where are they from people do ask me this all the time i’m like an influencer and people ask me this all the time are you talking about this black crop top from the gap or this black crop top from kohl’s this black crop top from american eagle this cashmere black crop top from j crew it’s very soft or this black crop top that’s nike i have two more that aren’t black these are from target oh where’s my amazon one well now okay there are four questions that we got over and over again because we’re so popular no everyone asks us this all the time there are four very controversial questions you’re either one or the other there’s no in between we’re going to call this segment versus this versus that what everyone wants to know packing cubes versus none i’m not saying that my way is better i’m just saying it works better for me i can appreciate that i am pro packing cube and you can tell because that one especially it’s it’s embarrassing i don’t even think that’s technically a packing cube that’s just like a mesh bag what’s the difference that good question i’m just in general in life not a very organized person so i don’t like having to pack in general but then having to pack stuff into packing cubes and make it more organized it just feels like it takes up so much more time packing cubes are like having to pack twice to be fair i do have one packing cube this is where i keep all of my underwear i will say another drawback to packing cubes is that it mashes all of your stuff into this confined area that sometimes bulges out and it can actually be harder to shut your suitcase if you have this and then the toiletry kit that ends up on top of it you just can’t that’s if you don’t know how to do it right okay i feel like this brings us to our next verses because if you don’t know how to pack then yes packing cubes can feel like your stuff is taking up more room so let’s talk about rolling versus folding it depends on what it is i think there’s a middle ground here for example i would agree with that yeah yeah see in my packing cube i roll nate you’re so guys i’ve never seen that before i’m so proud of you thanks these denim shorts denim is big and bulky why does anyone wear denim i don’t know anyway these shorts rolled is pretty big like it would majorly that’s how it looks when i try to use packing cubes it doesn’t it’s not a nice if it’s folded that is paper thin no problem so i try to organize my stuff based on how big it is same with this fair drop hoodie fairydoc.com check it out folded hoodie and denim shorts like they’re not even there rolled i probably didn’t need to do this with two different examples but i mean that’s massive i’m actually learning something about you right now really we’ve traveled together for six and a half years and i could not have told you whether you rolled or folded your stuff and here are all my shirts my bone just rolled on the wood floors that roll next up rolling suitcases versus backpacking let’s go all the way back to 2016. when we started we had a bag that allowed us to do both where were these guys you could either roll it or you could unzip the back a little backpack straps would come out and you could carry it we carried those bags for an entire year around the world 30 different countries and i think we use the back-to-pack straps like five times that was like a year-long experiment where we realized that we roll our bags a lot more than we carry so after that we just decided to get the best possible rolling bag i will say if you’re going on a specific trip you might make a different decision there are two countries that come to mind where i really regret it having a rolling suitcase that would be india this is the most chaotic place i’ve ever been and cuba cuba is a place that may be better to be backpacked that brings us to our last verses carry on versus checked bags i actually don’t think there’s a right and a wrong answer this summer if you’re traveling there is a right answer and that is carry on but we’re already in europe we already have all of our stuff and it weighs way too much to carry it all so that’s not an option for us oops we just realized that we’re late for a quick business call so let’s consider this like a half time break go get a snack go to the bathroom make a coffee we’ll be back in just a second okay let’s get down to the details let me show you exactly what’s in my bag i know that sounds boring but we’re gonna make it super quick i’ve already seen these underwear dirty clothes bag i have two pairs of shoes i have always had two pairs of shoes after traveling for six and a half years there’s always a pair of tennis shoes and sandals in my bag we’ve been wearing ons for a few years nate’s run a few marathons in them i think they’re cute normally these sandals are tacos but uh i’m trying something new with the birkenstocks i’ve pretty much worn birkenstocks since day one and i’ve now converted nate i didn’t like the chocos because the straps when they got wet they took forever to dry and i said this would be fast so that’s all i’m gonna say about that and these tacos just smelled so bad now let’s get to the clothes all of my clothes fit in these two bags one two three four five six seven eight t-shirts which is probably too many mostly black because uh like i mentioned i have a lot of black tank tops because that’s what i like i didn’t set out one day to decide like oh i’m just gonna dress in all black all the time it just happened and it’s bonus points if it’s moisture wicking at some point i got a black t-shirt and i was like oh this doesn’t so sweat it doesn’t show dirt and it just looks kind of nicer than all the other colored t-shirts that i wear and then that’s the t-shirt that i always hoped was clean and so i bought a couple more of them and then i was like oh i have all these white t-shirts now what goes with black more black and uh before i knew it 80 of the things in my suitcase were black so black is just easier i used to wear colors i really did but black is the new me the worst part about having so much black is everything looks the same when you’re going through your suitcase trying to find something you’re like wait is that no it’s literally a black hole i have this one sweater on the other side of this one workout shorts these are kind of my grody shorts i was talking about before um brody equals gross and dirty this is a matching jogger set from fury when we lived out of a van for a little while i got pretty spoiled with how many clothes i got used to just having and this was one of the things basically when we moved into the van we went from living out of a suitcase this big to having a space quadruple the size and i got really spoiled so moving out of the van and back into my bag has been a continual adjustment this next section is what i like to call specialty shirts this is a sun shirt after having uh skin cancer cut out the top of my head i’m uh prioritizing sun safety a little bit more these days i have a fancy short sleeve shirt fancy long sleeve shirt i use the word fancy very loosely one of my favorite pairs of pants i got them at h m at least four years ago and have had them with me ever since they look better than workout leggings or denim shorts but they’re also just so comfortable so it feels like cheating i have a pair of bike shorts i tried to get on the bike short train probably gonna leave these at home next time um this is another thing that i got spoiled in the van was having dedicated jammies overalls are a new addition to my wardrobe i find them very cute but they’re gigantic so it’s a sacrifice but the good news is i don’t feel like you ever really have to wash denim do you yeah random pair of socks just floating around because it happens sometimes pair of sweatpants i try to have one like dressy outfit like a long flowy romper kind of like my pants so i guess i have two dressy outfits i just end up wearing this every time we have to dress up and it works out i feel like i’ve really learned that nobody really pays attention or cares it’s hard to remember that sometimes and every time i go home and pack i get this like almost social anxiety of like i need to look cute really no one cares they’re all feelings that you put on yourself i don’t know maybe it’s just me maybe people do talk about how i wear the same thing every day but i’ve gotten to a point where i don’t care and it’s fine some point somebody asked us the ridiculous thing that we were carrying in our bag and i forgot about this this is how do i put this i have an emotional connection to these jeans and a dream that will probably never come true these are my favorite jeans i have ever owned i wore them for like three years straight these were the only long pants that i had like nice pants nice pants and now as you’ve probably seen in several videos because keep wearing them oh wow my dream is one day i’m gonna find someone to stitch this up for me and i’m gonna start wearing these again but for now i’ve just been carrying them around the world for months and this is a very big item to commit to just carrying around in my suitcase in the meantime the best replacement i’ve found is these cuts pants which i’m actually really coming to like they’re like a cross between sweatpants and dress pants you can get away with dressing fancy in them and you can also fly in them because they’re super comfy also two pairs of khaki shorts probably one too many sweatpants shorts definitely don’t need these but they are comfortable i don’t really know why i’m still carrying this i packed this exact pack towel in my first suitcase in 2016. it’s just one of those things i can’t let go of this is a new addition to my bag that i’m not proud of it’s a bunch of random cords gopro mounts and a lot of other electronic-y things that won’t fit in my backpack this is my bathing suit packing cube a swimsuit one shoe four tops in the early years only traveled with one bathing suit but this is another one of my favorite items when i bought it it was called a sarong but i mean it’s literally just a cotton piece of fabric with some little cute doodads on the end i wear this as my swimsuit cover-up but it can also be a scarf if it’s cold or if you’re traveling somewhere where you’re required to like cover up or cover your head and your shoulders i mean it’s just like a multi-purpose everything i’ll bring it to the beach as my sarong but then it doubles as a towel to lay on or just a towel to dry off with if i ever need one i actually bought another one in mexico but the crabs ate it when we were living in panama oh and in this bag is my cute little hat for some protection i have a person here i don’t ever carry it probably shouldn’t have this anymore this is good for me i’m learning the things that i need to donate speaking of things i probably don’t need i have tote bags for some reason i have this giant box of masks even though we don’t need those much anymore yay ag one bottle this is the one thing that kara carries around the world for me um no no are you kidding me what i have all of our ag-1 which i make you every single day i carried your entire dirty clothes bag all the way here two different flights i’m just saying so one thing we learned about packing for a bunch of different climates because sometimes during cold climates sometimes we’re in hot climates and whatever we have in the suitcase has to work for both is that a puffy jacket and a raincoat will keep you super warm because this works as like a wind layer and then this is your insulation and you can easily be comfortable in legitimately freezing weather in these two layers i do always have dry shampoo i try not to use it that much because it is one of those things that’s kind of hard to find hairspray i’ve always carried a little like day pack on a hike or something that’s pretty much the only time i use this toiletry bag before i open this i should say this is one of the very few things that has been in my bag since day one this is my og travel bag i also have carried it since day one but mine is in terrible shape probably because it’s not black i’ve also had about a million things bust in here all of the waterproofness is coming off yeah i feel a little embarrassed to admit this because i always thought these were for girls luffa is non-negotiable for me because it dries a lot faster than a washcloth and it doesn’t get disgusting washcloths are just so wet kara tried to convert me for years and then eventually i gave it razor deodorant what’s this called cone uh sometimes there’s q-tips in here right now there’s not toothbrush the sad state of my brush that i was traveling with six and a half years ago from day one the handle fell off but i still use the the head of it it’s a lot lighter uh one of these jade rollers my essential oil retainers nail file couple extra ponytails deodorant chapstick and if you watch your q a with sailing lava vagabond not too long ago you might remember the question about how i deal with my menstrual cycle on the road i love my david cup so hair gel that i don’t use very much anymore because most of them wear a hat toothpaste these are random hair products that i got tucked into buying when i cut my hair at the salon sunscreen flossers face wash and last but not least there’s another one of these floating around this apartment somewhere this is a goo tube so these are called this is another thing that’s been in my bag for six and a half years these are pretty amazing because if you’re at a hotel or maybe an airbnb that has some leftover shampoo or conditioner you know like a big pump in the shower you just kind of fill it up so this has like 50 different conditioners in it i’m proud of that i’m just saying it happens and that does it for what’s in my bag um oh these are life-changing i used to carry makeup wipes which one aren’t very good for your skin and they’re not very good for the environment as soon as i learned about these microfiber towelettes i never went back they’re magic i’ve kept the little dividers in my way back workout bands i really love doing nourish move love on the road i’m running really low on ag1 recycled plastic anytime something is wet or soiled i like to keep one of these around to stick in in case we have to like pack up and go somewhere before something’s dry this side has 50 fair drop stickers in case anybody wants one oh this is sad this is my very small jewelry collection that was a terrible idea i think that’s all for me wow that’s all you travel with it’s really not that much one last thing before we wrap up our suitcases and move on to our backpacks it’s really easy to stress out before a big trip with the what if what if i forget this or that or what if i run out of my favorite this or that and i need more and i really feel like the biggest thing i’ve learned is everybody uses most things if you run out of shampoo most people wash their hair you’re gonna find shampoo if you forgot your razor most people shave something if your flip flop breaks most people wear flip-flops it is so rare that we need something and can’t find it wherever we are the fastest way to overstuff your suitcase is to pack all of the what if here’s my advice if you’re packing and you have this one thing and you’re on the fence and it’s a what if stop for a moment think can i buy this at my destination if i do need it if the answer is yes don’t pack it because most likely you’re not gonna need it okay last but not least our backpacks honestly if that entire suitcase went away right now i would be totally fine if this bag disappeared i don’t know what we would do start with the bag itself honestly i saw it on an instagram ad and we got them and we’ve been carrying them for the last like four years what makes this bag perfect for us is that it’s separated into two main compartments the bottom half is all camera gear it’s like a gear place with lots of padding and the top half has this roll top the best part is that you can access this compartment from the back you can load it from the top boom everything is just here i’m sorry to interrupt how do you sit like this this hurts my foot bone so bad you’re pillowing it this whole thing actually comes out as well i think so it does it’s velcroed in but you can remove the entire bottom i think they call it a camera cube and then it can just turn into like a normal backpack which we’ve used that feature a few times we’ve taken these bags hiking well i’ll start with the outside this is like a little secret pocket i usually keep my passport down here because nothing can spill on it it can’t like get mixed up with other things and have that panic moment where like where’s my passport it’s just always in here it’s the only thing that’s in here and it’s actually not in here there’s also a zipper on the front which i only use for paper pretty much instead of buying souvenirs i keep paper memories so you kept your ryanair printed out take care i’ve kept all my tickets ever one day we’re gonna have the coolest like wall of tickets that’s pretty boring let’s get to the good stuff okay oh no laptop pocket in the back two you wrote 10 gopros uh three we just had to buy that one since our stuff got lost and we needed it for the wide carrying championships this is our older sony camera we upgraded but we decided to keep this one as a backup we pretty much have a backup of everything at this point if you follow me on instagram you know that i’ve gone on a journey recently of external hard drives i currently have these three four five somehow after editing videos for six and a half years nobody told me that this type of hard drive can crash very easily and then it happened and that’s when everyone told me about these beauties ssds lots of hard drives this is like half the way in my bag half the weight in my bag is our drone setup which is a very old mavic 2 drone that i just assume i will crash and i i want to upgrade but at the same time i know as soon as i upgrade i’m going to crash that drone so i’m waiting until i crash this one and then i’m going to buy a new one what happened we lost truth i thought i was finally gonna get to get a new one when we were in canada with eamon and beck and that’s how we found it and it was fine uh but yeah this this weighs a lot and takes up a lot of room in the backpack but for what we do totally worth it honestly i do think i will probably have back problems for carrie yeah this backpack i bet this backpack weighs as much as my suitcase because everything in here is just like heavy bricks no we have store backs every travel day i think we’re just out of shape this used to not be the case true yeah we got we’re either old out of shape or we just carry that much more stuff no we got old and soft during coverage and now we actually do have more stuff so it’s a combination computer charger phone charger this is a bag like i just kind of got sick of opening this and cords just being everywhere so i’ve just kind of it’s almost like a packing cube someone’s saying oh my gosh it is like a packing cube live mic so you can hear us when we’re on an airplane about 12 credit cards that i don’t even know if they work gopro batteries extra sd cards these are two things that are very special to me i have been carrying this converter what’s this called uh surge protector no this is called it’s a what is a plug called with extra outlets what is this called power strip power strip i have carried this power strip and this converter since day one converter can be bought anywhere i’m pretty sure they don’t sell this power strip anymore though i bought this on amazon i should we should start a company that brings this back has four outlets on it so you plug this into your adapter and then you have four us outlet and it’s so tiny oh i thought of something that i left in my suitcase that i’ve also been traveling with since day one oh i’m an old man while he’s doing that i also have an extra microphone because we’re professional like that sunglasses case that’s hard this is actually something we learned the hard way this can get smushed it keeps them sick before we left travel i wore big cotton bulky boxers and i was like i’m a traveler now i have to be more of a minimalist so i went on amazon and i bought 10 new pairs of underwear which is a horrible idea don’t buy new stuff to go travel but this random amazon brand called 32 degrees cool i’ve had 10 of these pairs of boxers in my suitcase for the last six years and none of them have holes in them that’s pretty crazy that’s all have you done everything in the bottom of your bag yes i actually have a toothbrush in here i don’t usually have this but you know since our experience when we were flying on the airplane i always bring a sweatshirt same thing nothing worse than getting on an airplane that’s like a six hour flight and it’s freezing and you don’t have any way to keep working you can pretty much guarantee on travel days no matter what the weather is outside we’re wearing tennis shoes pants a short sleeve shirt with a long sleeve shirt just in case it’s just worth it i have two of these giant power ranks power banks i think we’re getting tired we’re getting close to that i always carry this gigantic water bottle in my backpack it’s a huge bottle but i’ve just learned that if i have a small bottle i won’t drink as much this is 32 ounces and i try to drink four a day this is one of those things that we bought for the van that ended up creeping into our travels never had those before but now we can’t go without them you’re supposed to be carrying one of those by the way okay i always travel with my makeup bag it’s one of those things that i actually would be really sad if it got lost with our luggage i think the only thing i have left of interest is these headphones they are over ear noise cancelling headphones that are absolutely gigantic when you think about the little bit of space that we have to carry everything that we own and i’ve thought about leaving these so many times i only wear these on long flights not even like short like if it’s less than four hours i’m just wearing my air pods because i don’t feel like getting these out it brings me so much happiness to get on an airplane and all the craziness that’s going on around me can be happening and then i just put these on and i’m in my own little world another tote bag the key for us staying on the road is enjoying travel days and um these help me enjoy travel days i only put this in my backpack because my hair looked really bad i think that’s all i think we just made a packing video we finally made a packing video a weight lifted off of my shoulders seriously i feel like once every couple months we’re like we should make a packing video and then we think about it for a while and then we don’t do it and now we made a packing video you now know every single item that we own still not sure that this was a great idea could have been the most boring video we’ve ever made we’ll see it all feels so normal for us like this has been our life so none of the things that we do or things that we have feel special hopefully you learned something if you learn something so that i don’t feel like i’ve wasted my time for the last few hours would you let us know down below like what was the best tip like what was the most surprising thing what was either the most helpful or the most surprising or if you’re a loofah or a washcloth person or do you roll or fault cherry hole both cherry on carry on or check these are the answers that i want are we done can i not say with my legs crossed anymore oh i think we did it thanks for watching if you made it this far this is what we have to do when we don’t use the power strip instant potatoes we found at our airbnb 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