New Packing Tips & Hints

This week I was pleased to receive an email from a Cruise Diva reader Laura regarding our Packing List for cruise travel.

Laura said, "Thanks for the list. I was able to add a few things to mine from yours."

And Laura generously offered a few other ideas I'm pleased to share below. Plus, she related a situation that could have spelled disaster, but turned out well in the end. Her experience is a reminder to us all of the last thing we should all do before debarking the ship at the end of our cruise.

Laura’s suggestions:

SAFETY PINS! Every time we cruise I need at least one—that blouse that is too low cut, the bra strap that keeps showing, the button that pops. 

CHARGERS for everything electronic. Now we have a camera that gets charged, our Kindle, and the phones—which we all use for our music and games—and people also have tablets they bring. We've heard from hotel and cruise employees that these are the most common left-behind items, so that's why I think this last item is essential: 

A COPY of the packing list so when you pack your cabin up to come home you don't leave anything behind. Our last cruise we overslept and we had some last minute packing left of non-clothing items. Well, in our rush things were flying, arms were tossing items, chaos was everywhere in our panic and we all thought someone else checked the desk drawers—of course we usually do a final sweep, but since we were late, we rushed out and left behind 3 drawers of makeup, chargers, brushes, and an audio book. Thankfully, the Baltimore Port is awesome and we realized our mistake early enough that they were able to retrieve all the contents.

Thank you, Laura! There are a couple other items I always keep in my little "charger" bag pictured above and having them on hand when traveling has become so second nature that I almost forget about them. I'm referring to the "sea bands" for motion-of-the-ocean relief—yes, those little accupressure bands do work for me. Also in my bag is a plug converter to use with dual voltage appliances. Most staterooms have a limited number of outlets and the converter comes in handy when we need to charge more than one device at a time.

Image © CruiseDiva.com