This Girl Packed Her Life Into A Single Backpack To Travel The World For 9 Months

One of the most tedious and tricky tasks before leaving for a vacation is hands down packing! While there are a number of apps and sites out there to help you in flight and hotel booking, packing is one thing you have to do all by yourself.

The weight of this task feels even more when you are leaving for a longer trip and you feel like packing your entire house. If you too struggle while packing your bags then here is little something that can help you a lot.

This 24-year-old woman packed her life into one 50-liter backpack for her 9 month long trip around the world.

“What am I supposed to pack for a trip around the world? And how am I supposed to fit it all into a medium-sized backpack? That was the real (minimalism) challenge,” Marina Nazario says.

Here's what she brought

Much like any other traveller she made a list of everything she needs to pack and kept adding to it as and when something came to her mind. While there is a lot that you may need to buy, do not forget the fact that there are items which can be bought from any general stores which most places have. That puts things into perspective.

‘Minimalism’ is the key to packing right! “I chose to sell, donate, or throw out everything that wasn't in the multi-page Word doc that was my list. This was me trying to embrace minimalism. And it did help me declutter my life and take into account what I really valued. With most of my possessions out of the way, I felt pretty good — until I actually had to pack,” she says.

She took out all the stuff that remained on the list after thorough editing and it still felt a lot. Marina did three practice packing runs with her bag and lost her sanity each time much like any of us. The first time, she could barely fit her clothes and there was no space left for anything else. So she had to reduce the number of clothes in half which could make space for about two non-clothing related items. “I cut the number of clothes in half again.”

Here's what she was left with:

• 9 tank tops

• 4 pairs of socks

• 4 pairs of shorts

• 2 pajama shirts

• 2 dresses

• 1 pair of black leggings

• 1 pair of jeans

• 2 sports bras

• 2 bathing suits

• 15 pairs of underwear (might have been too much)

• 1 skirt

• 4 pairs of shoes (definitely too much)

• 1 jacket

Once her clothes were packed, next challenge was to pack all the small stuff that was quite important including a laptop, cosmetics, a GoPro plus selfie stick, chargers, a fast drying towel, an international adaptor, an external hard drive, a first aid kit, headphones, books, a purse, a hair straightener and journals.

At the end, she could fit in everything and was ready to set off with a backpack weighing 40 pounds.

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