L.L. Bean offers a pair of pants that I feel is perfect for traveling.  They are called ‘Perfect Fit Pants’, and there is a style to fit most women’s shapes as they are available in misses’ and women’s sizes.   They come in traditional pants, cropped, straight leg, boot cut, and slim.  What makes them perfect pants is that they wash and dry well, retain their shape thanks to the touch of Lycra in the jersey knit fabric, and come in four nice colors that traditionally go with everything – black, brown, grey and blue.

I own a black pair of the standard Perfect Fit Pants.  They’ve held up over time, a modest weight gain and subsequent loss, and a handful of trips out of state.  Give these pants a go.  You won’t regret it.

Photo credit: malias

Whenever a group of more than two people is traveling together, the potential for missteps increase exponentially. You all should know the ‘rules’ of where you’re going and follow them.  I went to Italy in 2000 in a group of 6 to see family we’d never met.  The sons of the family worked for Roman public transportation, so really, there was no excuse for what happened one day.

We were staying in the village of San Cesario, which makes Rome easily accessible via bus. We purchased a Multi-Pass at a local tobacconist (tickets are purchased for bus travel, unlike the coin-in-the-box American approach) as we had every other day that first week, and waited for the bus to arrive.  Two of our party were over 60, so when the bus doors opened, four of us zipped in the back door and found seats for the oldest of us.  The remaining two of us (myself included) entered the bus from the front door and, as we were firmly instructed by our Italian family, had our multi-passes stamped with that day’s date and time.

The four who entered through the back door just figured they’d do it on the way out of the bus.

Nope. Caribinieri boarded the bus and checked everyone’s passes.  With our combined Italian language skills, we explained about getting the oldest into seats and would stamp on the way out.  Nope. No quarter for ignorance.  The four who had not stamped their tickets received $50 fines for not being stamped. Although, they were not alone.  There were at least four other unstamped people on the bus…they were local.

When we retold to story to our Italian family, we were roundly scolded for not listening to direction. A mistake we did not duplicate on this trip.  The moral of the story?  Follow the rules!

Related Reading: 11 Things to Do in Beautiful Bolzano, Italy

Photo credit: tanvach

Always on the lookout for affordable travel tips, I was thrilled to find these sturdy, zippered bags normally used by plumbers and other contractors to keep their gear organized.

I first found them when designing zero waste lunch kits for my husband and I that could literally be used from backpack to briefcase. I noticed in that online product reviews that several contractors had been using them to keep fittings and such organized on tool belts and in gear bags. Made by a company called Custom Leather Craft, they apparently held up to a serious amount of abuse.

So I decided to go for it. The result? These clip-on, zippered bags are going strong with no wear and tear in the corners and zippers that are still performing well. The cool thing about these? You get three of them per pack. So after I ordered two sets to have one of each at the size we needed for the lunch kits, we had four remaining pouches (two of each of the other sizes) to use in various ways to organize our travel gear, which we did on our recent jaunt to Ecuador. The sets of three are less than ten dollars regularly, and have been known to go on sale for between five and six USD.

Some other suggested uses for these include organizing eco-friendly feminine hygiene supplies, keeping security items such as padlocks, s-hooks and door jams organized, or using them to store travel-sized pharmaceuticals all in one place.

Related Reading:

• Gift Ideas for Adventure Travelers
• Travel Gear You Can Buy at the Hardware Store
• How to Travel  Light and Low Budget

Do you have a favorite piece of travel gear from a non-traditional source? Share your affordable equipment hack below.

Photo Credit: Amazon.com

As much as I love using caribiners, sometimes they just don’t cut it. Either there’s no hook inside the bathroom door or shower stall, or the pole that you could otherwise clip it to in order keep your bag off the ground is too wide to accommodate your caribiner at all. While these issues don’t arise that much during luxury cruises or resort-style getaways, they sure come up during long term independent or adventure travel where going light and low budget is critical. Two ways to use s-hooks to your full advantage?

Create a hook where there is none.

This is great in those bathroom stalls with wet floors. Using an s-hook over the top lip of the hinged door, create your own spot to hang a pocketbook, day pack, backpack or any tote bag type of item you don’t want on the floor getting dirty. It also helps keep them out of reach and out of view of thieves walking by who could reach under the door gap and grab your gear while you are otherwise engaged with answering the call of nature. Hey, it happens.

The hybrid approach.

We like to keep large caribiners permanently clipped to the loops on the tops of our packs. When hooks and properly sized poles are available, it takes three seconds to get your pack or purse out of the way. When they are not, having an s-hook in a readily accessible side pocket is the next best thing. Just hook it over the pole or stall door and use your caribiner as normal. I wouldn’t recommend this for hooking your pack on the side of a truck or off the back pole of a tuk-tuk, but for stationary situations it can save the day.

I’ll admit that finding the large thin s-hooks even at various hardware chains can be a bit of a pain. The safest bet that works for us every time is Ikea. They even have large thin s-hooks that are flat instead of tubular. The regular ones would work fine of course, but the flat ones can provide extra stability. Do you use s-hooks for anything else on the road? Do you have another inside travel tip to share? Sing out loud in our comment section below!

Photo Credit: Ikea

When reading Beth Whitman’s book on traveling to India, one particular tip popped out at me. For locations where the restroom’s infrastructure won’t handle toilet tissue being flushed down it, or if there isn’t a restroom at all other than the nearest privacy-providing bush, you will need to bring your own tie-up tote bag to secure your waste paper in. (And of course, you’ll need to have your own toilet tissue supply most of the time too.) Receptacles to toss your toilet paper into will often be overflowing or nonexistent. Tossing it into a bag you can tie up and tote back to your hotel for proper disposal is apparently key.

But what about those of us who are trying to support the reduced use of plastic bags? Well, in addition to regular trash bags, Perf Go Green has a product for roll out doggy doo bags as well. The come in a conveniently sized box with a dispenser slot. All of their bags break down into bio mass in anaerobic land fill environments with absolutely no toxic fume production. Love that! So if you are running into the “tote your own toilet paper” problem in India or other developing country, pick up some Perf Go Green dog poop bags. Problem solved.

Photo Credit: Perf Go Green