Three Travel Items We Can't Live Without || Carry-On Travel Essentials

When we travel abroad, we pack our lives into a carry-on no matter how long the trip may be. We’ve packed for seven days, ten days, fourteen days, and (or biggest) sixteen days.

While we haven’t mastered the art of packing as light as possible, we’ve paired it down far beyond we thought possible. You may be working toward a similar goal of traveling carry-on only, so we wanted to make this post and share three travel items we can’t live without. Some of our carry-on essentials.

Obviously we bring our phones, passport, laptop, cameras, etc. This post is going to be three things that you may not think of bringing, but can be super important on your travel. We’ll be following up this post with three items we never bring, but for now let’s dive into the essentials.

The above photo is the carry-on we travel with. It’s from ROAM Luggage and we are thoroughly obsessed. It’s incredible quality, the perfect size, and you can customize the colors. Use this link for $50 off.

Essential #1 - Packable Jacket

The thing we’ve always regretted leaving town without is a jacket. Not necessarily a jacket for warmth, but a multi-purpose jacket that can keep us warm, dry, and safe from wind and other unfortunate weather.

When we were looking for the perfect travel jacket it took us a few tries, but we finally found it at Walmart of all places. It’s the Time and Tru Lightweight Anorak Jacket, and it comes in at less than $30.

Like the name suggest, it’s lightweight, but still does wonders against temperatures in the forties. Add a few layers underneath and you could make it into the 20s and 30s. It’s waterproof with a hood and has come in handy during many storms. Plus it has huge pockets that are great for storing gloves, your phone, or your mask for places that require face coverings.

It comes in black, olive green, and an adorable pink. We both own the green and Joanie B. has the pink coat for a little extra flair.

Our favorite part is that this little baby can fit into a purse, y’all! it folds up and packs so easily, so essentially it takes up no room in a carry-on. Super win!

This photo is from Jacksonville, Illinois. Pictured (from left to right), Joanie B., Gwenn (Blessings on State), Mayor or Jacksonville, and Jenni wearing the awesome jacket.

Essential #2 - Cold Medicine

This one seems weird, but track with us…

On every international trip we’ve been on, one of us gets sick. We can go the entire year without so much as a sniffle, and you put us on a plane and fly us to Europe and we feel like death warmed up a few days later.

The first Viking Cruise we took we didn’t bring cold medicine and we ended up missing two ports because we were so sick. Now we don’t leave on a trip without it.

Our go-to “pharmacy” to pack includes NyQuil/DayQuil, Tylenol, Benadryl, Zyrtec, and Pepto. The point is… don’t assume you won’t get sick, get a headache, or need some sort of allergy relief. It’s small. Pack it and you’ll never regret it.

Jenni in Budapest, Hungary after spending the day in bed with a fever (no cold medicine).

Essential #3 - Portable Charger

Picture this… you’re in the middle of Venice, Italy using your GPS to find an iconic bookstore. You spend a whole ten minutes in the bookstore, walk around the city a bit more, and hit a wall of people, which causes a panic attack. You pull your phone out to use the GPS to get back to the ship and… it’s dead.

Sounds like a nightmare, right? Yeah, well most of that happened to us except for the phone being dead part, because we always bring a portable charger.

We’ve gone through so many different kinds like Mophie, but we always forget to charge the portable charger, rendering it completely useless. But a few years ago we were sent the MyCharge portable charger that you can plug directly into the wall to charge PLUS it has the cords you need to charge your devices connected. All you need to remember is the charger itself.

Life. Saver.

It’s super affordable and has come in handy on road trips, long flights, and in the middle of foreign countries. The charger itself is smaller than our cell phone, so packing it is a breeze.

The bookstore in Venice that we used our GPS to find.

There are a ton of other things we never leave home without, but those are the top three that have been life savers here in the US and abroad.

Let us know in the comments what your top three travel essentials are. Maybe we’ll need to add those to our suitcase on our next trip.