This May I had a trip to San Diego from DC. Exciting! Either good or bad, I only travel with a carry on.  How do you make two weeks on the other side of the country work? Capsule wardrobe!

The main reason I needed to go to San Diego was for Costume Con.  Unfortunately, I’ve had one of the craziest years where I’ve barely managed to get through some days.  Forget making new costumes.  Carry on only?  It was the nail in the coffin.  The trip was awesome, I learned a lot of great stuff, I was able to have some meetings about web design/social media needs, and I was able to attend the International Costumers’ Guild Board of Directors meeting. All good things.

I used my handy dandy new packing cubes, and got creative.  Check out my wardrobe:

Impressive, but I got all of this in a single packing cube!

Packing List:

• Lightweight summer sweater – coral/pink
• 5 pairs full-length leggings (3 Disney because… SoCal!)
• 2 lightweight blouses – 1 grey and 1 black
• 3 pairs capri-length leggings
• 1 half-sleeve blouse – turquoise
• 1 dressy sweater – black
• 4 dresses (the bottom three are LLR Carly’s)
• 1 maxi skirt – floral
• 1 black knee-length ruffled skirt

For the record, I actually wore one Carly dress and pair of capri leggings from this photo to fly each way. I’m all about going as comfortable to the airport as possible because flights are long. There’s zero need to be constricted or anything.  No one wants to try to pull something from a carry on bag and change in an airline toilet.

Another packing cube held my undergarments and swimsuit.

This sure doesn’t look like a lot, but I got creative with my dress form and realized… I had nearly 90 outfits with this wardrobe! What?

 

Seriously… isn’t that insane? Whew. Crazy crazy.

Yes, there’s a lot of repetition, but that’s OK.  I didn’t feel bored at all.  I love the Carly dress because it can be worn as a dress or as a shirt. You can also wear a top over it so it becomes a skirt.  This garment is super versatile.

In total: 19 articles of clothing and 68 outfits.  I was able to go from day to night simply by adding the light summer sweater.  Using a black sweater top/black blouse and ruffled black skirt bottom, I formed a great Little Black Dress option for both day and evening, but also left myself open to mixing the items in to other outfits. I love the LBD as much as the next gal, however making my “LBD” work for me in more ways brought joy to my little carry-on heart.

If you are curious: Two blouses, capri leggings, mermaid leggings come from MyLaLa Leggings; dresses, turquoise blouse, maxi skirt, and other leggings are LulaRoe. The other three items came from local stores.

What do you think of capsule wardrobes and traveling carry-on? Can you succeed?

–Lady O