It’s been a year of airport chaos and problems with baggage handling have left many travelers struggling to reunite with their luggage.
Flying with only carry-on is as desirable as ever. But for one traveler, even that isn’t minimalist enough. She’s hitting the road with only a small, 12-liter shoulder bag.
Brooke Schoenman is an American woman living in Australia and the publisher of Her Packing List, a website which she uses to pass on her wisdom when it comes to whittling down what to take on the road.
And that’s something that she’s road-tested almost to the extreme.
Schoenman’s path to burden-easing enlightenment began when she studied in Italy before embarking on a post-graduate round-the-world trip. Along the way, she explored Guatemala and later worked teaching English in Ukraine before moving down under 13 years ago.
“I think I had a 55-liter backpack and a day pack that I wore on the front,” she tells CNN Travel of her first trip. “And that was me really trying to pack light. That was me thinking, ‘I don’t know how people do it with a 30-liter bag.’
“I didn’t use all those extra things that I packed.”
As she gained more experience as a traveler, she says packing light became more important to her.
