21 Day Summer Travel Capsule
Right now, I am preparing for 3 consecutive weeks of travel. First I’ll be in Amsterdam for a week, then near Zurich for a week, all for work. Next, I fly straight to Washington DC to meet up with Kirsten’s and my family for a few days at the lake then a few days of touring Washington DC.
With different locations, and both work and family trips blended together, creating a travel capsule for this trip is a challenge of serious proportions. And I still need to fit everything in my carryon!
A travel capsule is a curated selection of clothes that all work together to create maximum outfits with minimum pieces of clothing. I always start by deciding which shoes I need based on what I’ll be doing. Then I figure out the clothing.
For the activities I will be doing on this trip, I’m going to need some running shoes, a stylish loafer I can walk all day in, and a cute flat sandal that can dress up some casual clothing a bit but still be ok to walk in. Here’s the shoes I picked to help me stay stylish for Europe and still be comfortable while walking cobblestone streets and appropriate for vacation with the family.
Born Iwa Sandle and On Cloud Fives Runners
The Paisley lug loafer by Paul Green for all day walking comfort
With this being summer, and based on my shoe choices, I decided on a color palette of Beige & Blue for this travel capsule. Navy blue is one of my favorite neutral clothing colors and I have a lot of it in my existing wardrobe so I don’t need to buy anything new.
Simple travel capsule guide
I will be gone for 21 days which is longer than my standard 7-10 day trip. There are lots of different formulas out there to determine how many items to put in a travel capsule. One of my favorite minimalist approaches is dividing the number of days I’m traveling by 3. That determines how many “bottoms” I’ll need. In this case that means I’ll target 7 bottoms, including pants, shorts and skirts.
Next, I look at having enough tops and layering pieces so each bottom works for at least 3 outfits. Ideally that’s no more than the number of bottoms x2. That means 14 or less “tops” for this capsule. That includes the blazer and linen cacoon wrap I’m planning to pack as layering tops. I’m also planning to bring several tank tops and T-shirts I can dress up or down with accessories. I’ll bring one of my technical outdoors tops from Stio for any hiking in Europe and for sun protection at the lake too.
Adding some pattern and color pop that works with blue and beige pants
Next comes the other items like underwear, socks, pajamas, jewelry, scarves and a jacket. I align underwear count to the number of bottom pieces. It helps with planning when I’ll need to do laundry. Sock count is dependent on shoes. In this case 3 pairs should be plenty since I only need them for my running shoes, which I’ll use mostly on the weekends. My PJs are shorts which can be worn casually at the family portion of the trip too. I’ll only bring one neutral scarf and one necklace for dressing outfits up a bit more in the evening. I’ll also need a raincoat in case of summer storms.
Full packing list based on capsule guide
That’s the basic formula. Next I pull everything out so I can make sure I’m happy with what I picked to fill in the pieces for each category in my list. I double check things coordinate in outfits as intended.
I packed my bathing suit inside my runners
There’s a second compression cube under the one you see. By packing them more flat I could stack them.
The final step is to load clothes into my compression packing cubes and make sure it all fits in the carry on. I don’t include the outfit, shoes and coat I will wear on the flight over.
It’s all in there, now I just need to make sure it zips!
Packed except for the clothes and shoes I’ll travel in. 7 bottoms, 11 tops, 4 pairs of shoes and all the extras in my carryon.
That’s the step by step for how I came up with my Beige & Blue travel capsule for 21 days of travel covering Europe and Washington DC!
-Jenny
