# A Minimalist Packing List for One Month of Slow Travel
Last spring we spent thirty days moving through three cities in Portugal and Spain with a single carry-on bag that weighed 7.2 kilograms. That’s it. No checked luggage, no second bag, no “just in case” duffel. We’re not saying this to impress you — we’re saying it because for years we packed like we were preparing for a siege, and it made every trip worse.
The first time we tried to pack light, we failed completely. We brought 22 items of clothing for a ten-day trip and wore maybe eight of them. The bag was 14 kilos, our shoulder hurt, and we spent half the trip annoyed at how much we were carrying. So we started writing down what we actually used, trip after trip, and cutting everything that never made the list twice.
This is the minimalist packing list we’ve settled on for a month of slow travel. It fits in a 35-liter bag and leaves room for a book and a bag of coffee.
Clothing: five days, not thirty
The rule we follow now: pack for five days, no matter how long the trip is. A month of slow travel means we’ll have access to a washing machine at least once a week, usually in the apartment we’re renting. There’s no point hauling thirty outfits when laundry exists.
Here’s what’s in our bag:
– 5 t-shirts (three plain cotton, two merino for hiking days) – 1 long-sleeve shirt – 2 pairs of pants (one chino, one lightweight trail pant) – 1 pair of shorts that double as swim trunks – 5 pairs of underwear, 4 pairs of socks (all merino) – 1 light hoodie or fleece – 1 packable rain shell – 1 pair of everyday shoes, 1 pair of sandals
That’s the whole clothing list. We wear the heaviest pair of shoes on the plane so they don’t count against the bag. The merino pieces are the one place we spend real money, because they can go four or five wears without smelling, which means fewer washes and fewer items overall.
The tech that earns its weight
We work on the road, so we carry more electronics than a pure vacationer would. But we’ve cut this down hard over the years, and we’ve learned that smaller and lighter beats more features every single time.
Current setup: a 13-inch laptop, one USB-C charger that powers everything, our phone, wired earbuds, and a tiny 10,000 mAh power bank. That’s it. No camera — our phone is good enough now. No tablet, no Kindle, no Bluetooth speaker, no extra cables. Every time we’ve added a “nice to have” gadget, we’ve regretted it by day four.
One honest warning: if you edit video or run heavy software, a 13-inch ultrabook won’t cut it and you’ll need to carry something heavier. But for writing, email, and the occasional spreadsheet, this setup is all we’ve needed for two years.
Toiletries and the stuff people forget
We keep a permanently-packed toiletry pouch so we never have to think about it. Inside: a toothbrush, a small tube of toothpaste, deodorant, a travel-size bar of soap that works for body and hair, sunscreen, a razor, and about twelve ibuprofen. Everything else we buy where we land if we actually need it.
The items people forget but that save real hassle: a packable shopping tote, a small first-aid pouch with bandages and blister tape, a sleep mask and earplugs, and a 2-meter charging cable. We’d trade almost any clothing item for that extra-long cable. Hotel outlets are never where you want them.
What we’d leave behind next time
We’re not going to pretend we’ve perfected this. Last trip we brought a second pair of shoes and a small journal we never opened, and both annoyed us the whole month. The shoes got donated to a hostel shelf in Granada. The journal came home untouched.
The lesson we keep relearning is that packing light isn’t about sacrifice. It’s about noticing what you actually use and refusing to carry everything else. Every kilogram we leave at home is a kilogram we don’t drag up a flight of stairs in a building with no elevator, and every item we don’t bring is a decision we don’t have to make.
One thing we learned the hard way: weather changes fast, and a minimalist packing list has to bend with it. For a month across Portugal and Spain in spring, we needed a rain layer some days and sunscreen the next. That’s why the rain shell and the hoodie earn their spot even when the forecast looks perfect — they’re the two most borrowed items when a trip turns cold or wet. Pack for the season’s worst realistic day, not the best-case forecast, and you’ll stop buying emergency layers in overpriced tourist shops.
If you’re staring at a pile on your bed right now, here’s the test we use: will you use this in the first five days? If the answer is no, it stays home. That single question has cut our packing list by more than half.