Luggage. Our goal: to reduce it this time!

If you scroll down a bit, you'll find an entry from our last cruise about the self-serve debarcation and what we had to do in order to manage it. Here's the list of luggage items that we brought onboard for 3 people for 1 week last year:

• 4 standard rolling suitcases of various sizes
• 1 rolling garment bag (which I didn't realize was a rolling bag until this morning)
• 2 canvas duffel bags
• 1 really heavy backpack (storage for the laptop, the DVD collection, and the physics book)

This trip, I, for one, am not going to contribute my 2-2/3 bags to the total. I want to put my entire cruise wardrobe into a single bag.

There are a couple of good reasons for this. First, I want to fly down without
luggage. That means that my bag has to fit (along with everyone else's) in whatever my husband and parents end up driving to Houston.

Second, somehow, 9 of the 14 of us have to get back to the airport, without leaving our luggage at the cruise terminal. That means it has to fit back into that same car/truck/SUV/bus. I don't think we'll all be traveling at once, and our flight back isn't until evening, but still - if the bags outnumber the people, that has to mean more trips to get everyone where they need to go.

Finally, I want to drag off again. It's less confusing, and we don't have to worry about our luggage taking another trip through the Western Caribbean without us.

Future posts about how the minimalism works out. For starters: can I really go a week on only 3 pairs of shoes?