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Traveling? Don't Forget Me
Power Trip · October 6, 2003

On a recent trip to Quebec City, Canada, I opened my suitcase to find that a mission-critical item hadn't made it with me. It was something so essential to the success of my trip, in fact, that immediate action needed to be taken.

I'd forgotten to bring any underwear.

I found a department store the following morning and bought several replacement undergarments, but I made the mistake of confiding my forgetfulness to a colleague attending the same meeting I was. Within a few hours, everyone knew about my predicament. I had to endure underwear jokes for the rest of the conference.

As downright dumb as this was, a survey by British travel agency Thomson Holidays finds that I'm hardly alone when it comes to leaving vital travel items behind. The travel survey found that one in five travelers leaves toiletries such as shampoo, toothbrushes and toothpaste behind. One in 10 forgets to bring shoes, and one in 20 leaves his or her entire suitcase at home.

I feel much better knowing that. And after hearing some of your stories, well, I'm not as embarrassed as I was before:

• Take Sommer Gentry, a graduate student from Cambridge, Mass. She constantly forgets to bring disposable razors on her trips. "I wish that hotels would offer me a razor instead of 12 useless bottles of lotion in the bathroom," she grouses.

• For Pat Griggs, it's something almost as humiliating as leaving underwear: deodorant. Griggs, a private educational consultant in Earleville, Md., points out that forgetting anything at home is something of a professional slip-up, too. As someone who works on a special project with senior citizens, "Memory is a really important issue, and there are times when we make outrageous jokes about forgetting," she says.

• Of all the things Justin Wizard, a writer in Chloe, W.Va., has left behind, he says his glasses were the most painful. "My contact lenses start to hurt after eight hours," he says. Not having glasses forced him to keep the dry corrective lenses in his eyes longer. Ouch! But he's also forgotten to bring his shaver (I've done that too) and toothbrush.

How to not forget

I'm not a memory expert, and as Griggs would probably tell you, even a memory expert sometimes forgets. But if you're a frequent traveler or if you travel on business, you know that your forgetfulness can be more than inconvenient — it can also affect the productivity of your trip. For example, I missed a scheduled meeting because I had to go underwear shopping in Quebec City. (Fortunately, everyone understood my absence, even if they thought it was hilarious.)

How to prevent such memory lapses? Here are three tips:

Keep a list. Even if you travel very frequently, and always pack the same thing, keep a list. I repeat: Keep a list. Not necessarily because you might forget (even though you might), but because packing for a trip is sometimes a low priority. So you find yourself throwing everything into a suitcase while a cab idles outside your front door. That's when you can forget to bring something important, like your laptop computer.

Keep your bags packed. Kathleen Pierz, a consultant from Clarkston, Mich., pre-empts her forgetful streak by preparing her luggage in advance of her trip. "To avoid not only leaving items at home but also the stress that comes with packing for a trip, I essentially have a fully packed travel kit that stays in my carry-on bag," she says. What's in it? In addition to toiletries, it has dry-cleaning sheets to lift stains from clothing, a small pair of inexpensive reading glasses and first-aid essentials. Her family mocks her for being a "bag lady," but she says it's made for less-frenzied business trips.

Think before you leave. Take a second before you run out the door and ask yourself: "Did I miss anything?" That's something Jeanie Schneider wishes she had done before she left on a trip with her former husband, who is a diabetic. "We made it all the way to the airport for a trip to California before realizing that we had forgotten his insulin," recalls the customer service representative from Brooklyn, N.Y. "We had to go all the way back home to get it, then back to the airport." Fortunately, they still made their flight.

If you neglect to bring something along, don't worry. It's not the end of the road. Most places have drug stores and shopping malls, which can help get your trip back on track. Take it from the proud owner of Canadian underwear.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Key Largo, Fla. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.

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