Should You Check Your Bag?

Posted on by Forest in General

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In a week i’ll be landing in Auckland, New Zealand. Starting my journey at New York’s JFK airport it’ll be the longest trip of my life! Sadly as I am going for 5-months I have to check my 23kg bag. I’ve been minimalising my stuff and have my whole life in that 23kg but I really, really wish I didn’t even need that! I wish I could survive solely with my carry on.

Should You Check Your Bag?

Maybe one day I will be able to. Checking bags isn’t that much hassle but if you have ever flown a flight without doing it you’ll realise how much more painless the whole thing is. No waiting at each end, in-between flights and no dragging bags around the airport trying to get to buses and taxi stands.

So I travel with about 23kg check in and around 8kg carry on right now, this I think is still too much even though it is my entire life! I look at people like Wandering Earl who travelled the Middle East with around 16lbs. He breaks down everything in the post How Does A Digital Nomad Pack.

I would love to travel like Earl. Problems I find is that I carry all my stuff, paperwork, technology and clothing for cold and warm weather. It’s not possible at this point for me to store stuff around in various places because of the practical reasons. Checking that kind of ‘life’ baggage into a flight has problems. I fear it may go missing every time I see it go beyond the rubber stips into the unknown space between countries. I wander if things will get damaged or if I will end up somewhere waiting a few days for luggage to turn up.

I think I could get rid of baggage, especially as I work on simplifying my life, if I got rid of most clothes and a few keepsakes that I could drop off at my parents home. That would mean when I land in a country I would have to restock from maybe a used clothing warehouse and the drop off those clothes when I leave the country. It’s totally possible to do that and something I may consider in the future.

Delta, advertising it’s new tracking app, has put together this cool video about what happens to checked baggage.

So, should you check your baggage? Do the pros outweigh the cons? Have you ever had luggage go missing and was it recovered?

Thanks for reading.

Tags: bag limits, packing, travel