How to Pack for 40 Days in Europe — Honest Capsule Edit

I started packing a month early. Forty days is a long time to be gone, and I don’t have a great track record with this kind of thing. I’m pretty good at getting things wrong, so I gave myself a running start.

In the beginning, I was going to cull down to my favorites. My best stuff. Pack the version of me who looks put-together every single day, who could throw something on and be ready for anything. I did a whole pre-pack around that idea: pulled my best things and my favorite everyday pieces, ran a dry test to figure out how big a bag I’d even need. And then, because I couldn’t quite decide, and I didn’t want to put it all away and start from scratch again later, I left it sitting on the floor of my bedroom. All week.

That week did something I hadn’t planned on. I ended up living out of that suitcase… but just half of it, and I quietly ignored the rest. Every morning, I reached into the same stack and never once touched the other half, which was mostly aspirational dress-up stuff. Too-heavy sweaters, ornate scarves that matched exactly one outfit, a lace prairie dress... the pieces I’d put in there, believing that although they'd been in the back of my closet for months, I was a woman who always wore them. Sigh.

Here’s the question: why hadn’t I worn any of it yet? I live in Los Angeles, a where entire industries are centered around looking good, so it would seem like the best possible place to put a good wardrobe to use. If I didn’t reach for those clothes here, where beauty is a currency, what was I waiting for?

It wasn’t going to, because it isn’t the life I live. I work from home, digitally. I might leave the house once or twice a day. Kid drop-offs, dance class, the grocery store. Normal people stuff. I start almost every morning in loungewear because putting on a belted outfit to sit alone and answer emails seems anticlimactic. And I live in a beach town. Santa Monica is its own mix of a trendy beachside town and a fancy-pants celeb hotspot. Baseline is casual, and I love that. I am Californian through and through… this isn’t a wardrobe I’m failing to live up to; it’s my go-to lifestyle I am not seeing right in front of me.

So, everything that belonged to the imaginary dress-up me got re-evaluated. Did I like this item because it's pretty? Or did I like it because it's pretty on me? I tried everything on again. I imagined myself going to the market in it, heading to the beach on the metro, walking Vi to Spanish classes....would I wear it? Sitting for hours on a train? While sweating my way across cobblestones with my massive suitcase? That helped me get clear on what I needed and what looked right for most occasions. I found the pieces that made me feel like my laid-back California self, but also passed for stylish Euro.

The owner of the Airbnb sent me a laughing emoji when I asked about sweaters at night. So the suitcase got a trimming and a gut check. I needed that week of distance to tell fantasy from reality; the first day I packed everything looked like favorites, but left alone for seven days, the impostors gave themselves away.

I did give myself a couple of packing indulgences, and it’s the opposite of the cull. One, I brought my favorite Free People Swim cover-up that has so much fabric it could double as a duvet for a small bed, and a fluffy, leopard-skin tafetta bubble skirt (ridiculous, yes) because Milan. These two items are oversized and irresponsible to bring. So I vacuum-seal them down to astronaut meal-sized and hope the fashion opportunity arises.

I also left room for finding something special abroad, those one-of-a-kind pieces I’d never find at home. And here’s the key: I need to get something I would actually fold into the regular rotation. That’s the part I’m trying to get better at: not buying the precious thing I have to wait for a special occasion to wear, but choosing something that fits daily life in Santa Monica, and then genuinely wearing it. A beautiful thing you never use isn’t a treasure; it’s laundry with a passport stamp.

So it’s not two tidy bags. It’s a checked bag at the weight limit, with vacuum-compacted everything, a carry-on, and a smaller roller with a backpack stacked on top. My own little raft of luggage, rolling behind me through every train platform and ferry terminal in Italy while my family pushes our whole life from one place to the next. The load is real. Sometimes the lesson in travel is that my burdens are mine to carry wherever I go. At least this time I did the work to make sure those little burdens work for me and make me look good.

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