What are your must-have travel essentials? Hear me out, but the No. 1 thing I don’t leave home without is a roll of blue tape, also called painter’s tape. It’s the stuff you use to paint clean edges, keep paint off anything you don’t want painted or secure tarps to floors or walls. When you’re done, the tape lifts easily without taking part of the wall with it.
Thinking about travel essentials has led me to pondering Karl Malden’s ads for American Express Travelers Cheques that ran from 1973 to 1995. If you don’t know who Karl Malden is, then you likely have no clue what a travelers cheque is. One ordered them before travel (domestic or international) to use instead of cash. They lost favor around the turn of the last century, as foreign transactions because easier amid a rise in credit cards and ATMs where one could get cash in local currency. The American Express motto for Travelers Cheques was “Don’t Leave Home Without Them.”
Which brings me back to blue tape. I first started traveling with it during the seven months we lived in Belfast in 2017. Blue tape proved its usefulness around the flat and on our travels to tape curtains shut and block dots of light emitted by turned-off TVs, smoke detectors, vent hoods and anything else that was bugging me.
During our last trip, I affixed curtains to walls, blocked out red lights on TVs and used it to label our food in the common refrigerator in student housing at the University of Galway.
During our 7-month stint in Belfast, the management company affixed plastic signs to the landing on each floor imploring residents to keep the landings clear of bikes, prams, trash, etc. The glue that maintenance staff used wasn’t sufficient, and the signs soon hung askew or fell down.
Using my handy blue tape and an X-Acto knife (another useful tool for long trips), I taped the signs back up (not just on my floor but throughout the five-story building), taking particular care to ensure they were straight and that the edges were clean. I haven’t been back to those flats since we returned home, but I like to think the signs are still up, with dozens of people passing them daily and no one recognizing they were affixed by some dude who likes order and had the free time and tools to put them in their proper place.
You’re welcome.
Second Place: Tiny Fan
During this summer’s five-week trip to Dublin, Galway and Scotland, I quickly determined that I’d left home without hand sanitizer, a water bottle or my glasses case, the latter useful for storing my specs while plane “sleeping” and during my frequent visits to a lap pool.
But Marilynn and I did not forget our tiny fans, which are quite powerful despite being less than 5 inches round. These are new items among our travel essentials, and they proved valuable during the two weeks we spent at a Dublin flat last year while Marilynn was doing research in the National Library of Ireland. The fans are three-speed, make a decent bit of noise (this is a plus for us) and are powered by a USB. We carry an American electric adapter in the box for domestic use, but most international hotels and B&Bs have outlets that accept USB.
Don’t leave home without this, either.
Third Place: Medium Binder Clips
My laptop case always contains such travel necessities as extra AA and AAA batteries, charging cord and adapter for my phone, pens, ear plugs … and two or three binder clips, which around the house we call “chip clips.”
As you can imagine, we use them to close partially eaten packages of dry goods that go back in the pantry. On trips, however, they are also useful to ensure curtains stay closed where they meet in the middle. Blue tape keeps those same curtains affixed to the wall to keep any sleeping area as dark as possible.
Despite the length of our trip, we traveled with just carry-on bags. But blue tape, tiny fans and binder clips made the cut to travel with us.
To Europe ... and Back 