Everything I'm Packing For My Month-Long Trip To Europe

Starting September 1, I'm embarking on a month-long sabbatical where I'll visit five different countries, meet multiple friends to family, and attend one wedding along the way. Although I craft shopping content around everything from the best travel bags to accessories, putting my professional skills into practice is still incredibly intimidating — a.k.a., what's shaping up to be the trip of my lifetime is also shaping up to be the packing-feat of my lifetime. In order to help myself work through this process (and to keep my travel-shopping stories really real), I decided to detail my personal packing experience right here: from luggage to clothing and all the little items in between.

As someone whose last major international adventure took place a decade ago, my travel-savvy muscles were more than a little atrophied. To warm myself back up, I combed through past R29 packing coverage (there's a ton) and distilled the major takeaways down into a four-step strategy. Step 1: Find the right luggage; Step 2: Calculate travel outfits; Step 3: Minimize; Step 4: Pack like a pro. Ahead, while I won't go into complete item by item details, I will overview these steps as a shoppable guide including many of the products I'm actually bringing with me on my month-long hiatus. Scroll on to peep my plan and holler at me in the comments below with your favorite travel tips to packing hacks and must-have items for lengthy trips abroad.