We just flew in from Oakland from a wedding. We decided before leaving that we didn't want to wait upwards of an hour for our luggage out of baggage claim, either direction. This meant travelling without any sort of liquid in our bags. No shampoo, conditioner, lipstick, mascara, foundation, liquid eyeliner face soap, deodorant, haircare products, or lotion. I decided to be creative. Hopefully this little guide can help YOU when you need to travel without checking your bags.
Any hotel will give you soap, face soap, shampoo, and conditioner. Nicer ones also include lotion. The one we were staying at didn't have the lotion and annoyingly had a shampoo/conditioner blend. All you need is a nearby drugstore and their handy sample size aisle. You will need to buy lotion (if not included in the hotel set), toothpaste, deodorant (or like the husband, get a small version of one of those crystal things and you can actually take that back on the plane), and chapstick.
Some decent lotion will do you good, you can use it not only for your face after you use the crappy face soap (or if you have sensitive skin, use the shampoo to wash your face) but also for a quick styling product before a blow dry (seriously, it works! The more control you need the heavier the lotion needs to be). For lipstick bring your matching lip pencil and buy a cheap chapstick, outline your lips, put on a light dose of chapstick and use the pencil to fill in, dab lightly with kleenex. Voilà, no one threw away your expensive lipstick.
Now what to do about foundation? At first I was going to just go with the pressed powder I only use over the foundation and just use dry pencil for eyeliner. However, at the drugstore I saw a stand I hadn't paid much attention to for many years. Wet n' Wild (So cheap they don't even have their own website!). The haven for poor pre-teenagers. I was able to buy liquid foundation for just $2.99! I could have gone in for some liquid eyeliner and some lipstick, too but I thought my substitutions would do nicely. Also I hated leaving so much stuff at the hotel that probably just got thrown away.
All of it worked really well and for only $11! Eleven dollars to not have to wait at both airports for over an hour each to get our bags. Well worth it. I am going to utilize this technique next weekend when we fly to Vermont for our 6th and (hopefully) last wedding of the Summer. Now if I could just devise a technique for turning the server back on automatically when the power goes out.
Posted by kerewin at September 10, 2006 04:18 PM