Travelling with a lot less clothes

We had planned a road trip in August but put it off because of the smoke. When we told friends we were going to Red Deer, they would reply with such clever retorts as: “Did you lose a bet?” “Who did you p---- off?” and others I can’t write here. Jealous, I guess. We chose Red Deer because Carol has never been to Central Alberta and I worked there for four years and haven’t been back since 1988. We were there last week and enjoyed it very much.

We love to holiday and we have become fond of quick getaways of a week or less. The parts of travel I dislike are getting there, getting back and packing and unpacking.

Since I don’t have a feel for which pants go with which shirt it’s probably a little harder for me than for some, I tend to take too many clothes and I spend every vacation schlepping heavier luggage than need be.

For those reasons I decided to take the Six Items or Less Challenge. (I know, it should be Fewer. I didn’t name it).

Six Items or Less is a challenge where you basically live for a month with just six items of clothing. Holy! It began as an experiment among friends and quickly became a global movement questioning the power of what we don’t wear. The experiment is simple.

Each participant gets to choose six items of clothing and pledges to wear only these six for 30 days.

There are, for obvious reasons, exceptions that don’t count toward the six. Undergarments, work-out clothes, swim wear, work uniforms, outerwear (coats and jackets), shoes and accessories.

You can use multiples of the same item for laundry purposes, but different colours count as separate items.

This idea strikes me as more a woman thing than a man thing. I don’t know the gender mix of the original group, but it doesn’t matter — this should work as well for both. I decided to try it for our Red Deer trip.

I didn’t do well. I knew the weather would be cooler and that just put extra stress on me. Luckily, coats, jackets and shoes were exempt.

I decided to mention the Six Items Challenge in case you wanted to investigate it further, but it’s not for me. I guess I’ll continue being the Sherpa for all our travels.

At least it allows me to take whatever (and how-ever-many) clothes I damn well please. I mean, I know how to diet, but that doesn’t mean I’m skinny.

Fred Trainor is a retired broadcaster living in OK Falls. fredtrainor@shaw.ca.