Addiction, or obsession, rules – even in the luggage shop

My daughter looks at me wryly.  I know what she’s going to say – she’s sitting on my bed looking at the top shelf of my wardrobe.

This is what she can see.

“Why have you got three cases the same size?”

I explain: the red one is a hard-shell case and I use that for my checked luggage, it has two expandable zips; the lavender one on top of it is the one I use for weekends away, and I know, should have checked the size of that before I bought the dark blue one last week – which was to replace my small red carry-on bag which I had to jettison during my recent travels after a bedbug scare!  I thought it was smaller than the lavender one.

However, I know I have been sprung: I have a luggage obsession – what else can I say? 🙂

So, I’ve got all my bags out and photographed them just for you!  Do you have a luggage obsession?  Do you find it difficult to walk past a shop selling luggage?  I do.  I wonder if there is a word as describes an addiction to luggage – a luggage-aholic perhaps.  If so, I’m one.

Here are my bags – and they don’t even show my many multi-coloured handbags (do Americans still call them pocketbooks or some-such word – the ones you take when you go to the café, library, mall etc) – although I now notice my yellow handbag in a photo – recently bought in Malaysian Borneo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, this is the last bag shop I went in to.  It takes time to compare and contrast the pros and cons of each bag!

It’s on Lambton Quay in the Wellington CBD.  I went there to get a small, hard covered carry on suitcase to keep my photographic gear, my laptop, or tablet, and of course all the bits and pieces needed to keep them going when you’re on the road.  Leads, battery chargers, power plug converters: you know, all the things that weigh so much in our luggage.  They are also the most important things in my travels.  I can replace clothes or toiletries really easily, but not so my electronic gear.  (Of course, when I started my long distance, long-term, solo travel  (1995)I didn’t have any of those.  Just a little camera with film.)

After some time, comparing, opening, wheeling, and checking the weight of hard-shell cases, I decided although they are great, that they keep your gear safer and, you cannot overpack  – I also realised you have to open them completely to get the offending, suspect gear out, when going through security.

I prefer a carry-on that has a front pocket big enough to put everything that needs to be screened in the one place and pull it out quickly – so not holding up the line and having to repack at the other end  – to be checked as I go through security.

So that long-winded explanation is how I explained to my daughter why last week I bought a suitcase almost the same size as my lavender one, but with a better pocket on the front – well, that’s my reasoning – it didn’t wash with her either 🙂