Packing has been a big part of our sabbatical planning for months. We committed early to packing light — partly because we’ll be moving constantly, and partly because the less we carry, the easier it’ll be to get from place to place. After a few years of watching for sales, we finally landed on our bags: Justin’s 70L Osprey Farpoint and my matching 55L Osprey Fairview. Both can open like a suitcase or be worn like a backpack, which feels like the best of both worlds.
Once the bags were sorted, the real challenge began: fitting a year’s worth of life into 125 litres.
For months, anything that seemed “sabbatical‑worthy” got tossed into a corner of our bedroom.
This past week, we finally tackled the pile — sorting out the must‑haves (medication, passports, charging cords) from the nice‑to‑haves (binoculars, towels, adult goggles). Then came the finalized clothes and shoes.
Our packing strategy is simple: we’re never more than a week away from a washing machine. Most of our travel will be in 20–35°C weather, and we’ll buy winter coats in Japan when we finally hit colder temperatures.
Here’s what we ended up for the each of the girls:
Everything fits into their individual packing cubes, with sandals, hats, and swimsuits tucked into the communal Swim cube.
And for the adults:
We each have a compression cube to help squeeze everything down to something resembling “reasonable.”
We added a first‑aid kit and a large amount of medication. Here’s what we picked for our over the counter collection of medications, which was all distilled down into our very own travel medicine cabinet. Hopefully this enough to get us through the year, but at the least, it should be enough to get us to the nearest pharmacy to stock back up.
Prescription meds were a different story. We needed four large bags to hold everything, but the silver lining is that most of it will be used during our time in Kenya. After that, we’ll reclaim a bit of suitcase real estate.
Toiletries, a laundry kit, an electronics kit, and all the miscellaneous bits that didn’t fit anywhere else rounded out the packing. After some wrestling with zippers and a few strategic re‑shuffles, every bag finally closed.
