The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Our family is leaving on our annual July escape, running across the country and seeing how many miles we can put on our truck and our camper. My wife and I are both teachers, so even though this time of year is probably the most beautiful there is in this part of the country, we need to take the opportunity to escape for a few weeks with our boys. We've been fortunate enough to do a fair amount of traveling. We traveled when our kids were little, moving in to the homes of relatives like Caesar invading England. Mounds of playpens and toys, diapers, and clothes. As our kids got a bit older, we saw the piles shrink into a more reasonable size. But now, as we get ready to go again, we are seeing the size of one bag grow each year - our gadget bag. You probably have one of your own. It's the bag that holds your laptop, your camera, its cords, etc., etc. It seems never ending, and this year, it has grown even more. We've always carried an extra bag for books, pencils, puzzle books and stuff like that for our kids. We also have a bag of just general toys for the kids to play with over the month we are gone. Between these two bags, there used to be enough room to hold our gadgets, but not anymore. This year we are taking: a laptop and charger; three mp3 players and a charge cord for them; a cell phone and its charger cord; two digital cameras and their cords; random DVDs; two Nintendo DS Lites, their cords and a bag of games; and finally, two sets of headphones. Besides having far too much stuff and having spent far too much money on electronic goodies, the scary thing is that I don't think we are very unusual. Flickr, the photo sharing site that millions of people use, has a pool of gadget bag photos. Just go to Flickr and search for whatsinyourbag and you will be absolutely amazed by what turns up. It seems some people have more gadgets than actual luggage when they go on a trip. The trouble with a lot of this stuff is always the extras. It's okay to take your camera, your cell phone, your mp3 player, and your laptop. The problem is that by taking these things, you need to bring their cords and maybe batteries for them as well. Bad Experiences Over the last several years I've had a couple of bad experiences with leaving behind the plug-ins for my laptop and, more recently, my cell phone. No big deal I thought, I can just order another one. That is until I found out the price of chargers: $100 for my laptop and over $50 for my cell phone. Definite motivation to look a little harder for them and make a few phone calls to different hotels asking if they've found them. As you get organized for summer and prepare to do some traveling, here are a few ideas to keep yourself organized. First, find a bunch of twist ties to keep all of your cords organized. I keep them all wrapped up and in their own bag that I keep away from everything else. This reduces your stuff by half almost automatically. I keep some stuff in my suitcase and some stuff closer to hand if I'm going to use it all of the time. My cell phone and iPod are never too far away, while my camera might stay in my suitcase until I need it. I also make my kids look after their own stuff. While I make sure they've got it all when we leave, they need to haul their own stuff around in their suitcase or backpacks. My idea is to keep the amount of clutter in any place at any one time down to a minimum. While it is still all there, it makes it much easier to haul around if you keep it organized. ([email protected]) Tech Notes runs Mondays.
