Traveling light

I am gone all of next week, and I love to pack. By the way, packing is another opportunity to put minimalism into practice.

In general, I am a light traveler and am proud of my packing skills. That said, I still always find myself carrying stuff that I never use on the trip. It is surprising how you think that while you haven't used that balm/spray/gel in a whole year, you'll somehow need it on the 3 day trip.

The last time D & I went away on a vacation, we went with one medium size day bag - rather a largish laptop backpack, and that was for the two of us, for 8 nights. And I still found that I had carried things that I didn't use.

Our entire luggage for the last 8-night getaway, and my wonder slippers

This time, i am trying to pare things really really thin.

Over my years of traveling, I have developed some beliefs about holiday travel:

1.  No matter how long your trip, you don't need more than 3 sets of clothes, including what you wear for the journey.

Use hotel laundry (your lordship), or like me, carry a detergent bar and a brush, wash and dry clothes overnight, every night. You can pare that number down further if you are carrying jeans. You'll of course add 1 pair of location specific clothing - swimwear, warm wear etc depending upon where you are going. On my vacation (to warm locations), I carry 1 pair of jeans, 1 cotton trousers, and a maximum of 3 T-shirts or the exceptionally soft mull fabric cotton tops (why? because they fold away into the size of a hanky, taking up no space at all. I could stick a folded top in a pant pocket. My current mull tops are from pricey fabindia though. I must find the fabric, must keep checking in at the new handloom store)

2. If you need to pack a pair of footwear, you are such a diva.

My travel staple is a pair of flat rubber/foam slippers from Bata (see below) that are as comfortable as bathroom slippers, but look marginally better. They cost me Rs. 170 in 2009, and have been to at least 5 short and long getaways with me since then. Great for beach - wet wear, and I can walk miles in them with no discomfort.

My travel slippers from Bata (sorry for the poor photo quality - my mobile cam is no good)

3. Toiletries - it is worth investing in a set of small travel bottles

If your trip is not longer than a week, then the toiletry supplies that you need is limited. Chances are you are either lugging the entire 400 ml bottle of shampoo / conditioner / moisturizer, or you are buying overpriced "travel-size" packs from the brand. Instead, find little plastic bottles from around the house, or go ahead and buy cheap little plastic vials, label them and fill them up from your bottles at home. (while shopping, cheap is the key factor - plain white plastic bottles will do - this is not an occasion to go shopping for tupperware) You save space in your bag, fit into the cabin luggage fluid allowance, have less weight to carry, and you don't end up over-paying for the pretty but pricey travel-size packs.

I agree that bath gels are convenient for travel (if your hotel doesn't give you soap), but I prefer to bring well used bar of soap with me that i can finish on the trip.


4. Tricky bits:

The important thing about non-basic toiletries is that often, we think of a vacation destination as a place to re-invent ourselves with some kind of a makeover - you imagine yourself doing things that you wish you were doing back at home (diligently groom, preen, polish). Chances are, you won't do anything differently. I see vacations as a time to run on economy mode, not on turbo mode. Scale down, scale down!

Moisturizer.

Think think think. Do you really need to carry that bottle? Do you moisturize at home? Is you vacation destination drying? Won't a tiny bottle of coconut oil do? (Parachute's travel bottles for about 5 bucks a pop is lovely, and I am sure the other coconut oil guys have them too)

Sunscreen.

I really, really don't know about this one, and am planning a whole post about sunscreens. Frankly, too much fear has been drilled into me about sun exposure and skin cancer, but I have a hard time believing that the ridiculously suspicious looking list of ingredients on a bottle of sunscreen is harmless for you. Like Tequila says in the comments section of this post, cover up. Wear longer sleeves, carry a hat or an umbrella.

To my vacation next week, I will cow down and carry a bottle of sunscreen, although my last trip still gave me nasty sun rashes even after using loads of sunscreen. But this time, i am carrying full-sleeve rash-guards, so there will be lesser exposed skin. I will still use the damn sunblock though, because of the skin-cancer brainwash. A propos, I wonder if those who tan really quickly and turn very dark have a lesser exposure risk. My skin behaves like those  photochromatic spectacles that no one seems to favoe these days - turning very very dark, very very quickly. I like to think that that somehow reduces my likelihood of burning or sun related problems... I must look it up.


Hand creme / anti-wrinkle creme / similar snake oils:
Oh come on.

My one travel indulgence, though, is a book.


I'll let you know how my extra-light packing attempt goes.Do share your thoughts/experiences/tips on traveling light.

Found a handloom wholesaler

In Anna Nagar, (2nd avenue, near Santosh) I found  a wholesaler selling fabric from Chirala, AP. Huge but unassuming godown, loads of fabric from soft clothing material to curtain and upholstry material. Great range of Kalamkari and "daboos" fabric that is lovely for making the kind of clothes I wear. There are nice soft, chanderi and raw silk varieties too.

I find that for retail customers who walk in, the pricing is a bit arbitrary - I got the feeling that they just randomly quoted a number. Price ranges from 85 - 100 bucks per  meter on an average, with expensive fabric retailing at Rs.120.

The range is great, the fabric quality is exceptional, and while I don't know if the price is a steal, buying 2.5 meters and having a kurti made will still work out to about 40% cheaper than buying at fabindia, which is the only readymade store where I've seen sensibly stitched kurtis in these fabrics.

I have a vague memory of Madarsha (Purasawakkam) having really cheap kalamkari fabric (I am talking about rs. 60 / meter), but not sure if it was the same fabric quality. Must walk into fabric stores in T Nagar too, and take a lookie.

There is also the good old pantheon road with its streetside fabric merchants, but again, must check t see how the quality compares.

Anyway, back to the wholesaler I found, a couple of my friends raided the place really well, while I remained true to my no-more-new-clothes mandate, didn't buy any. Bought some curtain material for MIL though, upon her request.

A propos the dress shopping embargo, the 40 kurta thing is still bugging me. I'm gonna give away at least 10. They are all well used, but still perfectly usable. Might as well give it now when someone can still use it. And if I pare my wardrobe down, later in the year I can eventually pick up some fabric for myself too, maybe  ;-B

Value : Stainless steel drinking bottles

Don't use plastic water bottles, for all the obvious reasons - they are polluting and unhealthy, not to mention wasteful.

The stainless steel bottles you see below are a great option. If you are in Chennai, Santosh in Anna Nagar carries them, and I assume so will any well-stocked steel utensil store like Rathna. They cost roughly between Rs. 150-200 depending upon the size, and will last for years.

The bottles come in sizes from 300 ml to a liter. Keep them at home, keep one in the car and drop a smaller one in your office bag, so you don't have to buy packaged water. Irrespective of the size, the heads are all the same, which means you can mix caps. And by the way, they come with a variety of caps - flat lids, looped ones like you see here, and even sippers which make them nice for kids (or cyclists).  I use the really small one (300 ML) to carry breakfast porridge to work, if I am going early. Oh by the way, the caps are made of plastic yes, but my water sits well below the neck, and since they make the bottle completely leakproof, I'll make my peace with them.

These bottles aren't insulated though, so if you leave your bottle in the sun, the contents will get warm. But the water will still smell and taste fine, unlike the plasticky smelling water from a regular bottles that've been left in the sun. Eek. (Packaged water sits in those plastic bottles for god knows how long before you get to drink it.)

Among reusable bottles, there are also Sigg bottles and their clones, and here is my gripe with them:  while they look snazzier, they are much more expensive, are made of aluminum, and to keep the aluminum from getting into your water, the inside is coated with "food-grade enamel"(which their CEO claims is safe). In any case, it all seems unnecessarily complicated, and why bother when there is simpler solution?

I remember using steel bottles for a while when I was a kid - the steel was of very thin gauge and used to get badly dented, and also, the bottles used to have a lot of ridges just like a Bisleri bottle, which was idiotic because the ridges were impossible to scrub clean on the inside. That way, I love the smooth curves of my current set of bottles, with no place for dirt to hide. I wash them with salt water, baking soda and a bottle brush.

Safe, reusable, and economical in the long run.

cleaning

Lemons / White Vinegar
Salt
Baking soda

If you have the above four, you can handle many cleaning situations at home.

While rinsing water bottles and flasks, use salt+baking soda to scour and rinse. The salt disinfects, and the soda deodorizes.

Use water+salt+vinegar solution to wipe kitchen countertops and table tops. It disinfects reasonably well, and the sour smell discourages flies.

These items are cheap and safe. Avoid using commercially available spray solutions - they are invariably harmful, expensive and the 100% germ killing is impractical, and in any case unnecessary.

12/02/2011

Thanks anonymous commenter, for the tip on using borax. Borax is cheap, and especially suitable for bathrooms and other wet areas. Use with caution in the kitchen, because borax, though natural is harmful if ingested, so you'll need to rinse it our thoroughly to keep it from getting into your food. Read more about borax here.

Micro homes in the land of Mcmansions

Adorable!

I suppose downsizing to this scale might be rather scary for most people, but if you are planning to build a house sometime, this inspiration might help you save lots of money and maintenance issues.

Value : Carbolic soap

Remember the red Lifebuoy brick from childhood?

In a world of gooey last-a-week cream soaps and "bathing bars", few people know of or remember carbolic soaps.

Through the last century or so, carbolic soaps are credited with saving more lives from succumbing to infection than are drugs. Even now, this cheap and trusty old soap is a sanitation staple in health centers serving the poor in countries the world over.

{In the strictest sense, using a "bath powder" (grain or pulse meal mixed with herbs - cheap, healthy and biodegradable) is the finest bathing solution I've experienced, but more about this in another post.}

When it comes to soaps, I personally believe that there is no such thing as a beauty soap. The only thing a good soap can and ought to do is clean and disinfect without being harsh on your skin, or leaving semi-tested chemicals behind. As for slimy shower gels that are a pain to rinse off, I have nothing but contempt for them.

A carbolic soap meets all my bathing requirements. The soap has been around for a long time, each bar lasts a long while, it thoroughly cleans, disinfects and deodorizes, and doesn't leave my skin dried out either (but I moisturize in winters). It blasts through rashes (I have sensitive skin) and is supposedly very effective on acne. The smell is strong and aseptic, which is perfect because I want to smell clean, not like jasmine or seaweed or a tropical fruit.

There are a few other uses for the soap too. For minor scrapes and cuts, washing the spot with water and leaving on a film of carbolic soap for a while protects against infection. My grandmother used to do this for our little scrapes, and my dad tells me he used to do the same when he was a kid.

Carbolic soaps have been popular bug repellants for a while now, and in my personal experience, this is perfectly true. Commercial mosquito repellents can cause severe allergic reactions and/or respiratory problems, as they have for my mother, while a simple shower can give you a lot of relief from bugs. Apart from showering with the soap, I discovered a way to add a bug repellent booster dose. In Madras the mosquito menace is acutest in the evenings, and yesterday I had showered in the morning with carbolic but wasn't sure if the smell still lingered. So I took a dry bar of the soap and rubbed it all over exposed parts - arms, legs and feet. Yes, mosquitoes do steer clear of you!

There must be small manufacturers of the soap in various parts of the country, and among known brands, Nirma has a carbolic soap though it doesn't seem to be available in the south. I personally use "Carbolic" by Karnataka soaps & detergents. When I'm not using an herbal bath powder (and that is most of the previous year), this is the only soap I've used for almost a year now, and I simply love it.

The soap retails at 14 bucks for 150 gms and lasts a really long time. Sadly, this soap is not freely available everywhere (a situation that I find is increasingly the norm with many good, honest products), but I have often seen them in Big Bazaar.

If you live in Karnataka, you can pick the soap up in bulk at a KS&D factory outlet, and you'll get it for a couple of bucks cheaper.  (While you are at KS&D, don't miss another wonderful product - Mysore detergent bar, a yellow laundry soap that is inexpensive and skin-friendly - dermatologist Dr. Thambaiah of Madras recommended yellow detergent cakes. But I just checked their site, and I don't see it listed. Another lovely product dead??)

Apart from personal use, given how these have been preferred by doctors in primary care centers around the world, a box of carbolic soaps  can be a novel and very useful goodwill gift if you are looking to help a health facility that serves the poor, or a welfare-based school, or a home for children or the aged.  

The carbolic soap is a wonderful product, and it would be a shame to see it die because of lack of demand.

More on the topic of toilette:

My bathing routine simply involves Carbolic soap and a scrubbing brush. For brushes, go for fibre loofahs like this one. In Tamil Nadu, you'll find these in small grocery outlets or herbal medicine stores selling at 5-10 bucks bucks a piece. Or you can go to a health & glow type outlet and throw away 50 - 100 bucks for the same stuff.

Khadi gramodyog has round idli-like loofahs for 10 bucks each, made of fragrant vetiver! But remember to soak any natural fibre brush in water for a couple of days to soften it up. It can be quite rough on the skin when new.

If you have no choice but to go plastic,  these damn things make pretty bubbles, but are bloody useless as scrubbers. You are better off with these - very very cheap, no-nonsense and effective. Just be nice and try to make one last for a long long long time, so that you reduce plastic waste. Once it is shredded from use, it can still scrub tiles or your bike or car.

That's it for this post. Bye!

Skincare: Make your own moisturizer

I know of no woman that is so butch as to not keep a stash of skin care products. Even “low maintenance” women end up with a lot of cosmetic stuff that they pick up, often more out of impulse than of any real need. I challenge any woman to walk around a bath & bodyworks kind of store and not squirm and salivate.

Over time though, one realizes that most “skincare” products are actually nonsense. Most of what you really need, you can make at home.

Let us start with moisturizing:

Note:  There are several elaborate recipes even for homemade products, some of which are possibly valid cures for special skin conditions. However, since this blog is about simplicity and minimalism, We'll look at the simplest solution possible.

Dry skin can be itchy and annoying. Moisturizing is essentially creating a film of barrier on the skin to lock moisture in. The best moisturizer in my entire experience is a light oil rub down, right after shower. Just before you towel off, shake a couple of drops of oil (coconut) on to your wet palm, rub vigorously till the water in your palm and the oil forms a milky emulsion. Spread all over, rub in well. Leave for a  couple of minutes and do a very quick rinse (no soap this time). Pat dry, and you are done.

After several expensive bottles of fancy moisturizers, I found that this simple solution is what works best even in Canadian winter, when your skin turns to parchment and the best of moisturizers turn out to be chemical cocktails (Propylene glycol? Parabens? Acrylamide? No thank you) that don’t work, and very likely are slow-poisoning you.

You can use lighter mineral oils or baby oil if you like, but you are just flushing your money down the loo. That, and I wouldn't trust mineral oils all that much either.


For especially dry skin or patches like knees and elbows, wet the area thoroughly, and rub in lots of warm oil. soak for a few minutes and rinse off. Once every while, a warm castor oil soak is great for even the driest skin. Coconut oil will still work, but the thick, viscous castor oil is an elixir for dry, flaky skin. Remember that oil itself will not moisturize - moisture is essentially water. So wet the area well first. 

From the money angle, a 200 ml coconut oil bottle (Parachute and similar) costs roughly Rs. 30. A 200 ml bottle of moisturizer costs anywhere from 3 to 10 times as much, depending upon the brand.


So give the intense therapy silky pearl body milk cocoon BS a rest, and grab a bottle of trusty old CO at the grocer's.

The Red Tapes did it.

I am really not much of an accumulator of things. Or so I thought. I have always worn simple, comfortable clothes, almost no jewellery. My slippers and shoes are comfortable, sturdy.

I look around me at girls who seem to live on retail binging, and I snort in derision and feel superior.

I only wear cotton, and the kind that doesn't need starching. The fabric softens with every wash, becoming incredibly comfortable, if worn down, over time. I shop in Fabindia. My delhi frinds tell me it is awefully overpriced, but it seems ok for Madras, and the fit is perfect. Ingenious too, with pockets everywhere, even in salwars!

Speaking of which, I have salwars in black, white and every shade of beige from ivory to sandalwood, adn I mix-match these with all my kurtis.

And then, upon a whim, I counted the clothing articles I have, an here's my shame list:

50 kurtis of various sizes,

10 salwars,

8 trousers (I have two pairs of jeans, two formal(ish) pants, two cotton pants and 2 capris)

12 assorted stoles

1 silk salwar set

Saris from my wedding that I will never wear.

Footwear:

2 pairs of leather workwear sandals

2 joothies 9from jaipur trip)

2 pairs of black leather shoes

1 pair of adidas sneakers

1 pair of red tape casual shoes.

Too much you say? agree with you.

Not so bad, you say? thanks for being kind.

I think it was finally the red tape shoes that woke me up.

For two years now, I realize I've been on autopilot, buying kurti after comfortable kurti, flats after flats, till I simply have too many clothes and shoes.

I realized I dont need to buy clothes for at least a year. The salwars will probably shred, and if they do, I'll think about replacing them. As for footwear, I don't even need to replace any yet. Ihave two of every kind of footwear I need, and that is that.

On second thoughts, there must be much cheaper ways of getting my kurtis than coughing up the cash in fabindia. The fabric I like is the honest desi weaves that I should find in the open market, and I simply need a tailor to copy my best fitting kurtis and salwars, pockets and all. Thankfully, tailoring is cheap in India.

Bizarrely, the decision to quit shopping actually flooded me with relief. This is not like a diet, requiring discipline and focus. After I quit, i realized that it was the shopping that felt strained and unnatural.

Here we are.

This blog has been long coming.

In this blog I hope to build minimalism and simplicity-oriented content about everything from food, fashion and health to shopping deals and DIY projects. This blog is not about saving money; rather, it is about seeking value.