Stephanie's Top Five Items to Pack

I will be leaving on my next cruise in a little over a week and I am so incredibly excited. This adventure will be shared with my mom, best pal Jenny, my Aunt Janet and our family friend Cyndi. We will be sailing on Royal Caribbean's Navigator of the Seas. Our itinerary is below for your reference:



I am going to start packing this weekend and I will most likely do a post next week that will deal with my ongoing goal to not overpack (a goal that I have yet to achieve). But for now, I wanted to share my "top five items to pack for a cruise" that I simply can't leave home without.

1.) Joy Mangano's My Little Steamer

Royal Caribbean (and most cruise lines) does not allow irons since they areconsidered a fire hazard. Plus, I hate ironing. I am not ashamed to admit that I have not ironed anything in several years. Steaming is my preferred way to remove pesky wrinkles from my clothing. Joy Mangano created a portable/easy to use steamer and it is sold on HSN. This steamer works incredibly well and I absolutely love it. Joy created a "mini" version of the steamer that I also purchased and it is the perfect size to travel with. I take this mini steamer with me on all cruises and it truly is a handy item to have tucked away in your suitcase to steam your pretty dress for formal night!

Edited to add: Based on Mary's recent cruise, she informed me that she took the steamer and filled the water up to the line...and things didn't go very well. My advice for everyone is this: Please only fill the steamer up patricianly with the water. I usually only fill my steamer up to about an inch below the water line in the container. Think of it like filling a pot on the stove to the tip top. You can definitely do it, but when you do, the water is most likely going to boil over. Please steam at your own risk.

2.) Joy Mangano's Pack A Weigh Digital Portable Luggage Scale



I'm not obsessed with HSN. I promise. But, Joy Mangano does sell some handy products on this channel (I especially love her Huggable Hangers). As I alluded to earlier in this post, I have a tendency to overpack. This flaw also means that my luggage can easily go over the various airline weight limits. This portable luggage scale has been a lifesaver, especially when traveling overseas. I highly recommend this handy tool which will help keep you from paying additional fees due to heavy luggage.

3.) Surge Protector



I travel with quite a few items that require a plug-in outlet. These items include my hair dryer, flat iron, curling iron, the My Little Steamer, camera chargers, etc. That's quite a few items for one person...but the cabins are small and I always travel with a friend/family member who will also have a lot of items that they will need to plug-in. I learned early on after my first cruise that RCCL's cabins only have places to plug-in up to four items. That simply won't suffice! I have traveled with a surge protector on every cruise since and this easily solved the problem of not having enough outlets.

4.) Panasonic Lumix Camera



A cruise simply isn't complete without photos to remember the trip by. I realized several years ago that a camera with a 3x optical zoom just wouldn't do. However, I wanted the camera to be small enough to still fit in my purse. My needs were met when I discovered Panasonic's Lumix Camera. It has a powerful 12x optical zoom while still being small enough to easily fit in my purse. It's a compact camera with the power/zoom that is usually only found in much larger cameras.

5.) Address Labels



No, I don't take address labels with me for the purposes of mailing letters (though they will work great for that purpose as well). I was with my family once at the airport and we were all filling out about a dozen of the Delta luggage tags with our names and mailing address to help identify our luggage in the event that it was lost by the airline. We then had to fill out multiple cruise line luggage tags at the port. My mom said, "Wouldn't it be easier if we just had our address labels with us to put on all of these tags instead of handwriting our info over and over?" We made a mental note of this and we began traveling with address labels for every trip since then. It is such a time-saver and I definitely recommend taking address labels with you on your future trips as well.

Until next time, happy sailing!