If You're Team Carry-On Only, These 13 Travel Products Are Actually Worth The Precious Space
It also features adjustable warm light that's much easier on your eyes.
Abby: ^ Yes, that is me sitting in a pool in Hawaii holding my Kindle over the water without fear or stress that if it falls in, it will break. Truly living my best life.
Promising review:"I LOVE reading and being able to access a book anywhere with this thing. It is easy to navigate, very easy to read and adjust the brightness or how warm the light is. It doesn't auto adjust, but I don't need that feature. I've read in bright sunlight to dark rooms, and it's always been so clear. You can adjust the font and use the library to search whatever books you want. Makes packing books for traveling very easy. Battery life lasts me two weeks if I'm reading every day for a few hours." — R@L0
Get it from Amazon for $149.99 (available in three colors and with or without lockscreen ads).
2. A set of packing cubes that help you squeeze in more by keeping everything neat and compressed. You'll be amazed at how much you can fit in your carry-on, and since everything is organized into little sections, it'll be a snap to unpack and get on with your trip!
www.amazon.com
Promising review:"I travel frequently and travel light. My luggage is usually limited to a backpack that slides under the airline seat. For a two-week European cruise, I added a carry-on rolling suitcase. I've used these packing cubes twice so far, and I am hooked. One cube holds everything (including clothing) I take on a three-night trip. The cube slides into my pack, saving massive amounts of room, and everything is easy to find during travel and at the hotel. Taking out one cube and unzipping is much better than digging through a pack! I will never leave home without these!" — Gura
Get a set of four packing cubes (also comes with a laundry bag) from Amazon for $21.99 (available in 26 colors and two sets).
3. A Stow-N-Go travel organizer that's basically a portable closet. You can arrange everything while you pack, and when you get to your destination, just hang it up and that's it! You'll have perfectly organized clothes for the whole trip.
www.amazon.com
Abby: Plus, it has a zipper compartment at the bottom you can put all your dirty clothes in, so they don't get mixed together and you end up just washing everything when you get home (because that's usually what happens to me).
Promising review:"I just love it. I travel a lot. Now I don't have to hang anything up but my organizer. I can see what I pack and where everything is. Just love it. I can easily fit seven days' worth of outfits and three pairs of shoes in a carry-on suitcase. Just great." — Amazon Customer
Get it from Amazon for $22.99+ (available in two sizes and nine colors).
4. Some laundry soap sheets you'll be so glad you brought when you run out of clean underwear. Now you can easily wash your clothes in the sink and rewear them, *and* you won't have to worry about them stinking up your bag.
www.amazon.com
Promising review:"This stuff is awesome. I take it everywhere! We travel a lot, and it's perfect for all sorts of reasons! It was very useful on our trip to Israel where I ended up doing laundry in our hotel sink almost every night because of the dust. The packaging is very small and for as much as I have used this traveling, I haven't run out yet!" — Mia Bauer
Get it from Amazon for $12.95.
5. A strap to keep your personal items (neck pillow, jacket, purse, etc.) together so you can easily run around the airport without worrying about leaving anything behind.
Amazon
Promising review:"I love this little gadget. I used it to attach my jacket and computer bag to my luggage on an extended business trip. It made my airport walks so much easier. Now that I'm back home, I've been using it daily to attach my jacket or cardigan to my work bag or purse." — Michele
Get it from Amazon for $7.99+ (available in five colors).
6. A splurge-worthy set of Cadence Capsules that stick together ~magnetically~ and take up way less space in your bag than big pill bottles. They'll help you condense so you're bringing what you actually need (and not overpacking); plus, they're leakproof and incredibly sturdy so you can fill 'em with whatever: creams, vitamins, small jewelry — truly anything small that you want to keep safe.
The "daily routine" set includes four medium and three small capsules as well as magnetic, interchangeable labels for shampoo, conditioner, body wash, moisturizer, cleanser, a pill icon, and a blank tile.
They also offer skincare, bodycare, haircare, and pill case sets as well as extenders that increase the size of the capsule! And if you fall in love with these and *really* want to customize your collection, head to their site to build your own unique set.
Cadence is an AAPI woman-owned small business that was founded by Steph Hon with the goal of eliminating single-use travel-sized plastics. The containers are made from recycled ocean-bound plastic.
Abby: I have a set of four of these, and, wow, I love them so much. I used them on a six-day trip, and they were perfect. I customized the label so I knew which one was my shampoo vs. conditioner and did a general label for any other things I wanted to bring along. They do hold a surprising amount. According to the brand, they hold approximately one to two weeks of skincare products, more than two weeks' worth of serum, two to three days' worth of haircare, and more than 15 tablets (for medicine and such). And while two to three days worth of haircare might not seem like enough, I found it held more than that for me, but I also don't wash my hair every single day. They were small enough to slip right into my toiletries bag and go through TSA with no problem. The container was easy to open in the shower (even with wet hands), and I had no leakage from them (like I did from my face wash bottle that will not be making the trip with me next time. SMH). These are an incredibly useful tool anyone who travels will want in their luggage.
Get the daily routine set from Amazon for $117.30 (available in five colors and other sets).
7. Or a TSA-approved 16-piece travel toiletries set with a container for each and every one of your tried-and-true faves so you don't have to spend more money on the travel-size versions. These are reusable and leakproof, so your products (and other stuff in your bag!) will stay protected.
www.amazon.com
The set comes with four bottles, four jars, two spray bottles, two scoopers (to help transfer creams), one funnel (to help transfer liquids), one cleaning brush, a page of labels, and a bag that everything fits in.
Promising review:"I've purchased a lot of different travel sets for my toiletries over the years. Inevitably, they are hard to fill and tend to leak. This set was magic! The wide mouth made it easy to fill from a larger bottle, and the little scoops made transferring creams to the jar containers very easy and with much less mess. The only con (hardly worth mentioning) is that once you squeeze the bottle, it takes a few minutes to expand with air again, so the sides are a bit sunken. I solved that by unscrewing the top just a bit for a quick release of the vacuum pressure. I had no leaks, and plenty of containers for every toiletry." — MDC
Get it from Amazon for $9.99+ (available in seven colors).
8. A Hackwith Design House shirt because there's nothing more travel-friendly than a top you can wear *five* different ways (that we know of — but you might discover more playing around with it). It's timeless because you can always change how you style it, and it's made from a high-quality fabric that's soft, breathable, and can last for years.
Hackwith Design House is a woman-owned small business that creates made-to-order apparel. This shirt can be worn as a V-neck, off-the-shoulder, boatneck, V-back, and even open as a jacket. And the color is simple, which means it can be paired well with many different bottoms.
BuzzFeed Shopping editor Chelsea Stuart says:"I have this shirt and I *love* it. All credit for its discovery goes to TikToker @jennifer.bianca who I happened to stumble across on my FYP. It checks all my boxes: black, comfortable, versatile, and durable. My initial worry was that I wouldn't feel secure in it (I have a 38DDD chest and most wrap tops/dresses I've tried haven't stayed where they're supposed to), but I haven't had an issue with this! I've worn it tied in the front giving me a square neck (like the middle picture) and tied in the back giving me a V-neck up front (just like the photo on the right) — both were super comfortable, and I didn't have to adjust myself at all. As someone whose weight fluctuates, I also appreciate that this piece can handle pounds gained and lost. The fabric is medium weight, so I'll be wearing it season to season, and there's just enough elasticity in the arms that if you roll up your sleeves, they won't fall back down. All that is to say trust that I will be buying additional colors!"
Get it from Hackwith Design House for $145 (available in women's sizes XS–4X and in three colors).
9. A 2-in-1 hair tool that curls and straightens so you can achieve the perfect balance of texture and shine with just one tool. It's easy to pack for trips and dual-voltage so you can have gorgeous hair no matter what country you're visiting.
www.amazon.com, www.amazon.com
Just be sure to still pack a plug adapter if you're traveling to another country!
Get it from Amazon for $39.99 (available in two colors).
10. A portable rain hood to pair with *any* jacket so you don't have to try to cram in your practical raincoats. You can keep it in your bag for any impromptu downpours!
Amazon
All it is is a hood attached to a vest you can wear under *any* jacket to protect yourself (and your hair) from whatever the weather has planned.
Promising review: "I love this! The quality is very nice and it fits great. Wore it last week in the rain with a coat I love that doesn't have a hood and it was perfect. It slips right under your jacket so all you see is the hood, so it pretty much blends in with your jacket. Such a great idea! Wish there were more colors and patterns, I'd order more." — Jill Hammel
Get it from Amazon for $29 (available in two sizes).
11. A flying USB port with four spots to plug in your gadgets so you don't have to pack different power adapters. And bonus: This allows you to make the most of that one working outlet you managed to find at the airport!
Multitasky
Multitasky is a woman-founded and -run small business that began in 2020 as a way for founder Julia Xu to create products that were both functional and cute.
Promising review:"It does as it says it does, allowing my Dell XPS15 to operate a pair of USB devices from my lightning port! The laptop has two USB ports, one of which is always occupied by my USB mouse dongle and the other by my protected USB drive. If I wanted to plug in my phone to switch data or add another thumb drive to transfer a device, everything might have to be disconnected, but not anymore. It was really worth it." — Liberty
Get it from Multitasky for $25 (available in three colors).
12. A Subtl Beauty Stack to condense up to nine makeup products into one small stack. You can customize yours with anything from lip tints to face powder. And as convenient as it is for travel, it's also perfect to keep in your purse for any on-the-go touch-ups!
Subtl Beauty
Each stack also includes a mirror lid, a base, and a mini brush.
Promising review:"I absolutely love how compact this product is. I have been pleasantly surprised at how natural the makeup feels and I love the natural look it provides. I originally purchased it for traveling, but have been using it daily and love it!" – Paula Bowie
Get the Starter Stack from Subtl Beauty for $60 (available in 18 tones), or customize your own stack starting at $12 per layer, with up to nine product types available.
13. A skyline mini wallet emergency kit packed with the practical items that are easy to forget (like hair ties, tampons, Tylenol, and more!) while still being small enough to fit in your purse — so it definitely *won't* take up too much space in your carry-on.
Anne Cate
Anne Cate is a woman-owned small business based in Cleveland, Ohio that handmakes minimalist keepsakes with a skyline from more than 100 cities and colleges around the world!
The kit includes a hair tie, ChapStick, two floss pics, a sewing kit, bandages, emery board, two safety pins, two earring backs, a makeup wipe, two bobby pins, two mints, a deodorant wipe, a Shout wipe, a tampon, hand sanitizer, and Tylenol.
Promising review: "I'm heading to Rome this fall with my best friend and our husbands. I thought this would be the cutest little emergency case to bring along so I got each of us one. I am so excited to give it to her. She will love the Rome skyline and all the goodies inside." — Jen
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August is that in-between moment where you're still sweating through your tank tops and jorts, but mentally, you're already planning boots and sweaters. It's the perfect time to start building a transitional wardrobe that works for both summer and fall, and Amazon's trending fashion section is an unexpectedly great place to start. I combed through the most stylish, under-$50 pieces that are already picking up traction this month—think: throw-on-and-go travel outfits, lightweight layers, and comfortable shoes that work across seasons. Whether you're packing for an upcoming trip, updating your airport uniform, or just trying to dress for 75 degrees and unpredictable changes, these trending finds will cover your bases without blowing your budget. The soft, stretchy fabric on this two-piece lounge set makes it ideal for long flights, pesky layovers, or spontaneous snack runs. 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Those same details make the trousers a travel MVP—dress them up with a blouse for meetings or wear them casually with a tank and slides for sightseeing. You'll be surprised how often you reach for them, even post-trip. This matching set is your go-to when you want to look cool at the airport (but feel comfy) and not like you just rolled out of bed. The fabric is soft but elevated, and the pieces are just as cute worn separately. It's great for transitional weather when you don't know if it's going to be 80 degrees or 58 and raining. The Omoone Oversized Denim Jacket is the travel layer you didn't know you needed. It instantly makes any outfit look more put-together, and it's roomy enough to layer over hoodies, dresses, or that slightly-wrinkled airplane outfit. Basically, don't board a plane without it. These comfy, suede clogs are what happens when practicality meets trendy. 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A few years ago, Brian Boero and his wife decided to buy a vacation home in Tuscany. They envisioned owning an apartment in a medieval Italian city, the ideal splurge for a couple of empty nesters after the height of the pandemic. It was also "kind of a 'YOLO' thing," says Boero, the CEO of 1000Watt, a real estate consulting firm. Once he started hunting for a place, though, his European dream turned into a total nightmare. Shop Top Mortgage Rates Your Path to Homeownership A quicker path to financial freedom Personalized rates in minutes It didn't take long for Boero to realize he'd been spoiled by the American market. That may sound strange given the country's housing woes, but even Americans who've never bought a house have probably enjoyed the quirks that make our setup the envy of the rest of the world. When you want to get a sense of all the homes for sale in your area, you can easily cruise over to Zillow or the website of one of its competitors. The listings on these sites are pulled from industry databases that police their accuracy to ensure you're not wasting time on old or scammy postings. If you like a place, it's pretty easy for your agent to schedule a tour, scoop the keys out of a lockbox, and show you around. The rest of the buying process may come with tears and headaches, but the matter of actually finding homes is fairly seamless. Not so in Europe. The Zillow equivalents there offer only partial views of the market, turning up inaccurate listings or homes that have already traded hands. In particularly maddening cases, the same house may be listed separately by several agents, each of whom is asking for a different price. Brokers are also known to gatekeep their best listings, hiding them from the view of the average buyer. Even aggregate market data is hard to come by since there's no central clearing house for listings — it can be difficult to know whether you're getting a really good deal or a really bad one. In Italy, Boero says, he ended up having to carry out much of his search on foot, hoofing around town to peek at home listings posted in the windows of various brokerages. His real estate agent spent a lot of time on the phone, calling around to see what was available. For Boero, the whole thing felt like "feeling around in the dark." "It was shadowy, confusing," Boero tells me. "We really didn't feel like we were in control of the process." Boero is among those warning that the US market could be headed down a similar path. Some of the country's biggest real estate companies are engaged in a fierce war over the rise of "hidden listings" — homes advertised in some places but purposely kept off other sites. Zillow has gone so far as to ban listings that it says weren't shared with everyone, including Zillow, in a timely manner. Compass, the nation's largest real estate brokerage by sales volume, has responded by suing Zillow in federal court. The feud could result in a fracturing of the housing market, with home listings scattered across the internet or hidden away in so-called "private listing networks." Such a future would have real consequences for American homebuyers, who are used to getting a near-complete view of the market simply by navigating to one of the many home search websites available. There's also a bitter irony at the heart of this fight. Groups of real estate brokers in countries around the world are trying to replicate the US model at the same time that big firms on this side of the pond are squabbling over that very setup. "In France, they're laughing at the situation at this moment, honestly," Ali Attar, a real estate tech executive in Paris, tells me. The system in the US, he says, is more fragile than people realize. "They are taking it for granted in the US," Attar says. "And as soon as they destroy it, bringing it back will be extremely difficult." It took decades for the US to reach this kind of housing market transparency. The crown jewels of our modern real estate model — the things that make everything else possible — are the multiple-listing services, local databases where agents share detailed information on homes for sale. The MLSes then shuttle that info to search portals like Zillow, Redfin, or as well as the websites of thousands of local and national real estate brokerages. The average buyer doesn't get direct access to the MLSes, but with the help of the search portals, they don't really need it. Any home shopper can peruse the market, free of charge, from the comfort of their couch. The MLS model is considered by many to be the gold standard. Brokers in other countries have attempted to form similar databases, but the structure in North America remains unique. The problem isn't a lack of technological know-how — building the machinery isn't hard. The tougher part is getting brokers to agree to this kind of cooperation and enforcing the rules to make sure people don't take advantage of the system. In Europe, sellers are often represented by multiple agents who jockey to be the first to procure a buyer. There's a clear incentive to gatekeep a listing — share it around too much, and another agent might swoop in and broker a deal before you know what hit you. The popular, Zillow-like search portals in places like Spain or France are less unbiased repositories of information and more like advertising platforms. Agents ostensibly pay to display listings, but they're also marketing their own services. If a buyer inquires about a listing that's already sold, no matter — the agent can direct them to the other listings held behind closed doors. This is why listings may remain on these sites long after they've gone off the market. When it comes to drawing in more clients, there's no better lure. The ideal real estate marketplace is full of valuable, visible, and valid listings — what Attar refers to as the "three Vs." Buyers want these listings, they can find them, and the information is correct. House hunters in the US are accustomed to websites with postings that check off all three boxes. But in Europe, Attar says, home listings are typically missing at least one. "If it is valuable and it is valid, it's not visible," Attar tells me. "It's going to be hidden somewhere." Hollin Stafford, a real estate agent with eXp Realty in Portugal, can attest to these frustrations. She spent more than a decade working in the business in the States before moving to a town outside Lisbon in 2016. There she encountered a setup that, in many ways, still feels like "the Wild West," she tells me. Though Stafford has now spent years helping buyers and sellers navigate the Portuguese market through her company, Blue Horizon Properties, she hasn't forgotten the parts of the US system that she once took for granted. "You get so used to having the centralized system where you can see all of the details you need," Stafford says. "You can see what things actually sold for, and do a proper market evaluation, and all these things that you just think are par for the course." In September, real estate leaders from around the world are set to gather in Toronto for the third-annual International MLS Forum, a conference where attendees discuss plans to create the kinds of systems that buyers and sellers in the US already enjoy. Canada is the only other country with anything approaching a similar setup, says Sam DeBord, the CEO of the Real Estate Standards Organization, a nonprofit group focused on developing the technological rules and processes that undergird the MLS databases. Other places, like Egypt and France, have taken steps toward creating comparable databases. But in most cases, those with power — the big brokerages or portals that run things — have little incentive to make a change. "It's this concept of a tragedy of the commons," DeBord tells me. "If every individual goes out and takes as much as they can, all of a sudden the marketplace is ruined." There are some clear signs that the US real estate market could fall into something like the cutthroat, user-unfriendly European model. For one thing, the MLSes are basically a social construct. The National Association of Realtors — one of the most powerful industry groups in the country — effectively sets the rules for participating in these databases, and the local MLSes may levy fines against agents who run afoul of those policies. But there's no law that says it has to work this way, and recent troubles at the NAR have dented the group's influence over other power players. Actual enforcement among local MLSes is also known to be spotty. Some in the industry fear that it could all crumble if all this infighting turns into an actual exodus. Last year, Compass, which has more than 37,000 agents around the country, staked its future on a plan to draw more agents and clients by building up a stockpile of "exclusive inventory": homes that couldn't be found anywhere else. The company began heavily pushing a "three-phased marketing strategy" that encouraged sellers to test their home listings exclusively on the Compass website — first in the company's internal database and then on its public-facing landing page — before sharing them with the MLS and the major search portals. The crux of their pitch was that the MLS and sites like Zillow display information that doesn't help a seller, tracking stuff like price cuts and how long the house has been on the market. The brokerage's marketing plan, on the other hand, lets sellers fine-tune their approach and gather valuable feedback from other agents before making a broader debut. Plenty of industry figures cried foul over this plan — the whole system is predicated on the idea that agents share their listings widely and freely. But the brokerage's play also seemed to be working. Buyers want to get a first glimpse at homes however they can, and sellers may not mind testing the market in a limited capacity if they think it'll net them more in the long run. In February of this year, Compass said that more than half of its sellers were choosing to "premarket" their homes using the three-phased plan. About 94% of Compass's listings last year, including those that went through this kind of premarketing, eventually made it to the MLS, the company says, though it's not clear how long those houses spent in the databases. Even if most of these houses ended up on Zillow and the like, Compass clients still had early access to thousands of listings that couldn't be found on the big search portals. The concern now is that other big brokerages could decide to follow suit, keeping homes on their own websites before sharing them elsewhere. In this state of play, a buyer could still visit a site like Zillow to look at homes for sale, but the portal wouldn't be able to show you all, or maybe even most, of the available listings at any given moment. Instead, you'd have to jump from site to site, scouring the web for homes. The choice of an agent would carry additional weight — you'd have to consider just how much of the market they could unlock via their access to private, internal databases. The closest analogy to this hypothetical may be the fragmented world of video streaming, in which companies like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max are racing to build walled gardens of exclusive content. Sure, you can try to get access to all the shows and movies out there, but doing so requires a lot of time and money. And, frankly, it's a huge pain. Mike DelPrete, a real estate tech strategist and scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been warning about this threat to the search portals for years. "When it comes to browsing for real estate, consumers want access to all of the available inventory," DelPrete wrote in a blog post four years ago. "If a certain portion of listings are held off-market, available exclusively on another platform, consumer eyeballs will naturally follow." For now, a lot of eyeballs are still on Zillow, which draws more than 220 million unique visitors each month. But that's of little comfort to those who warn that Compass could trigger a domino effect among other large brokerages. The 10 largest brands in real estate accounted for more than half of US home sales volume last year, data from T3 Sixty, a consulting firm for residential real estate brokerages, shows. Even some leaders who have come out against Compass' strategy have warned that they, too, could flex their sizable market share to execute a similar game plan. MLSes need "someone to enforce the rules," DeBord tells me. In this case, that enforcer may turn out to be Zillow. The home search giant has tried to put the kibosh on all of this by banning listings that are not shared with Zillow — and the rest of the MLS — within one business day of being marketed publicly. That means as soon as a "for-sale" sign shows up in the front yard or an agent posts about a house on their website, the clock is ticking for them to send it to the databases that share listings with pretty much every other site in the industry. Those who don't comply will be left to explain to their clients why their house won't appear on the most popular home-search portal in the country. Compass has sued Zillow in federal court, accusing the company of using its monopoly power to quash a competing business model that, Compass claims, gives sellers more control over where and how their homes are marketed. In a formal response last month, Zillow disputed the monopoly characterization and argued that it shouldn't be forced to help Compass freeride on the system by accepting its stale listings only after they haven't sold on the Compass site. The brokerage's three-phased marketing strategy, Zillow's lawyers wrote, "harms consumers, who face balkanized and less liquid markets for homes, and Zillow, whose ability to attract and serve consumers depends on comprehensive, up-to-date listings." It's important to remember that anyone weighing in on this battle has a financial stake in their desired outcome. Compass wants to grow its agent base and market share. Zillow needs fresh home listings to fuel its business, which relies on selling leads to agents who pay to advertise on its platform. American companies aren't the only ones who care about this, either — brokers around the world are watching to see how this shakes out. When I talked to DelPrete back in June, he had just returned from a weekslong work trip to Europe. The fight over inventory back in the States, he says, came up "a surprising amount of times." "I think it's a case of the grass is always greener, right?" DelPrete says. "The US wants what the rest of the world has, and the rest of the world wants what the US has." There's a case to be made that all this hand-wringing will turn out to be hyperbole. The real estate industry in the US is notoriously slow to change, and consumers are used to the current setup. Zillow draws so many visitors that it's hard to imagine real estate agents shunning the platform en masse — it's simply too powerful a marketing machine. The MLS model, at least as it exists in the States, is far from perfect. More than 500 local databases form a complex web of overlapping fiefdoms that agents have to subscribe to individually. The recent class-action lawsuits against the National Association of Realtors and major brokerages cast the MLSes not as models of transparency, but as shadowy databases that helped prop up agent commissions by facilitating a sneaky practice known as "steering." There are other models that could work, too: In Australia, for instance, there's a dominant search portal where most people go to find homes, and many places sell via an auction that offers more transparency than the US system of making blind offers. And while the search portals here offer pretty comprehensive views of the market, they've never had all of the listings. There have always been so-called "pocket listings" that float around beyond the reach of the MLSes, available only to in-the-know agents who can offer their clients a leg up on the competition. But hardly anyone in the industry disagrees with the basic premise that buyers like being able to find homes easily and in one place. People may gripe about Zillow's power in the industry or the questionable accuracy of its ubiquitous Zestimate, but the ability to scroll through all the listings on the site — or those on any of the other search portals — is unique to North America. Few probably appreciate this better than Boero, the real estate exec who set out to buy the Italian getaway of his dreams. He did eventually find a place that checked off his boxes: "We're happy with it," he says. But he made that purchase with far less confidence than he had in any real estate transaction in his life. And even today, he has no idea whether it's worth more or less than it was when he bought it three years ago. The whole experience, he tells me, gave him a new appreciation for the American way of doing things. "Within the industry, we've made these comparisons ad nauseam," Boero tells me. "'Hey guys, let's not destroy this very special thing we have. Because just look at the rest of the world and how messed up it is.'" James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team. Read the original article on Business Insider
