Travel Bottles and Essentials

It is not ESSENTIAL to take any personal hygiene products with you but it is often useful to do so. Likewise, it is likely that you will want to take certain favourite food items with you. All will need containers.

This article takes a brief look at what is available in the way of various Travel Bottles and what you can find by looking intelligently through the shops.

If you have no bottles at all then it will be worthwhile to look for Sample-size or Travel-size products with a view to re-using the container that they come in. If you already have suitable bottles then it is more cost effective to buy larger volumes of the various liquids and decant them into a smaller bottle.

Since airlines started to restrict what you could take into the cabin there are a lot more travel-size items in the local drug stores and all at silly prices. These are the same items that manufacturers give away as 'free samples' and on magazine covers etc.

I'll split this into several section:

• Commercial Travel Bottle sets
• DIY Travel Bottle sets
• Travel Essentials
• Luxuries

Commerical Travel Bottle Sets

There are now lots of different sets of bottles on the market. Some sets are a random mix of bottles and containers and some are targetted at say cosmetics or food. It is essential to look at and squeeze the bottles that you are buying. A rigid bottle is no good for gel based products such as suntan cream and soft bottles can be inconvenient with some fluids.

The other big point to make is that some of the bottles are quite large. Most Travel bottle sets seem to contain bottles from the larger end of the scale - 4oz when for Ultralight hiking you are looking for 2oz or 1oz bottles or less. In order to find a suitable mix of bottles for general use I have bought three different bottle sets. That is a lot of money...

Nalgene Bottle Set (£8)

This has to be the grand-daddy of them all:

It contains a mixture of bottle - soft and rigid, 4oz, 2oz, 1oz sizes, some pill/cream boxes and some dispensing tops. The Lipsalve and 2oz bottle of alcohol wash are in there for scale. The 4oz bottles are currently too large for flight hand-luggage (April 2007).

I have a tendency to treat the nalgene bottles as food containers - mainly for powder drinks such as hot chocolate or coffee. I also have a 2oz nalgene bottle that is reserved for Alcohol for a stove.

I like the Nalgene bottle set because some thought has gone into it. Using different bottle shapes, cap colours and types means that it is easy to identify the bottles without relying on labels which rub off in a pack. The bottles are very tough and also leak proof. I tend to just throw them into a pack with whatever else they belong with. Generally they will be put in an Aloksak with either food or hygiene essentials.

If you use Nalgene bottles for cosmentics on one trip it is probably best not to try and use them for food on another trip - some chemicals do seem to taint the bottles a little - but this is true of all plastics.

I am not going to list out weights. The bottles are heavier than some others on the market because they are much tougher.

The dispensing caps only fit onto the 2oz clear-cap bottles. The thread on the other bottles is different. Apart from that restriction bottle caps are interchangable.

The pill/cream bottles are screw-caps and are tough.

Eagle Creek Bottle Set (£6)

After buying the Nalgene bottle set I realised that some of the bottles were too large for what I wanted and not all were suitable for all chemicals. The Eagle Creek bottle set is more focussed towards cosmetics.

This set contains two 2.5-oz bottles fitted with dispensing caps and two 2oz bottles one with a dispensing cap and one with a screw cap. (All bottles are small enough to be acceptable for hand luggage).

The kit also includes two flip-top pill containers that are water-tight unless abused - which would make them just fine for pills or creams.

The kit is definitely aimed at cosmetics and includes a set of generic labels. All bottles are soft.

For my own trip planning I have earmarked one of the larger bottles for suntan lotion and one of the smaller bottles as potentially for liquid soap (see later).

If you compare this kit with the Nalgene kit you will realise that the bottles are slightly lighter. To give you an example a 2oz soft Nalgene bottle (with a standard top) weighs 14g/0.5oz and a 2oz Eagle creek bottle weighs 10g/ 0.3oz. As an aside a 4oz Nalgene bottle weighs 20g and my free 1oz shampoo bottle weighs 8g.

The point to make here is that travel bottles are designed to survive many trips of rough treatment and that has a weight penalty.

Boots Miniature Travel Bottle Set (£3)

This is the cheapest and the lightest of the three bottle sets and includes a usable ziplock bag

There are three rigid 1oz/32cc bottles, a syringe/pump, one spray dispenser cap and all 3 bottles are fitted with removable dropper insets.

I have earmarked one of these bottles for Midge/Mosquitto repellent (DEET - diethyl toluamide) and will decant some of the 2oz solution that I bought into a smaller bottle.

As an aside DEET is sold as the main ingredient in many insect repellents - it is a trade name for the chemical. I found that I had a 4oz bottle of the stuff in my medicine cabinet.

DIY Travel Bottle Sets

It is possible to buy a good set of travel bottles from your local shops - especially the bargain shops that sell sample-sizes.

In order to find reusable bottles and containers suitable for travel use you need to look at your local shop shelves differently. You are looking for containers that can be used for generic items and you are looking for containers that do not have press-fit tops.

For instance, sample shampoo bottles can be reused for shampoo and liquid soaps. Sample toothpaste tubes can be refilled (if you wish) and earplug containers will make good pill boxes. The bottle that I am most pleased with is one that was given to me in my junk mail by a firm trying to sell me a water filter...

The image shows a 0.5oz sample bottle, two 1oz 20p shampoo bottles and three old earplug containers.

The Shampoo bottle will probably be used for liquid soap and one of the earplug containers will probably be used for vitamin pills.

Several stores near me such as M&S and Body Shop sell lots of cosmetics and bath salts and so on in small 'treat' size tubes and bottles which would be ideal for travel bottles. For instance my local M&S beauty section was selling an assortment of 6 bottles of bath crystals for £5. Each bottle was a 2-3oz rigid plastic bottle. The bottle would be ideal for many things if not as durable as some of the 'real' travel bottles.

Travel Essentials

My starting point for an essential is that if I don't take it I put my health at risk. That produces quite a short list. Most things that we think of as travel essentials are not.

For instance I find that my skin seems to be healthier after a week in the open air and not washing than if I spend a week in the home/office and wash it 3 or 4 times in a week.

I have mostly given up washing my face with anything other than water - and then only rarely and my skin seems much healthier because of it.

I am not going to discuss medical/first-aid items in this section as they deserve a topic in their own right.

What you need for a one-day trip may be a little different to a one-week trip or a 3-month trip - but not much.

The main issue with 'essentials' is that there is a limit to how little you can take whilst still being sensible. Often it is easier to leave something behind. For example I still wonder if a 0.35oz eye dropper bottle is a usable size for something like DEET.

Instead, I feel that if you have to take it then the smallest practical bottle size is the one that you take. I think for me that is going to be 1-2oz for most things in a week. For overnights it is simpler not to carry it!!!

Let's look at some combinations based on trip duration and conditions.

Travel Essentials - 1 day, overnight in mild conditions

The toothpaste and toiletries together come to 75g and the hand cleanser adds another 75g. The hand cleanser can be decanted into a 1oz shampoo bottle so that it only adds say 25g to the weight. To get any lower than 100g means using a finger-toothbrush and some of the mini-dropper bottles available from Backpacking-light.

However, for my own personal choices as of today I am not worried about squeezing the last 10g out of kit in one area if 50g or 100g is available elsewhere. It is easier for me to pack a small toothpaste tube than decant toothpaste into an even smaller container. Lipsalve is in a handy size already. The Aloksaks are small and durable (at 5g each) and anything less is quite fragile and will not stay closed in a pack.

My overnight essentials do not normally include DEET or Suntan lotion. I will avoid sunburn by dressing sensibly when required and insects are only a problem in some terrains near water and in calm weather.

Travel Essentials - 1-2 Weeks

This picture shows what I am thinking of taking for a one week lowland walk where I expect to be sleeping in areas where insects might bite, where I am expecting lots of sun and where I am expecting to pass through civilisation. I also show some of the bottles that I will decant things into.

The only issue I have at the moment is that I am not certain how fast I will use certain items on a week-long trip. I know that 30-50ml of DEET will be enough and that one Lipsalve will last more than a week. I cannot predict how much suntan cream will be sensible to take and I do not yet have a hard figure for how fast I will use hand gel (based on one or two hand washes a day). I suspect 1-2 oz will be sufficient but I do not know.

I also plan to take 0.5-1 fl oz of travel soap in addition to the hand gel. The travel soap will be used for washing underwear. In the past I have found that washing with soap is better than washing with just water. It may seem strange to take both soap and gel but the gel does not need water and if water is scarce I can still have clean hands.

The two small white containers are water purifying tablets and neutralisers.

My one luxury item is a 50ml Lynx deodorant. I expect to be visiting one or two pubs on the way and if I overnight in a B&B as a luxury I want to at least be able to smell presentable - even if I am still wearing my day clothes.

Travel Essentials - 2+ Weeks

The only difference between 2 weeks and longer is the volumes that you take with you. If you can resupply at various places then what you actually have is several shorter trips back-to-back.

One thing you will not see in my pack is a razor. I find it easier and simpler to start clean-shaven on day one and grow a beard. If I try and shave in the wilderness then I run into all sorts of issues with trying to keep my skin healthy and the razor clean etc. If I don't shave I don't have those issues...

If you are travelling for 2 or more weeks then you will often find that the 'travel-size' bottles of many things are now the right size for you and there is no point in decanting stuff into smaller bottles.

I tend to have a very close haircut prior to a trip and so my hair will not need much maintenance or washing for at least 4-6 weeks. Short hair is low maintenance, hygenic and trouble free.

Luxuries

Luxury items are ones that are not essential from a health and hygiene viewpoint but are helpful to morale so that your trip feels more like a holiday and less like a survival experience.

Over the years I have found that my luxury list has become shorter and shorter. It is now down to one 47g can of deodorant. Most people start with a long luxury kit but after a few days of lugging the stuff around and packing/unpacking it each night you will find for many items you resent the weight/space/hastle and so it gets ditched mid-trip.

A Final Note...

I was surprised by how much weight I could save by taking much smaller amounts of the essentials. I didn't think that they weighed all that much but when they were all put together it added up to rather a lot. When I weighed my 1-day travel essentials before trimming they were 200g. With elementary pruning that is easily trimmed to 100g. With extreme pruning - using mini dropper bottles and so on it could be dropped to under 50g. I've seen Ryan Jordan quote his SUL overnight essentials as 27g!!!

This weight saving may be free or nearly free to obtain but those last 23g in weight loss is going to be hard to obtain. It is als no more than the weight of one sip of water.

I am hoping that my 1-week kit will weigh in at no more than 200-250 which is in some ways a sizeable weight. On the plus side is that the pack I have made is 300g lighter than the GoLite Jam that it will probably replace - at leas t for some trips - and so my overall pack weight will still drop.