When my mother and father returned from a six-week trip to Europe some years ago, my father begged my mother to throw away her capsule wardrobe – a navy blue pantsuit and all of its matching tops. He’d looked at her in pretty much the same outfit for a total of 42 straight days and was completely sick of it. Apparently she felt the same way and blithely tossed them in the trash.
So a couple of months later when I headed out on an open-ended trip through Mexico during a break from college, she took me to the local charity consignment store and had me pick out a complete travel wardrobe. “Make it much more conservative than you usually wear,†she advised, “so you will blend in better. And then toss the clothes when you get home.â€
She was right – when the trip was over I never wanted to look at those clothes again. Plus it was easy to toss them since we hadn’t spent a fortune on them in the first place. I would never have worn them at home anyway – they weren’t cool enough. But they allowed me to move around Mexico incognito – another good strategy on a trip.