I don’t know about you guys, but I’m totally ready for the semester to end. With less than a month of classes remaining here in Texas (because who counts Thanksgiving week?), my thoughts have shifted to my winter break vacation plans.

I recently made a goal to visit 50 new cities during my four years of college, so I’m not counting any place I’ve stepped foot in before my freshman year. I’m in the low thirties right now (and I only count it if I actually left the airport/train station and spent at least 30 minutes there), so I’m looking forward to doing some more traveling! But as any suave traveler knows, one of the biggest hurdles is figuring out what to pack and what to leave behind.

Prior to last summer, I could not have picked out a single occasion where I didn’t pack the night before. I called it my “procrastination packing” method and was so sure that I was doing it right. And yet for some unfathomable reason, I always ended up with too many clothes! I would always pack my stuff in a small suitcase or a backpack to minimize this risk, so how on earth was I still bringing along pointless items?

I figured it out in June, when my friend and I discussed what we were bringing on our backpacking trip through Europe. A 30-day trip out of a backpack. We didn’t just cut it down to the essentials – we brought the essentials that we would want to wear and that matched with each other.

For example, I brought a favorite pair of skinny jeans, assuming I would wear them the majority of the week. And because jeans go with practically everything, they were the perfect pick. I also started packing days in advance, which allowed me to repeat this evaluation process with all the items I was planning to bring and ensured that I could create at least three different outfits with each piece.