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Travel Advice: Power Cables
How many electronic devices do you travel with? If you’re like me, you’ve got phones, tablets, cameras, battery packs, laptops – the list goes on and on. Also, if you’re like me, sometimes you forget a certain charger or power cables. Have you ever opened up your suitcase at a hotel and realized you forget a USB cable, or a wall plug adapter? Frustrating as hell right?
Well, generally, I’ve fixed that problem. I keep a separate small bag in my suitcase all the time. This small bag has my travel only power cables and adapters. These items live in this small travel bag and only come out when on the road.
In this bag, I keep the following items:
- Three two-prong wall plug to USB adapters
- Two Type-A USB Adapters (these are the older style that work for my 3-year old Samsung Tablet
- Two Type-C USB Adapters (these are the new ones that connect my Samsung Galaxy S8)
- Two Type-A to Type-C USB Adapters – just in case
- Small battery pack with enough power to charge my phone 1.5 times
I personally keep these items in a 5+ year old Lufthansa Business Class Amenity Kit. I was pissed when I got this kit while en route to Vietnam. The small canvas bag is strong and has held my most important power cables for years. I love this setup.
The Gift
At work, we’ve got a couple new people who just started traveling more frequently. Deciding to outfit them each with one of these little kits, I popped over to Amazon and bought some Amazon Basics Power Cables for either their Android or Apple products. I even snagged enough wall adapters to open up my own shop. I found small canvas bags on Amazon too. Take a look for makeup bags – they work splendidly.
I also snagged this gift for my better half. It seems right before a trip he’s always running around the house looking for something. Now this just lives in his suitcase. For him, I splurged on a nice leather bag – some moderately overpriced, handmade pencil bag from a little shop in the neighborhood.
When he opened the box at Christmas, the look on his face was..well…disappointed. After I explained it to him, he seemed a little more pleased. It wasn’t until his first trip, when he was frantically looking for things that this gift made sense. I had already filled the bag with his needed cables and adapters. Since he travels internationally for work, I also threw in a European and UK converter. Easy breezy.
Now I always know where my cables are and I know that I am NEVER to remove these cables from the simple canvas bag if I am in Chicago. Hard Stop. Don’t Touch. It works great!
What little travel tip or hack do you have?
Lufthansa First Class Amenity Kit
I love Airline Amenity Kits. A Lufthansa First Class Amenity Kit made it’s way to me – after some issues on Austrian Airlines forced a flight change. Amenity Kits are really hit or miss nowadays. You’ve got airlines like EVA and Thai who still offer the beautiful Rimowa kits and then you’ve got United who will sometimes provide a tin. The sign of a good amenity kit for me is two fold: 1) The design itself and it’s reusability and 2) The contents and their immediate usefulness.
The Kit
I love to reuse an amenity kit. Currently, I’m using a simple Lufthansa Business Class kit to house my various cables while traveling. It’s compact, sturdy and strong. The current First Class Amenity Kit is quite a bit larger and is in a strange quasi-heart shape. The two-toned color looks good at day one, but I’m sure with regular use, the light suede will really start to show the wear.
The quasi-heart shaped First Class Amenity Kit.
As you can see there is a folding snap in addition to the proper zip closure. The flap appears to be just decorative, which I don’t care for. It is just another piece to get in my way or get damaged. It does add a nice aesthetic though.
Sunburst detail on the flap.
The Contents
Like any good amenity kit – either in First Class or Business Class, I think you’ve got to have an eye mask, ear plugs and socks. Those are the absolute bare minimums, otherwise it’s just a complete waste. This kit included those items, of course, and they were quite nice. The eye mask included a velcro adjustable strap and the mask itself was quite broad, easily covering the area around my eyes. The earplugs were pretty standard, but they came in a great little carrying case. I think this case was pretty useless, but I thought it really upped the presentation. The socks were traditional thin airline socks, but they were much longer than normal – traditional sock size.
In addition to the minimum requirements, this kit also included a plastic shoe horn, a compact brush and la prairie moisturizing creams. The brush isn’t at all useful for me (have you see a recent picture??), but I love the shoe horn – I keep one in each of my suitcases, backpacks and briefcases. They are strong, compact and lightweight – you can always use a shoe horn. The moisturizing creams were pretty creamy and smelled fresh, but they took a while to properly absorb into your skin. I felt a little greasy. Nice effort – use these before you pull down your eye mask and take a nap.
The contents of the kit – even tied so elegantly with ribbon.
The kit, fully unpacked.
The interior of the heart-shaped amenity kit
The Results
The contents were spot on for in-flight use, but the kit itself missed the mark for reuse. It was a bit too big for what I would use it for, plus that extra flap just frustrated me. After a few weeks of traveling, I am confident that the light brown suede would look a bit dingy. So unbecoming of a lovely First Class Amenity Kit.
What do you think of this kit? Do you like to reuse the Amenity Kits you get whilst traveling or do you leave them behind? What other purposes do you task you kits with?