Few people have seen the packing fiascoes I create for myself. This is one of them. It could be an app for the iPhone. ...Fit all this stuff into the last allowed suitcase. Oh, and stay within the 50 pound weight limit. :)
I tried.
I did pay ($50) for an extra checked bag because we brought home my guitar for Michaela who wants to take lessons. Better than 50 euros a month to rent one...
Anyways, I packed all the suitcases myself. Better this way I learned because of the fact that I also UNpack them, my dear husband doesn't know what exactly I've bought because he may not understand WHY I've bought what I have. It's better he's not involved. :) hee hee...
I weighed each one using a stand on scale which when we got to the airport I realized was off by five pounds. So every bag was overweight by five pounds. Super. AH HA! I had thought ahead. Because I'm super packer.... I had put at least two cake mixes or frostings in each suitcase knowing that if I was overweight I would just have to pull out a cake mix or two since they are heavier than one thinks. I figured that worst case I would leave behind a $2.00 cake mix. After adjusting the weight of all my luggage though I now had a pile of cake mix I had to... leave behind?? No way, I couldn't do it. I opened two boxes and shoved them into the guitar case, but I still have 5 boxes and some frosting I couldn't bear to part with.
But. In Canada, they check your luggage in and tag it, but YOU carry it through customs and put it on the conveyor belt yourself. So now I'm in a customs line with all my suitcases... Soooooooooo..... I opened up my bags and put my cake mix back in. My new super trick for flying out of Toronto. :)
Here is how I justified it:
I emotionally couldn't leave the cake mix. They were too important. I was going to end up carrying them on somehow. Bottom Line - The Cake Mix Was Coming. AND if it was coming then it would be on the plane -SO- Either way the plane was going to carry my cake mixes. Who cares if it's in the stowed luggage section or in the overhead compartment? It's the same weight, just in a different spot and I don't suffer as much. With my new way of thinking I also took some heavy books from my bag and tossed them into a checked suitcase too.
Now that I had this new logic going in my head, I also decided that people should get a weight allowance per ticket. Each ticket is allowed 250 pounds. You and your carry ons can weigh 200 pounds, and your checked bag can weigh 50 pounds = 250 pounds per person. Well, I only weigh 105 pounds so that means my bags can all weigh 145 pounds. Andrea only weighs 20 pounds so she gets a bag that weighs 230 pounds. I believe this is a perfectly reasonable argument. I wonder who I should talk to about it.
4 comments:
I LOVE LOVE LOVE that you said this could be an iPhone app!!!!
I'm totally digging your weight concept with the bags. But, I suspect some groups (ACLU, etc) may have some issues with that!
Very very very smart packer you are!!! And I thought about the total weight consept before I read the last part of your post, so I totally agree, you deserve to bring some extra goods :-) !!!
My guess was that you should have given the cake mixes to some other passenger going on the same flight... finding out that the weight was the same for the plane, but you lost your mixes, IF the passenger buddy wasn't such a nice guy that he handed the mixes back after landing..... BUT you were NOT desperate, you solved the problem way smarter.
It's a COMPLETE brain-teaser, I agree. I felt the same way last week as I was trying to pack from MI to come back here to Lux. What totally sucks is that you're now only allowed 1 bag per ticket. So instead of my usual 6 bags that I used to bring back, I could only bring 4. Which meant that I should have adjusted my shopping, but I didn't. So I had PILES of crap and only 4 bags to shove it all in. Took me 3 hours to pack, but I did it! Such a feeling of accomplishment. I may add it to my resume one day under "special skills".
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