Carry-ons Only!

An international trip family trip—with just carry ons!

Rewind to a year ago: summer 2025.

We were seriously considering if moving to Portugal was feasible and if it was the right decision for our family.  I know some people aren’t in a position to take a scouting trip, but we decided to shuffle our travel plans and make it happen. We wanted a vibe check, wanted to check out different areas that looked good on paper, and to visit several schools. So we booked a trip traveling all around Portugal for the month of November.

I knew we’d be moving around a lot—staying in apartments for only 2-5 nights per town. I had been reading about the strikes that impacted people’s checked baggage and such, and knew that the rental car would be small.  We decided to try to make the month-long trip with only our carry ons to try to help with these issues.

People thought we were crazy, but it worked out well.  Here’s how we figured it out.

Things I considered:

The weather & temperature for that time of year. We were traveling in November, a month that is known to kick off the rainy winter season. The temperatures vary a lot during the day and in different parts of the country, so layers were important. It can be warm and sunny, or chilly and damp—all in one day.

Activities we’d be doing. We would be walking around a lot outside, but also taking a high speed ferry into the Atlantic to visit an archipelago, and spending several days in the Algarve at the beach.

How often we’d have access to laundry. I knew we couldn’t possibly pack 3-4 weeks’ worth of clothes, and none of us has a month’s worth of underwear so we were going to have to do laundry anyway. I checked our apartments and most had washing machines.

So that meant we needed clothes for temperatures ranging from windy, cold 35* on the open ocean to 80* of sunny swimming at the beach to chilly 50* rainy days and everything in between.

We had 4 carry ons, and 4 personal items (our backpacks).

Kids:

1 backpack each, with toys, books, and entertainment both for the flights and for the time spent in the car

1 rolling carry on, with clothes and outerwear for each of them packed into the one bag

Adults:

1 backpack each with electronics, guide books, laptop, travel gear, and whatever didn’t fit in the carry ons

1 rolling carry on each, with clothes and outerwear

1 rolling carry on for food

Bonus issue: food. As I’ve talked about before, most of our family is intolerant to gluten and sensitive to dairy, and one of us is intolerant to corn/corn derivatives/food dyes/etc. Our food plan was to self-cater, that is, visit grocery stores and cook our own food. But since I’d never been to Portugal, I didn’t know how easy/hard it would be to find things like snacks. I packed a whole carry on of safe snacks, and emergency meals. 

Packing list:

2 door stop alarms, with batteries removed (side note: I forgot to remove the batteries before our Big Move this summer, and it started going off in the airport. It was SO. LOUD. and it’s very stressful to dig through a tightly packed checked bag to find the noisy thing while the airline staff is asking you about prohibited items and you’re about to move abroad…just saying.)

2 battery operated smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, with batteries removed and packed separately

Luggage straps and suitcase locks, in case they make you check a bag

Guide book

Basic Portuguese phrase book

Bubblebum, inflatable booster for the Younger one—check car seat laws!

Travel purse. I got one that had features to help prevent pickpocketing.

Laundry detergent sheets. These don’t take up much space, and since we’d used it at home, I knew no one was sensitive to it. The sheets are great since you don’t have to worry about liquids in your carryon

Basic first aid kit

Prescription medicines, vitamins, supplements, or anything we took regularly

Toiletries. I went with things like shampoo bars, bar soap, conditioner bar, etc to help with the liquids rule. We could have also purchased toiletries here when we arrived but again, I wanted things I knew we weren’t sensitive to.

Backpacks:

Laptop

Headphones

Eye masks

Ear plugs

Jet lag homeopathics

Anti nausea/motion sickness meds

A few little activities for the kids, like a new yoto card, activity books, little lego sets

Chargers for electronics

Clothes:

5 shirts, a mix of short sleeve and long sleeve

1 hoodie/sweatshirt

1 pair of shorts

3-4 pairs of long pants

Underwear

2 sets of PJs

6 pairs of socks

Outerwear:

Rain jacket, great to use as a light jacket or windbreaker too

Warm hat, gloves, warm jacket—this was specifically because we knew we’d be on open water and it would be cold

Flip flops—for shower shoes, as well as beach days

Waterproof, warm, comfortable shoes. We didn’t pack separate sneakers and rain boots: we just had our fall/winter water resistant or water proof shoes that we usually use at home.

Practice.

Pack your bags. Unpack. Remove items that you have packed “just in case.” Repack. Repeat until everything fits easily. Unless you’re traveling to a remote country, you don’t need a ton of emergency stuff.

Remember room for souvenirs.

Be careful of how much you buy, and be sure to leave room in your carryons for souvenirs. We ended up scrambling the night before our flight back home to try to get everything to fit. In the end, we left a lot of stuff behind in our airport hotel room that wouldn’t fit, like the inflatable foot rests that the kids didn’t use on the plane, to make room for things they bought.

In the end, it was absolutely worth it to only bring carryons. We still packed more than we needed, doing laundry wasn’t terribly inconvenient, it saved room in our rental car and saved us a lot of stress.