Travel Tips

How to Pack Your Cosmetics When Traveling

• Collect sample sizes of your favorite skin care and makeup products (fragrance, too) before your trip. When you buy a beauty product, ask for samples for your travel kit. Check out drugstores for inexpensive, trial size beauty aides, such as toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, and deodorant.

• To keep luggage as lightweight as possible, carry pills and creams in plastic containers. Count out the number of pills or capsules you will need for the days you will be away and put them in labeled containers.

• Carry your cosmetics on with you. They will keep better at board temperature than in the cargo hold where extreme cold or heat can ruin formulations. And they will be handy when you want to reapply them.

• Streamline your makeup choices with double-duty products, such as cream-to-powder base, eye shadow that pinch-hits as a liner, lip pencil that fills in like lipstick, blush that highlights eyes, too. A suntan product with aloe Vera also makes an excellent body moisturizer.

• Make sure cosmetics are “cushioned” (those plastic bags create protective pockets of air) to prevent breakage and leakage. To further safeguard against spillage from plastic bottles (shampoo, moisturizer, etc.), compress the open bottle, cover the Opening with plastic wrap and then close the top while continuing to squeeze the bottle.

• Keep sharp-edged beauty aides (razors, scissors, etc.) encased.

• For easiest access, pack all-of-a-kind essentials together, in separate bags — toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, and mouthwash; feminine hygiene products; shampoo, conditioner, hair spray.

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