Dopp, again
The human I’m dating has begun following these, and someone else just signed up because of a post I wrote 400 years ago about my dopp kit. Materially everything has changed about the dopp kit, and I’m about to start traveling a little with the human, so here’s a brief summary of my dopp kit pack load. Again. Expect another one of these in 3 years.
Bags
The dopp kit itself is a DMade XL with UX10 lining and interior insert. The XL size is very large, filling the whole bottom of a carry-on bag. Unless you also want to throw your 311 bag in there, you probably should get the regular size, not the XL. But this works for me because it fits a lot of other items and easily decants straight into the bathroom once I’ve arrived at my destination.
I used to use a Pack-It Quick Trip from Eagle Creek (which, for the record, came in a very different form than either of the current models), but outgrew it as I moved more to an all-soap process. Shaving sticks aren’t small.
311 bags are hard to source well. They technically need to be clear, but in practice nobody cares as long as you can see through them enough. Fully clear bags are either too thick, not thick enough, or the zipper is too fiddly. Matador’s bags hit all of the right design notes for me. I use the zip-shut variety, and it goes into the dopp kit, since I’m precheck and seldom need to remove the 311 bag. (It is often, god help us, checked on long-hauls.)
I have four(!) 1-way drying roll top soap bags from Matador that I use for my shampoo & conditioner (both JR Liggett), face bar (Chidoriya matcha), and body soap (Dr. Bronner’s).
Finally, I have two small-sized ILE acessory bags. One of them contains all of my tools: nail trimmer, nose hair trimmer, tweezers, styptic pen, acne tool. The other contains single-use neti salt packets.
Inside
In the 311 bag, I use mostly Muji bottles, which are about $1.20 apiece. It also includes face moisturizer, SPF, allergy meds, hair cream, and single-use Soak unscented packets for laundry.
The bag itself contains a comb, razor, blades, a shaving stick, a deodorant stick, toothpaste pills, toothbrush, travel neti pot (fight me), and a pill case from Muji with pepto, Imodium, Mucinex, and vitamin C.
I’m a dude
I’m sure that a lot of this is being scoffed at by other beings, so to be clear: this is what works for me. And there are other guides for other people! Tortuga’s is pretty general. Pack Hacker has guides to solid toiletries, toiletry bags, and the pack loads themselves.
And that’s it for your triennial update. Nice & simple.