A travel day splits your things into two piles without asking you. One pile needs to be in your hand a dozen times between the front door and the hotel: phone, ID, boarding pass, a card. The other can sit zipped away for hours. Get that split right the night before, and the airport stops being a sequence of rummaging.
Decide what rides on you
Start with the short list. Your phone, your passport or ID, one payment card, your keys and whatever gets you through the gate. On a day like this, nothing else has to be reachable in under three seconds.
The U.S. Department of State, in its advice to travelers from the U.S. Embassy in Paris, puts it plainly: carry only what you can afford to lose, and keep a copy of your passport. So the spare cards, the second ID and the printed copy go in your carry-on or your checked bag, not on your body.
What is left fits a belt bag easily. Our large four-zip crossbody fanny pack is 13.5 inches long, 5 inches high and 3.5 inches deep, and the product data lists a phone of any size, a passport, keys, ID and cards among the things it holds. If you would rather carry almost nothing you can see, the running belt is 0.7 inches deep and thin enough to wear under a shirt.
Pack the fanny pack the night before
SINNO Large 4-Zip Crossbody Fanny Pack
Crossbody fanny pack · 13.5 × 5 × 3.5 in · 10 colors
From $9.49Give every item one pocket and keep it there all day. Four outside zippers means four decisions you only make once.
- Front pocket: boarding pass and ID, the things you show most.
- Second pocket: your phone, on its own, so keys never touch the screen.
- Third pocket: keys and a card.
- Hidden inside pocket: the passport copy or the card you hope not to use.
Then put the bag on over the jacket you will fly in and set the strap. It adjusts from a 26 to a 51 inch waist, which is also long enough to take it off your hips and wear it across your chest. Try both before you go to bed. A strap you have already set is one less thing to fiddle with in a queue.
If you listen to music with wired earbuds, run the cord through the small port on the bag now. The phone stays zipped in and the cord comes out where your hand expects it.
Toiletries and the quart-sized bag
The Transportation Security Administration rule is about the liquids themselves. Liquids, gels, creams and pastes in a carry-on have to be in containers of 3.4 ounces, or 100 ml, or less, packed together in a quart-sized bag.
Our wide-open makeup bag does not change that. It is 8.5 by 8.5 inches with four lined pockets, and it is a good place for brushes, a lipstick and anything solid. The small bottles still go into their quart-sized bag, and that bag comes out on its own at the checkpoint. Pack the makeup bag with the quart-sized bag on top, so you lift it out without unpacking anything else.
The makeup bag folds flat once it is empty, so on the way home it slides in beside your shoes instead of taking a corner of the carry-on.
At the checkpoint
On its security screening page, the TSA says that devices larger than a cell phone come out of a carry-on and go into a bin for X-ray, and that officers may ask you to separate items that clutter a bag. A belt bag with one thing per pocket is the opposite of cluttered. Still, have the bag off your body and ready to put in a bin if you are asked, instead of unbuckling it with a line behind you.
Keep your boarding pass in the front pocket through the whole checkpoint. It is the one thing you will be asked for twice in five minutes.
Through the terminal and on the plane
Once you are past security, move the bag to the front of your body. The State Department advice is to keep a zipped bag in front of you where you can see it, and a fanny pack worn across your chest does exactly that part of the advice with no effort. It does not do the rest for you: the short list you packed the night before is what keeps the stakes low.
On the plane, a bag worn at your waist ends up under a seat belt and a folded tray. Across the chest is more comfortable for a long sit, and the phone pocket stays reachable when the seat in front reclines. If you wear the running belt under your shirt, it can stay where it is for the whole flight.
At the hotel
Unzip the makeup bag on the bathroom counter and leave it open: four lined pockets you can see into beat a toiletry pile. Hang the fanny pack by the door with everything still in its pocket. Tomorrow morning your phone, your key card and your ID are exactly where they were at the gate.
Before you leave for home, put the small bottles back into the quart-sized bag first. It is the step people forget, and it is the one the checkpoint will ask about.
A question about a bag in this piece? Write to hipline@sinnostore.com and the SINNO team will answer.