Hi all,
I love minimalist travel -- traveling with my backpack as small and light as possible. I've used a large camping backpack to do a few 4-6 week international trips, and one 6-month trip across SE Asia and China, but my pump supplies always end up taking up a lot of the bag, and keep me from being truly "light." Right now, I can go for 2 weeks at a time with just a small day pack, but even then, my pump supplies take up almost half my pack.
What I'd really like is to be able to take, say, a 2-month international trip with just a day pack. Basically, something like Tim Ferris' backpack in this blog post, but with the volume of my pump supplies minimized in the same way. But I still want the peace of mind of bringing more supplies than I need, as I do now.
Right now, my strategies for shrinking the footprint of my supplies have been pretty simple:
- removing the supplies from their boxes, keeping them in large plastic bags, and interleaving the reservoirs in the empty spaces left by the infusion set packaging to minimize volume
- taking vials of test strips and individual lancets out of their boxes
- strapping my Frio to the outside of my bag (needs to be exposed for the evaporation effect anyway)
I want to take things to the next level, and I suspect someone here has already tried some "unconventional" ways of making pump supplies take up less space. For example, one thing I'm considering:
- taking my Quick-set infusion sets out of their massive plastic containers and sticking them into the slots of a large pills case (this should take care of the need to protect the needle, but is not necessarily sterile...)
- storing my OneTouch test strips in a similarly air-tight but less space-wasting container
Anyone have awesome strategies for making your diabetes packing footprint smaller?