In this post, I’ll share 9 of the best travel accessories you absolutely cannot live without.

Yes these are affiliate links where if you buy the item I get $ to help run the site, at no cost to you. However, these are all the exact items I personally use.

Here’s a couple of examples showing you I actually own the items I’m about to suggest to you below.

The 9 Best Travel Accessories You Absolutely Cannot Live Without

Below are just what’s worked wonders for me. But as always with anything you read on the internet, do your own due diligence and see if it’ll work for you as well.

First, I’ll introduce to you 5 items that I use for packing for my trips and to make my journey to the destination as comfy as possible.

Then, I’ll recommend 4 other items I use that helps a ton for when I actually arrive to my destination.

My Favorite Packing Cube

Packing cubes help you with clothing organization. They make it so that as soon as you go to your hotel room, you can just open up the relevant cubes for your underwears, shorts, or tops. No more rummaging through your luggage or backpack to find that one pair of socks.

The ones I use are these ones from peak design. Built with YKK zipper so they’re strong and durable. And like luggage, these cubes have got an additional zipper that can assist in compressing your contents. I have other packing cubes, but they’re generally too rigid and don’t have an extra zipper to compress the cube.

Compressing the packing cube makes this one of the best travel accessories I cannot live without because it saves a ton of space in my carry-on / backpack / luggage. This means more space to pack other things.

Saving Your Neck In Long-Haul Flights Or Train Rides

I personally use this neck pillow for long-haul flights or long train rides.

They’re compact, foldable, and very comfortable. You can easily take the cloth off and put it in the laundry if you’re a clean freak like me.

This neck pillow uses an internal, foam-padded plastic spine to support your neck and is designed to be super compact.

Conventional neck pillows are very bulky and annoying to carry around. Not to mention wearing them feels like someone’s choking you.

This trtl neck pillow on the other hand isn’t nearly as thick and works more like a very supportive scarf. As a result, it feels much ‘cooler’ than other neck pillows and you don’t feel like someone’s trying to murder you as you sleep on the plane.

Once You’re Done Saving Your Neck, It’s Time To Save Your Ears

From a political standpoint, I’m definitely for wearing masks.

But for 8-16 hour flights, I find wearing masks extraordinarily uncomfortable. The strings on my mask dig into the back of my ears and it’s quite unpleasant after a while.

If you’re like me, you should purchase ear-savers which distribute the spring load from the string evenly across the back of your neck.

The discomfort from the mask digging into my ears tenses me up, which makes the task of sleeping hard as I’m not relaxed. I find that wearing ear-savers helps me sleep on flights a lot easier because I’m not focused on how annoying wearing a mask is.

Sleeping on flights is super-important if you’d like to time your schedule to your destination’s time. Small things like your mask digging into your ears can cascade out into bigger consequences, like extended jetlag which deteriorates the quality of your trip.

These are the earsavers I use. For under 10 bucks, these are one of my newest, best travel accessories I cannot live / fly without.

Secure The Bag…To A Support Beam, Or A Nighstand

People steal shit in a lot of countries. As such, it’s important to lock your luggage and bags.

One annoying thing with traditional locks is that it’s very hard to loops the lock’s hook into your zipper holes.

Instead of traditional locks, I use these locks with a long cable (like a bike lock) so I can:

• Easily wrap the cable around zipper holes
• Wrap my luggage’s handle against stationary objects like a support beam

Hotel maids in Mexico (or LATAM in general) / poor countries are known to steal shit. Thus, it’s common practice for me to put my valuables in my luggage and use a lock like this to lock my zippers when I go out for the day. This way, if they want to steal my laptop, they need to steal my entire luggage, which is a lot harder to pull off.

My luggage also has 2 airtags (for redundancy) inside it so even if they were to steal the luggage, I should be able to find its location fairly easily.

And, if the hotel room has a stationary object (like a beam or a cabinet handle), I’d just use a separate lock for the zippers, and then use this cable lock to loop the luggage handle around a cabinet/nightstand drawer handle so that they can’t move the luggage without moving the entire cabinet.

The reason why I don’t just use a hotel safe for my valuables is because:

1. Not all hotels have a hotel safe, so I need a better system for securing my goods (i.e. airtag in luggage + locking up valuables in luggage).
2. Hotel safes malfunctions a lot. And I don’t want to have to learn how to use a new safe every time I go on vacation.

NOTE: The Amazon reviews seem to indicate that it’s a quality lottery. Mine works for me but you might want to buy this well ahead of a trip so you can stress-test your lock before going overseas with it.

Sleep Mask + Silicone Earplugs

A sleep mask blocks out all light from the plane for easier sleeping. And earplugs is the legal equivalent of snuffing a crying baby.

For my sleep mask: I like the ones from bedtime bliss because they have a groove where your eyeballs are. I’ve tried a bunch of other eyemasks, but most eyemasks don’t have that groove so it presses against your eyeballs while you try to sleep. This makes sleeping difficult for me because it feels like someone’s palming my eyeballs while I’m trying to sleep. The bedtime bliss sleep mask avoids that.

The sleep mask I recommended here comes with earplugs. Though I just use the sleep mask because I personally don’t like reusing earplugs too many times due to hygiene reasons. I also find that foam earplugs don’t block out as much noise as disposable silicon ones.

These Mack’s earplugs can be reused 2-3 times. For me, these bad boys block out basically all noises in an airplane. Paired with the sleep mask and the Trtl Pillow, it feels like you’re isolated in your own world where you can sleep, even if a baby’s crying in your cabin.

You can also use these if you want, which has a higher decibel rating than the ones I recommended above. Though I haven’t tried these out personally so I can’t vouch for them. Since they come with so many foam tips, you can dispose of these ones after a few uses too if you want.

Protect Your Eyes

These are is the best travel accessory that I absolutely cannot live without.

Sunglasses.

They make you look cool and they also protect your eyes.

But the problem with a lot of sunglasses is that they are very expensive, especially if they look cool. Well, news flash: those $200 pair of Oakley’s you have? It took them $2 to manufacture, and ship it to your door.

This is why I use these ZeroUV sunglasses.

They’re cheap and effective. The 3-set above is like $7 a pair of sunglasses. This means even if I lose them or destroy them (as I often do), I’m not going to cry over it like I did when I scratched my $120 Oakley’s one time.

They’re rated to protect your eyes from UV, so they’re just as effective as <insert overpriced brand here>.

Oh, you want polarized? No problem. Just use the same link above and pay $1 more per pair ($8/pair each as of this writing).

I love these not only for travel, but to use everyday. Because they’re so inexpensive, you can easily just get 6 sunglasses and then:

• Have 2 pairs in your car: one polarized for driving, and another one for guests if they forgot to bring sunglasses.
• Have 2 pairs in a travel bag for trips.
• Have 1 pair in your office.
• Have 1 pair in your home, for if you want to want to go out for a walk.

This way, you never have to pack sunglasses. They’re already there, everywhere you go.

Lastly, I like these glasses because they’re a snug fit. A lot of other sunglasses (stupid Oakley’s) are super loose for me and fall out of my face. These sunglasses have a sturdy fit, like a good-fitting running shoe, but they’re not so tight where there’s any pain, even after many hours of wear.

Flash Lights

If you’re going to more adventurous countries or spending time in nature, a flashlight will come in handy.

These flashlights are pocket-sized and can easily fit in a drawstring bag (see below).

I got the 2-pack because I’m always paranoid one’ll break, and 2 of these don’t really take up any space.

And at the end of the day, what’s more handy than a small flashlight on a trip? 2 flashlights.

Swim Trunks

I don’t have much recommendation for swim trunks, but if you’re traveling to, say, Mexico or something where you’ll go to cenotes or something, you should grab 2 swim trunks.

You want 2 instead of 1 because you’d want to allow for ~2 days for the swim trunks to dry. This way, you can reuse your swim trunks every other day. This’ll help in situations where:

1. The weather is humid, or
2. You went for a swim at night. In which case, the trunks probably haven’t dried completely by the next morning.

Lastly, you might grab swim trunks regardless of whether or not you’re anticipating to swim. For example, if you’re going to a nice hotel, you’ll generally regret not bringing swim trunks (happened to me a few times). You’ll discover they have a huge / awesome swimming pool that they never advertised on their website and you’ll think: “Oh man if I only had swim trunks I could kill 30 minutes just playing around in this awesome pool.”

It doesn’t take a lot of space and can minimize your regret level should you run into a situation where you’d like to swim. OR you can risk it and just buy swimming trunks locally should the need arise since swimming trunks aren’t expensive anyway. Either one works.

The Best Travel Accessory You Absolutely Cannot Live Without, Period

I’ve saved the best for last. And this is something you absolutely must bring with you on every trip.

And that is a drawstring bag for your day carry.

The reason why I prefer a drawstring bag over a regular big-ass backpack is that they’re much more lightweight. This makes it very convenient to carry a drawstring bag all day.

In addition, they’re much more inexpensive than backpacks and still provides some organization.

For example, these drawstring bags have a side insert and small exterior pockets so you can conveniently grab your hand-sanitizers or other smaller goods. Helps avoid having to fish your smaller items (which inevitably fall to the bottom) in the main, large compartment.

Word of advice though: I wouldn’t place things like phones and other highly valuable items though, because outward facing pockets/zippers are easy pickings for pickpockets.

If you’re afraid of theft, just use an around-the-neck pocket pouch (as I do) to hang passports, cash, and other important document under your clothes. Impossible to steal. Also makes for a great passport holder.

Your Turn

I’m always looking for accessories that’ll help me in my travels.

Is there anything travel accessories that you think are the best that isn’t being included here? Email me at hello@goodmoneygoodlife.com or leave a comment below!