What Do You Carry In Your ‘Junk Bag’ While On Vacation?

It would take four steamer trunks and a forklift manned by Passepartout, Phileas Fogg’s faithful manservant, to tote the sum contents of my readers’ collective “junk bag.”

I recently listed a few useful gizmos and accessories I stash away in a bag when I travel - the equivalent of the “junk drawer” in my kitchen. I asked readers to divulge the contents of their “junk bags,” and the response was astonishing.

Nobody could carry all these items without incurring ruinous excess baggage charges from the airline. But I bet everyone who reads this will find at least one item that becomes indispensable.

I’ll start with Pauline Sweeney of Windsor, Calif., because she was the first to respond, because her ideas were quite astute and because she is, after all, my mother.

What goes into my mom’s bag are: A small credit-card-sized solar calculator with an attached Post-It note with the currency exchange rates of the countries she’ll be visiting. A small washcloth. Hardly any hotels outside the U.S. have these. A small bag of moist towelettes. She adds that my stepfather, Dan Sweeney, takes along a small eyeglass repair kit.

A small roll of duct tape always accompanies Nancy Hoyt Belcher of Oakland, a writer and photographer. “It’s been used for repairs to the raccoon-torn tent when I was camping in Yosemite, to the cotton pants that got torn in Namibia (in an embarrassing place), to repair cameras that were about to disintegrate because a screw had fallen out (yes, I also carry a miniature screw driver, but that doesn’t help if you’ve lost the screw), and to hold a suitcase together when the lock busted.”

Scented votive candles to freshen musty hotel rooms travel in the junk bag of an e-mail correspondent.

Another reader suggested packing inexpensive gift lapel pins specific to your town, county or state. “They make great spur of the moment ‘thank you’ and remembrance gifts.” For repairs while on the road he carries a compact “Leatherman” tool with narrow-nose pliers and a gamut of screw drivers, files, wire cutters and blades.

Several readers suggested something that had never occurred to me - plastic clothespins “not to hang wet clothes,” one wrote, “although they work well for that, too. I use them to hold the room drapes closed. Inevitably the air conditioner blows them open a bit, and it is easier to sleep in a dark room!”

Iodine pills for drinking tap water that looks marginal reside in the junk bag one reader, along with several coffee filters: “I am both a coffee addict and coffee lover,” he wrote, “and it’s a bummer when I meet up with travelers who have java but no filters.”

Another suggested some super glue, and a few cassettes for the tape players in rental cars.

Small individual packets of mayonnaise, mustard, relish, soy sauce and salt and pepper - the kind you get at McDonald’s or cafeterias - reside in at least one reader’s junk bag to lubricate dry airline sandwiches and spice up picnics.

Several readers suggested packing a 100-watt light bulb on domestic trips. “Motel reading lamps are way too dim,” one wrote. “(But) you must remember to take it with you when you go.”

A Sacramento woman said she never leaves home without several plastic Disney toys (from fast-food chains), small perfume vials given as samples by department stores, promotional items (key rings, dice, etc.) from Nevada casinos and small pins from the state capital gift shop. “These make nice icebreakers,” she said, “and the children like the toys.”

There’s one item that travels in just about everyone’s junk bag - including mine, although I neglected to mention it: a Swiss Army knife. These quintessential tools have delivered just about all of us from trouble at one time or another.

A reader recalled the time she was aboard a rubber Zodiac boat off Caroline Island in the Pacific Ocean, threading its way between reefs, when the propeller became entangled in an old fishing net.

“The helmsman had no knife, nor did the other passengers,” she said. “I whipped out mine, we cut ourselves free and were no longer stalled in the wilds of the South Pacific. I was personally a big hit, being a 68-year-old zaftig woman amid a bunch of outdoor types.”