When I was a kid I was obsessed with the idea of disappearing into the woods and never coming back. There were a whole bunch of things that tied into this, but probably it started with the stories where people were swept off into magical worlds without warning. I didn't want to be like Dorothy or Wendy or Susan and Lucy, dropped back at home after such an adventure, but it didn't seem like something that there was much control over, so I think instead I became fascinated with being prepared just in case I did get swept up into a portal. I tended to carry a backpack everywhere with the things I considered essential: a book, a notebook, some pencils, some cash, a beat-up state map that was tearing on the folds, string and a pocketknife and whatever else seemed necessary for that just in case at the moment.

Outside of fantasy, I read about Laura Ingalls and Kirsten Larson and others who took off with everything in a wagon, about itinerant and nomadic tribes in the US and elsewhere in the world, about traveling tinsmiths and blacksmiths and bards and pilgrims and monks who carried everything on their backs, about traditional skills and practical skills and outdoor survival skills and backwoods camping and people who hiked the Appalachians, how to build shelters and hidden caches, and from there I got onto the mailing lists for Paladin Press and that is its own rabbit hole where I learned about prepping and bug out bags, which is really just another way of thinking about carrying everything on your back just in case.

Looking through zine distros, I discovered Dwelling Portably, who were talking about the same things that would come up in the extreme minimalism and tiny home communities later. Once I got into ren faire costuming, I started looking into the SCA and other historical reconstruction folks who wanted the kit as well as the clothes, folks who wanted to be able to go out into the woods with the same things a mountain man or a ranger from Tolkein would carry and survive as they would have. I spent a year as an exchange student overseas and actually did live out of two suitcases and a backpack. I made plans to do that again in college, though life happened and it never came to fruition. When my then-fiancee and I moved to Oregon, we got rid of everything that wouldn't fit in our hatchback, which gave me a genuine thrill at the time.

I often feel like I live suspended between the desire to own only what I can carry and the desire to be a cozy cluttercore maximalist. If one goal is to carry the perfect travel kit, my other goal is to live in a home full of books, art, textures, magical objects and crafts and tools, where I am also prepared for anything but in a completely different way.

One of my favorite forms of everyday carry is the chatelaine, which is basically a brooch or belt hook that allows you to keep a variety of useful tools on short chains. It's best recognized in the Victorian era, but I first connected with the idea of having everything hanging from my belt, essentially, in the context of ren faire costuming, and the current trend of having a having a hanging keychain with the useful tools on it is from the same school.

I end up fascinated with keychain-designed tools, with my collection of tiny flashlights and multitools and tech tools and all sorts of other random items, plus art supplies like my keychain watercolor palette magical tools like a keychain charm, enspelled key, charged compass... you get the idea. I don't carry a pouch on my belt everyday the way I do at the ren faire, but I know there are people who do and sometimes I wish I could carry it off.

Beyond what goes in my pockets or on my keychain, I rotate through a variety of different bags, including a sling bag and a backpack. They're perfect opposite ends of the spectrum- the backpack was a secondhand find, and one I've had to patch and mend. It's very modern, mostly in bright blue, and not aesthetic at all really, but it's big enough to hold almost everything, and well-padded so it's easy on my back. The sling bag is a Della Q bag with tons of pockets and organizers in it, so it's almost more like an overgrown pencil case than a bag. It was an investment pieceI tend to feel like I'm always on the search for the perfect bag even though I know perfectly well no such thing exists.

Probably unsurprisingly, my favorite tiny house belongs to a historical re-enactor who has made her interior look wonderfully historic.

I love taking inspiration from historic sewing kits, ditty bags, and even historic toiletry kit. Aside from sewing, other hobbies like painting have nice sets as well. Magically-speaking, there's not as many good pathwalking kits out there for inspiration but it's still great to look at. And where real magical kit isn't very popular to share, LARP magical kit can step in.

One of my kit goals is a travelling tea set suitable for vacations and the like, inspired by Chinese tea baskets and fancier travel tea sets:

Those seem a bit harder to source and a bit bulkier than I'd need, so I've considered building it out in a kit like this, replacing the mixer with a thermos-sized electric kettle and the mixing tools with a tea spoon, strainer, maybe some small containers with loose tea in them...:

scrying mirror.