Tis the season for gift, trial, and travel size cosmetic sets. Along with their siblings in merchandising, advent calendars & the free gift with purchase, holiday sets are the easiest source of small sizes for putting together a travel routine.
It is a silly optimization, but as any road warrior will tell you, keeping your core routines grounded when flying can do wonders for your health and energy. Here I am traveling back from San Francisco with only my sunscreen (Super Goop Glowscreen Stick) and the items pictured in my 4×6 inch re-sealable baggie below. It is a mix of travel sized items and products I decanted into droppers and glass jars.
Next week is the busiest travel week of the year, so I’d like to offer up some of my tricks for traveling with my preferred cosmetics but without having to lug around a giant bag. That’s right, I can even transit through Heathrow with a full routine in a single 8×8 baggie and without checking a bag because I’m a baller.
Travel’s Liquid Rules
Those jerks in the UK want it all packed inside a single, transparent, resealable plastic bag (approximately 20cm x 20cm) with a maximum capacity of 1 liter/quart. And individual liquids must be all under 100ml.
In America, the TSA wants you under 3oz, while European Schengen areas are phasing out a roughly 100ml or under ruleset, but individual airports still have the rules. Liquid rules when traveling can feel random & arbitrary, even with TSA-Pre-Check, so I pack for the maximum set of restrictions just to prove I can.
So, how to pack for air travel restrictions and convenience? You can manage your toiletry needs with two different strategies. Buy or decant. There are pros and cons to both approaches and I myself do a mix.
If you don’t mind spending for convenience, you can often purchase your favorite brands in a travel size kit designed by the brand, or by mixing and matching together sample sets of multiple brands. Sephora has a wide selection, but don’t be afraid to check department stores, Target, Marshalls (I’m told it has had K-Beauty as of late), even Amazon.
Brands will often merchandise products together for specific needs, like dry skin or acne prone skin, but they will also sell individual travel size items of their star products in the mini or travel size section. You are welcome, this is my dumb dent in the universe. One day I’ll write a definitive piece on my adventures in pushing the travel size category into existence.
Travel has become a huge category in cosmetics and every brand has hero product that has been merchandised into multi-brand routines, so you can find many more options now than when I was a cosmetics CEO a decade ago.
Buying Travel Sized
Go to Sephora, Ulta, or even CVS, and look around the travel section for minis in every category from razors to wrinkle & oder sprays. I got myself a Tide pen at the Bozeman CVS today, where also I spotted mini vibrators and condoms in the travel section, so I guess a college town gets a spicy merchandising line up before Thanksgiving.
I generally do a mix of purchasing (or using my Sephora points), along with decanting. I am an avid collector of sample size products (founding subscribers will know if you’ve taken up the offer to have me build you a custom routine), but I do have a consistent routine I like to maintain when traveling.
I’ve recommended The Ordinary before, and for $28 you can try a whole range for oily skin or for dry winter skin (and get a travel bag). I use Youth to the People and think this is a good travel set up of cleanish products for the hippie set. For the acne prone, Sophie Pavitt (aka NYC’s favorite facialist) has a set competing against category behemoth Paula’s Choice for oil prone skin. If you want a little bit of everything, Mario Badescu is one of my favorite “affordable” lines and is an excellent value for the price. For $35 you can handle almost any skincare issue in this set.
Decanting For Travel
The other more involved option (as if trawling the travel section wasn’t involved), is to decant your existing routine into travel size containers. It is somewhat more cost effective to decant creams, serums, toners, and cleansers into containers of smaller sizes, but not always feasible, as many facial actives aren’t sold in very large sizes nor do you need much.
In the first image carousel, you can see a sample of Farmacy Face Wash ($18, but I received as a sample), a full size but still 15ml INKY List Caffeine Eye Cream ($12), a 15ml travel sample of Sunday Riley Luna Retinol ($55), a black glass 20ml jar into which I decanted Beauty Pie Retinol Serum ($29), a 2ml Beauty Pie Super Dose Vitamin C Serum ($29), a 2ml Super Dose Facelift, and 5ml of plain jojoba oil. The larger 20ml black dropper is filled with ROC Super Correxion SPF.
Not pictured is my Aquaphor, nor my 2oz Cetaphil Lotion, that got me through a week in San Francisco. So yeah, you are probably over-using your skincare. Keep it to 1-3 drops of actives and a pea sized amount of retinol serum.
Amazon sells plenty of options from cheap plastic to premium contains. Search for “travel-size toiletry set” to get started and then go down the rabbit hole. Many travel sets come with vials and scoops for convenience and you can relatively easily transfer 5-35ml of liquid products with a dropper. For reference, 35ml is 1oz in freedom units for Americans. You’d be hard pressed to find a serum or facial oil in a container larger than 35ml, even if the packaging makes it look much bigger.
Looking to nail your Instagrams? Many people, including Wirecutter, like the aesthetics of Cadence’s line up of magnetic containers. I personally think they are expensive while being somehow both too large for most of my needs, and too small for others (though they are on sale for Black Friday on Amazon).
They are 1.3oz, which is a bit on the low side for shampoo or body wash for a week, but way too much for a face serum or moisturizer, I don’t want to decant every milliliter of my product. The upside is that the Cadence products have a nice clean look for men who might not mind having more total volume on short trips as they most likely don’t have as many individual products as a woman. I just can’t personally recommend it.
For anything less than a week, I prefer to be extremely compact. Hence the 2-5ml dropper for a serum. If you have a number of items in your face routine, keeping it as small as possible is the way to go for peace of mind, less waste, and less visual clutter on the road.
I decant my Beauty Pie Retinol routine (I do have a referral link for Beauty Pie which will get you $20 off your order but I’ve otherwise kept affiliate links out) into amber glass jars, as light degrades active ingredients like retinol. Then I separate out morning and night routines into different baggies for my own convenience.
For $18, you can get, two dozen amber glass containers with metal lids that will keep active ingredients like sunscreen and retinol protected from sunlight (not to mention not soaking in plastic if that sort of thing matters to you). Is it crazy to buy a 50 pack of 5ml glass vials for $14? Maybe, but I am that kind of crazy.
Body Care Tricks
Other picks I use include this set for my scalp when traveling to locales with dicey water situations. This Makeup Forever HD contour & blush cream set that is somewhat “solid” and so slips past security without counting as a liquid. A stick foundation and your face is handled.
More and more brands are doing products in solid or stick form. I carry the Hanni “Fatty” Moisture Stick to moisturize on the airplane and their No Rinse Shave Gel Pillow is a winner for post travel shaving. Viori has shampoo and conditioning bars. There are lotion and skin conditioning bars like Kate McLeod.
Calming Stress Induced Appearance Issues
Airplane Skin Care
Dr. Dennis Gross Skincare Alpha Beta® Extra Strength Daily Peel Pads ($20 for a set 5) can be used to take off congested, clogged, and rough skin. I’ve been known to use one after my flight takes off, then apply a sheet mask (Mediheal is my favorite), and finally add a full barrier routine in the air (a water sleeping mask from Laneige is my go to), so I land looking well moisturized. I love these Korean Hey Face compressed towels ($10 for 50) that open up into a a full wash cloth when wet and barely take up more than an inch in your bag. I keep them stowed everywhere and before landing use them to wash off all the products, apply sunscreen, and hit the ground running.
Unexpected Zit
A blemish arriving right before a big family event is such a cliche. Old wives tales say you can crush an uncoated Aspirin (which as acetylsalicylic acid is closely related to salicylic acid), mix it with water, and put the paste on the zit. Obviously its better to use salicylic acid spot treatment or Benzoyl peroxide 2.5–5%, but if you have neither, it’s good in a pinch.
Hero’s Mighty Hydrocolloid Patch ($10 for 36) are super easy to carry and can comfortably cover a white head and suck up the gunk in a day. Similarly, Microdart Acne Patches with Salicylic Acid & Madecossoside ($9) work like a hydrocolloid patch but have salicylic acid in a dart to stop the pimple from forming.
Puffy Eye & Dark Circles
I love a Cryo Globe right out of the freezer. Dose your skin with a heavier serum and rub gently up and out till your lymph drains. I also swear by a mini rose quartz roller or a gua sha as well as the knock-off Nurse Jamie facial roller ($15).
If you don’t want to buy anything fancy, make a cup of green tea and pour it into an ice-tray to freeze overnight. Pop them out and gently rub your face with it: antioxidants, lymph movements and soothing cold.
Red Face
Rosacea and general over indulgence can be soothed with K-Beauty staple’s Dr Jart and the Cica line which goes on green to reduce redness and calms through the day.