A small publication for people who pack light.

We test things, repeatedly, on real trips. Then we write down what worked.

The Carry-On Edit is a travel publication for women who fly often, hate overpacking, and would rather repeat an outfit four days in a row than spend Saturday morning deciding what to wear in Lisbon.

We started the site after a few too many years of writing roundups that were politely useless — twenty-item lists where nothing was actually tested, ten-best guides where the editor had clearly never put the bag through a real five-day trip. The premise here is simpler: we pick a small number of things, take them on a real trip, and tell you what happened.

Most reviews are written by our editor, Kate. A few times a year we commission pieces from working flight crew, hotel concierges, and pack-light obsessives whose travel cadence is harder than ours.

The editor

Kate Holloway is the editor of The Carry-On Edit. She lives in Brooklyn and has spent the last decade writing about travel for magazines and brand newsletters. She flies somewhere about twice a month, mostly for work, and has slowly converged on a small carry-on and an even smaller list of things she actually wears in it. She started this site after losing a checked bag in Madrid for the second time in 2023.

How we make money

The Carry-On Edit is editorially independent but receives compensation when readers purchase products through our links. We only write about things we have tested and would recommend to a friend. Our full disclosure is here.

Get in touch

Tips, corrections, requests for a specific gear test: editor [at] thecarryonedit [dot] com. We read everything; we reply to most things eventually.