Keep All Your Gadgets Charged on the Road

Difficulty: Easy

Messy wires on hotel desk

There are few things more annoying than arriving at your destination and discovering that some important device you brought won’t get charged because of one stupid thing you forgot to pack. Here’s an easy way to avoid that.

Dress Rehearse

The only foolproof system I found is to do a full, dress-rehearsal for my overnight recharge in the hotel when I’m finishing up my packing and doing it the right way:

  • Gather up all the devices and gadgets that will need recharging. Think it through. Did you remember the Apple Watch that’s on your wrist and the DSLR camera you intended to bring?
  • Connect everything that needs to be charged to its charging cable and charger and power supply. For everything you have, there should be a chain with the device at one end and a wall outlet plug on the other
  • Great! Now figure out how many power outlets you’re going to need. If it seems like there’ll be a lot, then add a compact power strip or multi-outlet adapter. Some hotels can be very generous with the number of outlets they make available. Some, not so much. 
  • Consider any device interconnections you’ll need. Are you syncing your phone with your laptop or downloading photos from your camera to your computer. When I travel, I always make sure I keep copies of everything I create in two separate places.
  • If your travels are taking you out of North America, make sure you have enough adapters for the local style of wall outlets [Wikipedia link]. If you need to lug along a device like a CPAP machine that you’ll need in a specific location, make sure you remember to bring a local power adapter for that, too. Pretty much all adapters and chargers are built to handle the range of voltages used by different countries, but if you have any doubts, it’s worth checking with the manufacturer.
  • One other thing I do is make sure that I have charging cables for anything I may need to use on the plane in my most accessible carry-on. Sure, it may only be a 90-minute flight, but what if I get delayed in the terminal or on the tarmac for hours?

In Conclusion…

This approach seems the most obvious now but wasn’t the first that I tried. The others left me with tons of spares that I had to buy at my destination and now sit in a drawer at home, some of which came from overpriced hotel gift shops, and another obtained after hiking to a Walmart down the road, and one overnighted to my hotel from Amazon. (I have a lousy memory for these kinds of things.) 

This takes a bit of work, but when you’re heading to your distant destination, you’ll have the peace of mind of knowing that all your devices can be happily charged when you get there.

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