Packing for the Holidays in 15 Easy GIF Steps

I hate traveling. More accurately, I hate getting to places; once I’m there, I love it. I was not alive for the days when air travel was a glamorous and refined experience, but based on the vaguely bus station-like feel it has now, I have a hard time believing that those days ever even existed. With the holiday-travel trifecta of Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas looming large in the near future, odds are that most of you are going to board a plane or two in order to visit family and loved ones sometime in the next six weeks. In an act of blog-based commiseration, I’ve assembled 15 GIFs that I feel accurately portray the process involved in packing that most annoying of bags: the suitcase.

[All GIFs via Tumblr]

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1. Checking the weather at your destination a few days before your flight.

2. The weather is terrible

3. Pretending the trip is not happening so you can delay packing for as long as possible.

4. Spending the evening before you leave frantically doing laundry, picking up dry cleaning and pulling your suitcase out of storage.

5. Getting distracted while choosing things to pack by trying on clothes you forgot you had.

6. Rewarding yourself for your hard work with a Netflix movie.

7. Remembering that you actually, in fact, need to pack because the plane will leave without you.

8. Ok, let’s just get it over with.

9. Trying to figure out what you forgot.

10. Realizing that your bag is too big to carry on.

11. Letting your bag go and convincing yourself that nothing will get stolen out of it and you will, in fact, see it again.

12. Realizing what you forgot while your plane is in the air.

13. Waiting for your bag to come around the baggage carousel.

14. There it is! Your bag!

15. Buying too much stuff while you’re away and having to shove it all in your already-full suitcase to do the whole process again on the way back.