I will be away for three days next week—and no blogging, since I’m not taking my computer with me. One of the lessons I learned in software development is that it’s good to do things as early as possible (for example, if I had a big report due in two months, I would work on a tentative outline the day I learned of the assignment, and start writing what I could and gathering the information I lacked in the first week).

So I’m packing now. Here’s the shave kit I’ll take:

The Mühle travel brush is the best travel brush I’ve found; the knot stores in the base, and a large opening helps it dry. (You can get a variety of knots for it, including synthetic and silvertip badger.) The shaving soap is quite good and was selected because of the compact container. Three aftershaves from Hardy Shave Products because I’ll be away three days. (I do like variety.) And for the razor, since I’ll be using carry-on this trip, the Gillette Guard, a single-blade cartridge razor I got some time back to test as a shaving option. Because of the handle, I prefer this to the Bic disposable single-blade razor, that handle being the diameter and strength of a plastic soda straw. The Guard isn’t bad, though I did note that I was unable to control blade angle (because of the usual cartridge pivot).

It’s perhaps worth noting that, while 8 Gillette Fusion Proglide Power Cartridges cost $32.50 on Amazon, 8 Gillette Guard cartridges are $4.00, less than 1/8th the price. Of course, the Guard cartridge will probably not last the 5 weeks Gillette claims for its multiblade cartridges, but then the multiblade cartridges don’t seem to last that long, either.

For more packing tips, including a few new to me, check out this post on Cool Tools today. Some very good ideas there.