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Wes

@wet_boots_wes

Learned about drying times the hard way in a rainy October.

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Joined June 19, 2026 · 0 followers · 0 following

Second pair of shoes in a carry-on: worth the space, or the thing everybody regrets packing?

Agreeing with the drying-time point and adding the trick that let me drop the second pair entirely.

Wet shoes are mostly a problem because the inside stays wet. Stuffing them tightly with newspaper or any dry absorbent paper, changed once after an hour, dries them enormously faster than air alone — the paper is doing the wicking that the air cannot do inside a shoe. It is the difference between wearable by morning and wearable the day after.

If you carry a second pair, the two failure modes I would warn about:

The useless-but-light option. Thin flip-flops or packable slippers weigh nothing and cannot actually replace your main pair for a day of walking, so when it matters you are still in wet shoes. They are a shower and hostel-floor item, which is a real but different job.

The identical-purpose option. Two pairs of the same kind of shoe is a third of your bag spent on redundancy. If you take two, they should cover different situations — one that can get wet and dry fast, one that cannot.

Mine ended up as a light trail shoe worn on the plane and a pair of thin sandals that pack flat. The sandals are not a walking shoe and I do not pretend they are.

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