Where’s my stuff? I get asked that question a fair amount as I travel. Here’s a rundown:

Most of what I own fits in a carry-on bag. My clothing, sundries, and gadgets live in the Aeronaut made by Tom Bihn. Of course, I don’t own much, because it needs to fit in the overhead bin.

The stuff I’m not carrying around fits in some cardboard boxes provided and stored by MakeSpace. The company has four boxes of our stuff and keeps it secure for $25 a month. It’ll ship one or all of our boxes when and wherever we like. We’ve got some mementos and our winter clothes in those boxes.

In the event of an emergency, we’ll need some dressy clothing that isn’t easy (or practical) to keep in the carry-on. As long as the emergency happens in the United States, we’ll quickly receive our “funeral” clothes from DUFL. This company will ship us a suitcase full of a suit, dress, shoes, etc. by overnight courier. Our clothes will arrive freshly dry-cleaned and ready to go after being pulled from our DUFL closet. The closet is $9.95 a month.

What We Keep in Virtual Storage

The rest of our “stuff” is digital.

We’ve got photos stored on Smugmug. The site keeps everything safe and sound with regular backups. It preserves our metadata as well as the images, so the pictures are truly ready for use down the road.

Our important “papers” are locked away in Evernote. My wife and I each have an Evernote account, and we share important folders between our accounts.

The remainder of our files live on Google Drive. We keep some files synced with our laptops, and other files live on their servers without syncing with our devices.

Our pictures, documents, and other files are backed up and synced on Amazon Cloud Drive. We use CloudHQ to grab everything and back it up at Amazon. It runs 24/7/365.

Everything is password protected, and those passwords are unique, complex, and encrypted and housed at Lastpass. Theoretically, Lastpass keeps our information safe from hackers as long as we can remember our Lastpass password. So far, so good, and we keep our fingers crossed.

That’s it. It fits in the Aeronaut, one of the MakeSpace boxes, and the DUFL bag, or it’s digital. Otherwise, it goes to Goodwill. It’s simple. I like it that way.