What to Put in Your Bag for Six Hours of Daytime Clubbing
A small bag you can wear across your body, packed with nine things, beats a big one you have to hold all afternoon.
Take a small bag you can wear across your body, and put nine things in it: phone, cash and card, ID, keys, lip product, blotting papers, a couple of hair grips, plasters and a hair elastic. That is the whole list, and everything else is a decision to carry something for six hours.
The size of the bag matters more than what goes in it. Anything you have to hold, you will put down, and anything you put down in a room as busy as Digital on a Dreamworx afternoon takes twenty minutes to find again. Across the body, zipped, forgotten about.
The Bag Itself
A small crossbody with a zip is the right shape. A strap you can shorten so the bag sits at your hip or in front of you is better again, because it stays where you can feel it while you are dancing.
Avoid anything with an open top, and avoid a clutch. A clutch is a two-hour bag being asked to do a six-hour job.
If your bag has an inside pocket, put your card and your ID in it. Everything else can rattle around.
What It Costs
The kit is cheap. Buying from scratch, you can cover the lot for under fifteen pounds between a chemist and a supermarket.
- Blotting papers. A pound or two, and the single most useful thing in the bag.
- Plasters. Get the fabric ones. Shoes you have worn a hundred times behave differently after four hours of standing.
- Hair grips and a spare elastic. Pennies, and they rescue a hairstyle in seconds.
- A travel size deodorant or a couple of wipes. Small, cheap, worth it in a warm room.
- A small power bank and a short cable. The one real expense, at around ten to fifteen pounds. Charge it the night before.
Take some cash as well as your card. Cloakrooms and taxis are the two places where it still saves you time.
The Makeup That Earns Its Place
One lip product and blotting papers. That is the working kit for six hours.
Add a mini setting spray if you have one and a cotton bud for cleaning up under the eye. A cotton bud takes up no room and fixes the mascara smudge that would otherwise bother you all afternoon.
Leave the foundation at home. Topping up foundation over a base that has been on for hours is what makes it look patchy, and you will never do it well in club lighting anyway.
Feet, Coats And The Weather
Wear shoes you have already stood up in for a full evening. Daytime clubbing means more standing than a night out, not less, because at Dreamworx you tend to be there from the beginning rather than arriving at ten.
Plasters go in the bag before you leave, not after you notice a rub. By then it is too late for them to help much.
A cloakroom is worth using, and it is usually a pound or two. Hand over your coat and anything you brought for the journey, keep the small bag on you, and you have both hands free for the rest of the afternoon.
Phone, Battery And Getting Home
Your phone will do more work than usual: photos, finding people, and getting you home at the end. That is a lot of screen time in six hours.
Turn the brightness down when you arrive and it will last noticeably longer. Agree a meeting spot with whoever you are with in the first ten minutes, so a flat battery becomes an inconvenience rather than a problem.
Sort out how you are getting home before you go out. Future you, at nine o'clock, will be extremely grateful for that one.
What To Leave At Home
Your full makeup bag, a hairbrush, a book-sized purse, an umbrella, and anything you would be upset to lose.
Leave the big jewellery too, or at least the pieces that catch. Earrings that dangle and long necklaces both find their way into hair and sleeves once a floor fills up.
A jacket counts as luggage rather than an outfit once you are inside, so wear the one you are happy to hand over and check it in. Carrying it round all afternoon is the single most common way to end up with one hand permanently occupied.
The Test Before You Leave
Put the bag on, zip it up, and stand in front of the mirror. If it sits where you can feel it, if nothing digs in, and if you can dance with your arms up without holding it, you have packed it right.
Everything on this list is there because it fixes something small before it turns into something that pulls you off the floor. Nine things, one strap, and the rest of the afternoon is yours.