Work trip outfits: try on your week before you travel.

You put on Wednesday's outfit in the hotel room and the trousers pull across the hips. Now a waistband is on your mind through every meeting. The fix happens at home: try on all of your work trip outfits, shoes and all, two or three days before you leave. Here is how to do it in about an hour, and what to pack once you have.

I try on my clothes before work travel, the actual outfits I plan to wear, so I know I will feel comfortable and confident in them. It is one less thing to worry about during the week. A work trip already asks a lot of you. Your clothes should not be on that list.

Plan your work trip outfits from the calendar, not the closet.

Before you open the closet, open the schedule. Write down each day of the trip and what it holds: the flight, a full day of meetings, a presentation, a team dinner, a site visit with a long walk between buildings. Each day gets one outfit. Any evening that needs its own look gets one more.

That list is your packing list. Everything else is extra, and extra is what makes a suitcase heavy and a hotel morning confusing.

Plan the travel day like a workday, because it is often the longest one. If you go straight from the airport to a meeting, that outfit has to do both.

Sunday is a good moment to sketch this out. If you plan on paper, The Year of You, an undated weekly planner, opens every week on Sunday, with room to write each trip day down before the week starts moving.

Try on your week in one hour.

Two or three days before you leave, set aside an hour. Lay each day's outfit on the bed in order, complete, from shoes to bag, and put each one on the way you will wear it.

Do not stand at the mirror and decide it looks fine. Live in it for five minutes. Sit in a hard chair as if you are in a long meeting. Walk the length of the house in the shoes. Reach forward as if you are writing on a whiteboard. Then check it near a window, because meeting room light is rarely kind.

Anything that pulls, gapes, creases badly or pinches comes out. No negotiating. If you are adjusting it at home, you will be adjusting it all day in front of people.

Your clothes should be the one thing you do not have to think about.

How many outfits should you pack for a work trip?

One for each day, one for any evening that needs its own, and one backup. That is usually all. The backup covers a spilled coffee, a colder room or a dinner that moves somewhere more formal.

Build from one or two base colors, like navy, black, camel or gray, so everything goes with everything else. Two bottoms, three or four tops and one good layer can carry a full week. On a longer trip, repeat the bottoms and the layer and change the tops. Nobody keeps track of what you wore on Tuesday.

The pieces that travel best are usually the ones you already trust at home. If you are still building those, the go to outfits worth owning tend to be the same ones that pack well: jeans and a good t shirt, a black dress, comfortable heels.

Shoes, a layer and fabric that survives the suitcase.

Pack shoes you have already worn for a full day, never a new pair. Two pairs is usually enough, one for the day and one for the evening, and the evening pair should be comfortable too.

Bring one layer for cold rooms. Meeting rooms and planes run cool. A blazer, a fine knit cardigan or a soft wrap that goes with everything earns its space.

Test fabric with your hand. Crush a corner for a few seconds and let go. If it holds the creases now, it will hold them after a day in the suitcase, so choose something else or plan time to steam it.

Pack what passed, and keep a travel drawer.

Fold each day's outfit together, so every morning you pull out one complete look and get dressed without deciding anything. Leave the rest at home. Note what failed, the trousers that need tailoring or the heels that need repair, and fix them once you are back.

I was always forgetting something when I traveled, sure I had put it in my bag when I had not. So I started a travel drawer. Everything travel related goes into that one space and only that space. Instead of running around the house looking for a million things, preparing for a trip is much easier.

Yours might hold a phone charger, an adapter, a travel toothbrush, a small jewelry pouch and a folded tote. Put everything back the day you get home, and the next trip is half packed. If this trip includes a reception, preparing for a networking event works the same way: decide early, so you can be present later.

Decide at home. Be present on the road.