I had the worst packing experience ever when I was a teenager in the late 90’s. My mother and I were returning from a trip to Ireland. Before leaving home, we packed luxuriously, imagining different weather conditions without rain. Also, for some reason, I decided I needed to take the entire CD booklet with me and not just the Discman. We were already full when my mom went to the local butcher shop and bought two dozen sausages, a few strips of bacon, and a few cans of stew the day before our flight home. Her idea was to wrap everything in plastic bags and hide it inside a giant duffle bag of laundry. Neither the dog nor the customs officials at Dulles Airport were fooled. Kneeling on the linoleum at the end, surrounded by sausages, stuffing clothes into bags, I felt as if I was on the fence, a real public humiliation.
It’s obvious why packaging is difficult. Packing involves a series of tedious questions. What, how many, which, what? So what should I do, what should I do, then what should I do? You can cope by accepting the consequences of heaviness and disorganization in advance and trying to cram everything in. Alternatively, you can try to arrive at an answer in detail through a rational thought process, but as a result, you often run into the limits of your knowledge. For example, while it’s true that Ireland has a lot of rain in October, there were actually several sunny days in the 70s during that month last year. So is it wise to wear shorts? And what about a sun hat? And perhaps since it’s impossible to predict the future after all, wouldn’t sandals also make sense?
After the sausage fiasco, I told myself I would learn how to pack better. A few years later, when I had to spend a month in a Los Angeles hotel with my mother recovering from brain surgery, I bought a 40-liter backpack from outdoor company Osprey and packed it with everything I needed. I decided to get into it. There. I succeeded. Still, it was clear that I was wrong, as the packed bag was very heavy and my luggage was crumpled and crushed. For the next few years, I was confined to one gigantic suitcase on trips to Japan, Turkey, and France. But I didn’t like being dragged through puddles or across cobblestone streets. And the more I used it, the more I became dissatisfied with the whole wheeled bag gestalt. Travel is symbolic, and improper packing can undermine the sense of freedom that travel ideally brings. Why should travel be limited to smooth, paved surfaces? I dreaded the inevitable moment when my overstuffed bag would topple over with a thud, rocking back and forth like a turtle caught in its shell. Things about myself were working against me and I couldn’t help but take it personally.
The Packers face three obstacles. There are unforeseen circumstances. We need to somehow control the various possible futures. There’s consumerism. You need to sort through the junk you own and make it into a useful collection. And then there’s comfort. You want to cushion the impact against the sharp edges of transportation. Staring at these monsters can be unpleasant. Despite having so much, it’s embarrassing to find yourself living in anxiety and admitting that you need a blanket. Perhaps if you were someone who was able to get things done and lived a tougher, less materialistic life, packing would be easier. So there’s actually a fourth obstacle. It’s you.
What kind of person is good at packing? Joan Didion has a famous list of possessions, which is included in her book of essays, The White Album. Basically, 2 skirts, 2 shirts, 1 sweater, 2 pairs of shoes, stockings, some underwear, robes, slippers, toiletries, mohair throws, legal pads, files, a typewriter, a few cigarettes, I put my bottle of bourbon and my house keys all in two bags, one to check and one to carry around. This list is frequently redistributed in articles about how to “pack like Joan Didion.” This is a cool way to pack. It’s not that we want to pack like Joanne, but that if we were as sharp, sophisticated, and insightful as she was, then as a kind of effortless bonus, we might be able to travel like her. The idea is that it can’t be done. I pursued this strategy for some time. It always seemed to work until I added things to the bag at the last moment. I didn’t have Joan’s confidence.
Eventually, I found a new role model. A man named Tynan. Although we had never met, I often visited his blog. Tynan, a “minimalist nomad”, makes his living primarily by working remotely from cruise ships, which he claimed is his ideal working environment. (On one boat, he worked in a “perfect lounge where a string quartet played four hours a day.”) He lived most of his life in one small backpack, carrying only one of everything, viz. He seemed to only own one button-down backpack. , 1 T-shirt, 1 pair of pants, 1 down jacket, and 1 rain shell. Most of his clothing was made of durable materials that could be washed and dried overnight.
Tynan wasn’t cool, he was kind of nerdy. In other words, he was more on my wavelength. Through him, I was introduced to the world of “one-bag” packing, a subculture centered around the pursuit of things like the smallest possible charger or the ideal multipurpose sweater. The promise of One Bag was that no matter how long your trip, everything you needed could fit into a backpack small enough to slip under the seat in front of you on a plane. The most dedicated practitioners posted after-action trip reports, painstakingly reviewed all the gear they packed, and wondered how they could be made even smaller. A subreddit dedicated to “zero luggage” took this idea further, with users taking on the “zero luggage challenge.” (Often a jacket with pockets was important.)
I’ve found it’s fun to think of packing as a game rather than a chore. During my years of frequent travel as a reporter, I put together a four-season “capsule wardrobe” made entirely of merino wool or technical fabrics. I bought one small backpack and put together a system of packing cubes and small pouches to keep everything squared away. I found a smaller version of my gadget. We have standardized and streamlined chargers and cables. I prepared a small travel toiletry kit and kept it stocked at home. I carefully wrote down a detailed packing list for winter, spring, summer, and fall. This was a consumerist endeavor, but it had an end point.
During this period, packing strangely became my main hobby. At the time, I was making an unusually long two-hour train commute to my New Yorker office each way, and I found myself increasingly living as if I were constantly traveling. I wore my travel wardrobe almost every day because it was simple and comfortable, and I used my travel Dopp kit while getting ready after the gym. In his book, The Comfort Crisis: Embracing Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, and Healthy Self, author Michael Easter writes about how we recognize that our addiction to being comfortable is It claims to bind us even more than that. He focuses on professional athletes, monks, and outdoor adventurers, but a willingness to be uncomfortable can make ordinary travel and even ordinary life easier and in many ways better. I found out that it is. I couldn’t fit another one in my small backpack, so I was shaking while waiting for the train, but so what? There was joy in the constraints of packing. A creeping austerity entered my life outward from the bag. On the other hand, when I go on a reporting trip, even a long trip covering several cities abroad, I leave with just a little extra in my bag, just like any other day. .
Many fundamentally mundane activities hide or can conceal enormous amounts of effort. For me, packing requires a surprising amount of consistent work over time, from staying healthy to reading well to cooking a decent weeknight dinner for a family of four. It turns out that it is similar to . The effort is not only practical but also intellectual. For example, mastering the concept of “distinction without difference” will make you a better packer. Just as there is a mere distinction (not a real one) between lying and claiming “alternative facts.” There may not be much of a difference between two distinctive-looking garments (for example, a quarter-zip navy sweater and a button-neck black sweater). You can also improve once you truly internalize the concept of decision fatigue. We all know from first-hand experience that making choices takes energy, but surprisingly, research supports this: decision fatigue is cumulative. The more decisions you have to make, the worse you become at making them. Overpacking can cause you to postpone decisions and move them from your home to your hotel room. Once you understand this, you will be more motivated to pack. It is pointless to increase not only the physical burden but also the mental burden.
The best way to pack might be to just keep packing. By repacking your bag as soon as you return home, you can almost completely eliminate packing decisions. I haven’t reached that level of packing zen yet, but I’m pretty close. My packing is very standardized and I pack so much in advance that it now takes me about 15 minutes to prepare almost anything. It’s a limited victory. These days, with two small children, I rarely travel more than a few miles from home. The house is filled with dismembered Legos and orphaned remote control cars. When my family goes somewhere, my neatly packed bag is like a drop of rain in a sea of luggage.
On the other hand, becoming a master packer taught me an important lesson: success is possible. My new goal is to be as organized in my life as I am when I travel. My hope is that packing will eventually become a kind of laboratory for developing a more rational me. A properly packed bag has a certain look to it. The zipper moves without bulging. The compartment maintains its proportions. The dough will keep its shape. Isn’t that the case with other things as well? ♦
