Are you an efficient packer?
In this era of bag fees and restrictions on carry-on bag sizes, good packing techniques are worth their weight (under 23kgs) in gold. I traveled for 2 months with just a 40-litre backpack (pretty small), a carry-on compliant roller suitcase, and a small carry-on backpack (your one piece of small cabin luggage plus one personal item quota). In them, I managed to fit two weeks’ worth of clothes, camera equipment, rain gear, suits for nights out, hiking and dress shoes, cold weather clothes, etc. In this video below, I show you how. It’s also available on our YouTube channel at The Gentleman Backpacker. Please subscribe to us there if you want more video content and free tips!
So how do you pack when you are preparing for a trip? Please share any tips or comments you have with us below.
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Some great tips here. When I travel, which isn’t often, my challenge is fitting in the steel toed rubber boots and helly hansen rubberised rain gear (thats about 23kg right there). The dslr gets its own case. The rest of my clothes get rolled up pretty tight to save room. Wrinkles in the field aren’t going to be closing any doors to me. The tripod somehow wedges diagonally into the duffel bag. I usually pay for overweight bags. I always take too much. But even so I learned to pack pretty efficiently. It would have helped years ago to learn some of your methods.
Thank you for sharing! Yes, a photographer would have to pack differently for sure. This is intended more for people who are trying to be jack-of-all-trades and prep for anything from attending the opera to going hiking on the same trip. Again, thanks for sharing your experiences.
Hi. I don’t claim to be a photographer! When I travel it is as an archaeologist, but I often do take the pictures on projects. It is the field gear for dirty often wet work that jostles with some clothes for going out for a meal or similar incompatible activities. Which is why I usually pack too much – not knowing quite what range of things I will be doing. Dress shoes though, they never travel on these trips.
Ah, fascinating. Would love to hear more about your main pursuits some time. My English cousin and her husband from Peace River were archaeologists at Oxford before giving up and becoming lawyers (bet you’ve hear that before). They used to work on Pompeii and Yucatan sites, etc. I personally grew up dreaming of palaeontology and attended camps in Drumheller to that end. Alas, it did not pan out. I studied history at UBC instead. As I said, would love to hear/see more from your main work in due time. Meanwhile, I just love your photographic eye.
Hi. I very occasionally post some archaeology photos and stories. This tag link (http://burntembers.com/tag/kilgii-gwaay/) is from a project in Haida Gwaii – some of the posts are about the setting and several about the dig.
There are quite a few lawyers that were once archaeologists, in BC anyway. Many of them had been very involved with First Nations and just took their research in new directions doing Aboriginal rights and title cases.
One of my brothers did a doctorate in history at UBC in the 90s and I was there in the mid-80s before moving to the UK to do archaeology in London for 4 years.
George – this was very interesting, and will be helpful the next time I pack for a trip! I like that kitchen, too, and paused the video to check out the design details.
Thanks, Melinda. The kitchen’s glass tiles are really beautiful, but a pain to clean because of their uneven textures. If I owned the place, I wouldn’t install that kind of impractical art in my own kitchen because I actually cook a lot, and design in this case should have functionality, not just form. 🙂
Function is sort of important in a kitchen – odd that it gets overlooked by architects/interior designers. Our kitchen has glass tile behind the cooktop, but it’s flat, so not any harder to clean than anything else that could be on the wall.