How To Pack A Backpack: Travel Hacks and Inside Tips For 2022
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Loading... - Adriana Lopez
- 02 Aug 2022
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As world travellers, there are many diverse skills that we must all develop and refine in order to survive. These skills or arts even, include the art of blagging lifts across entire countries from total strangers. They include the art of driving impossible room rate bargains with unwilling guest house proprietors, and of course, the art of holding in ones poo for heroic lengths of time once the single squat toilet on the Indian train overflows.
But of all the skills a traveller must acquire, perhaps none has proven quite so elusive as the dark art of correctly packing ones backpack.
Indeed, effective packing can make or break an entire trip. It is the difference between having everything you need and not having it, between being able to find things in a hurry and not being, and between keeping packed valuables safe and valuables being at risk. Perhaps above all though, proper packing even makes the very difference between been able to carry your backpack, or not been able to carry it.
Today we are sharing the sum total of our collective experience with you our dear readers. Welcome our to epic How To Pack a Backpack For Travelling Guide!
Before we can even think about packing our backpack, we need to carefully examine what exactly we are intending to pack into it. Whether you’re looking at doing some one bag travel or taking a few different packs, you need to think long and hard.
Now, this is an exercise which you should take your time over and do in a relaxed frame of mind. Therefore feel free to pour yourself a glass of wine, get the tunes on, and even burn some incense.
To start, find an empty room with either a decent amount of clear floor space or a double bed (ideally one with nobody trying to sleep in it) and then lay out every single item that you are even thinking about taking. This includes travel documents, clothes, shoes, toiletries, electronics, first aid kits and skipping ropes – I repeat, if you’re considering bringing it, get it out!
At this point, you should have a big, sprawling ungodly mess of worldly goods and consumer items, which will incidentally serve as a pretty concise snap-shot of who you are and what your life is about. What we now do is identify all the items which you are going to take as carry on such as passports, laptops, a book to read, dynamite, and whatever else you want to take into the airplane cabin with you. Put these items to one side.
Always Try To Pack Light
From the remaining pile, it’s time to weed out every last bit of excess. For example, 2 pairs of shoes is usually more than enough for any trip. For my upcoming 2 month Goa/Bali trip I am bringing Converse All Stars for both day to day and dressed up wear, and my running trainers for running, and trekking. As you will presumably already be wearing one pair of shoes to catch to your flight, you only need to pack 1 into your backpack.
Any “nice to have” items such as a formal shirt, high heels or the collected world of Leo Tolstoy should be purged and removed from the pile. If there is any room left at the end, we can always bring them back.
In order to help you assess how much stuff you need, check out this epic backpacking packing list. As a rule though, one weeks worth of clothes is more than enough. Do bring some nice items for “best” wear, but try to keep them as versatile as possible – for example, short sleeved, nicely made Hawaiian shirts look equally ridiculous both for cocktails and on the beach alike so they’re a win/win! Ladies, note that hippy chic and trance wear is purpose made for travellers as it’s easy to dress up and dress down so can also be worn on the beach or at the/da club.
If you already have experience of backpacking then you will probably have learned that less is more and this pile of “prospective items” will be more or less ready to go minus a final edit. For beginners and first timers though, it is quite likely that your short list is ridiculously excessive. A rule some find useful is to try and cut your pile by 50% – yep, first timers have a tendency to try and bring twice as much stuff as they actually need!
How To Pack a Backpack With Clothes
How to pack a backpack with clothes? Well we will tell you. Now that the boring prep work is out of the way, we can begin the real magic – rolling things up!
In order to maximise space, roll up as many of your clothes as you can. Roll up those socks, those underpants, those trousers and those t-shirts. In case you have never rolled up a T-shirt before the process is simple;
1. Fold the arms in so it takes on a rectangular shape
2. Fold it in half across the middle and then fold in half again
3. You will now have a long, thin rectangle
4. Turn it round and roll tightly from one end to the other
5. Done!
Be sure to put as many rolled items inside of your shoes as you can, as this saves even more room. Shoes themselves however should not be rolled up…
Use Packing Cubes
And that’s all the minimising and culling we can do. Unless of course, by the time you read this, somebody has invented a shrinking machine, in which case this entire post will possibly be obsolete.
So from now on, the focus of this guide is on compartmentalisation and sub-categorisation.
And one of the smartest things you can do here, is to use packing cubes.
What Are Packing Cubes?
Packing cubes are zippered fabric containers generally made into a rectangular, “cube” shapes, purpose built to help you organise your stuff! They come in a myriad of different sizes (and sometimes shapes) and are usually sold in sets.
How To Use Packing Cubes
If you have never used them before, then you may well be wondering exactly how to pack with packing cubes.
You can use packing cubes to organise all manner of gear and they help you to sort and organise items together logically. For example, you could have a cube for socks, another for t-shirts and then one for electronics.
Packing cubes are great for many reasons. As well as making packing that little bit easier, they make unpacking a whole lot easier. For example, if you are looking for a particular t-shirt then you know it’s in the t-shirt cube (as long as you packed it properly).
Packing cubes can seem expensive at first flush – especially if you have just paid out $000 for a backpack and another $0000 for a one way ticket to Paradise. That said, we’ve found that good quality cubes last many years and they really are worth it to save space, and keep your luggage organised.
Choosing The Right Packing Cubes
There are a lot of different packing cubes out there. They do come in different sizes and sometimes different shapes, but the biggest difference between them is material, build and quality.
After working our way through countless different packing cubes, we strongly recommend this set of 3 compression packing cubes from Nomatic. Nomatic are fast establishing themselves as a leader in making top class travel gear and their cubes can help maximise storage space by 50%!
Buy Nomatic Packing Cubes
If you do decide to use packing cubes, put your belongings into the packing cubes and stop there for now. Don’t try to put the packing cubes into your actual backpack just yet.
Oh, and with all this cube stuff going on, do feel free to give the Tetris theme music a quick play. Your glass of wine may also be empty by this point so do feel free to replenish it.
Get a Toiletry Bag
Packing cubes are very handy and will make your life on the road so much easier. They are however, definitely not “essential”. What absolutely is essential though, is a toiletry bag so do not leave home without one!
In case you don’t know, a toiletry bag is a small(ish) bag used to house the hygiene, beauty and health products which you need when you travel. Typically, the toiletry bag will hold a toothbrush and paste, some soap or body wash, shampoo, hair styling products and maybe some feminine hygiene products. Some have extra zippered pouches on both the inside and outside which are great for storing things like paracetamol, condoms and rehydration sachets.
Ideally you should get a hanging toiletry bag one which you can hang from your bathroom mirror or hostel bed wherever you go. It is worth spending a bit of money on this as it will get twice daily use so please remember the old adage, “buy cheap, buy twice”. The last thing you want is for the zip to break or the cloth to tear because of water damage.
Note that if you are struggling to zip your toiletry bag closed, you’ve probably packed too much stuff. This means excess weight and also puts some undue strain on the toiletry bag which may result in damage. So if this is you, then go through it and have a wee purge – do you really need that coconut scented hair conditioner and bottle of Hugo Boss aftershave?. Read More...
