Start From the Outfits, Not the Items
Packing item by item is how a bag fills without becoming a wardrobe. Lay out the days instead, decide what each one actually needs, and the overlaps become obvious: one pair of trousers usually covers three days, and the shirt count is the number that really moves.
Compression Is a Volume Tool, Not a Licence
Cubes and sacks buy you roughly half the volume of soft clothing, which is genuinely transformative for knitwear and useless for shoes. Use them on the things that squash and leave the rigid items to set the shape of the bag.
Leave a Quarter Empty
A bag packed to the seams on the way out has nowhere to put what you buy, what you are given, or what does not fold back the way it came. A quarter empty is not wasted space; it is the space the return journey needs.
