Start From the Days, Not the Items
Packing item by item is how a bag fills without becoming a wardrobe. Lay out the days instead and the overlaps appear: one pair of trousers usually covers three, and the shirt count is the number that actually moves.
Compression Is a Volume Tool
Cubes and sacks buy roughly half the volume of soft clothing – transformative for knitwear, useless for shoes. Use them on what squashes and let the rigid things set the shape of the bag.
Leave a Quarter Empty
A bag packed to the seams has nowhere to put what you buy, what you are given, or what refuses to fold back the way it came. A quarter empty is not waste; it is the space the return leg needs.
