You're Overthinking Packing

The Packing Industrial Complex is ruining how we travel.

There is a seemingly endless amount of content floating around the internet about how to pack for an upcoming trip: what to bring, what to not bring, the best strategies for stuffing everything inside. Recently, several top newsletters—Opulent Tips, Blackbird Spyplane, Shop Rat—have tackled the issue, the New York Times has chimed in, The New Yorker dedicated space to it, and just about every content creator on the face of the earth seems to get at least a week’s worth of material out of what to put in a suitcase on a trip. As supply naturally follows demand, the audience for these suggestions appears to be seemingly endless. But is it really all that complicated? Every day, we grow more and more entrenched in a Packing Industrial Complex we cannot seem to escape.

I am here to tell you, every single last iota of ‘how to pack’ advice is hogwash. “But I’m so lost! I I don’t know where to start,” you cry out. Please trust me when I say this, you do not need help packing a bag. You already have all the tools in your arsenal. You know how many days you’ll be gone for. You have access to a weather app where you can check the climate you’ll be arriving into. You know what clothing you normally like to wear, and you know what clothing you have in your closet. That’s really all you need to know.

Here’s the best way to pack for an upcoming trip: put a bunch of clothes in a bag. Roll them up. That’s literally it.

The amount of planning and thought that needs to go into the enterprise is surprisingly minimal. Count how many days you’re going for, then bring the same number of shirts as the number of days minus one (unless you have access to laundry, then probably less), 2-4 pairs of pants, a couple nicer dresses if that’s your thing and a change of shoes. Something to sleep in at night and a bathing suit if you’re headed somewhere warm. I always bring an extra pair of underwear and socks because sometimes I like to change throughout the day. Then experiment by trying on a bunch items to ensure everything goes together. Frankly, it’s not that different than figuring out what you’re going to wear on a day-to-day basis, which I trust you do all the time.

It makes sense that there is an entire cottage industry of advice preying on people’s travel anxieties because it’s an incredibly lucrative thing to do. You can sell packing cubes, toiletry bags, expanding carry-ons, suitcases with more and more compartments. Essentially, if you keep people worried about what to bring on a trip and they’ll buy more and more things to assuage their nerves. But the thing about travel is: you can’t get rid of the nerves no matter what. When placed in unfamiliar surroundings, all of the prophylactic layers a person builds up to shield themselves from their anxieties dissolve leaving just you and the anxieties. Internal monologues seems to echo louder than usual. You just have to face everything head on.

I’ve said before that the beautiful thing about travel is that it teaches people how to enjoy themselves in spite of a near-constant stream of small disappointments. Travel doesn’t automatically make you a more interesting person, but it does make you more resilient and probably less annoying. In 2023, The New Yorker published a horrible essay called “The Case Against Travel” in which its author, Agnes Callard, a philosopher at the University of Chicago, essentially argues that people who love to travel are pathetic dullards who require external stimulation in order to become capable of interesting thoughts. She suggests travel gives one a false sense of accomplishment and views the purpose of travel as temporarily experiencing change, viewing travellers as mindless automatons who gain no perspective or enjoyment from the pursuit of what they’re doing.

Callard does not seem to enjoy travel herself, because she operates from a very prescriptive definition of what travel is supposed to be. In Abu Dhabi, she chose to visit a falconry hospital because it was one of the most-suggested activities in the area, and seems surprised when she did not enjoy the experience despite having no prior interest in falconry. Perhaps if Callard had allowed her own desires and impulses to form her agenda she would enjoy the experience more and be less indignant about her inability to enjoy her own life. She seems to believe that it’s far more noble to just stay in place, which lacks a crucial sense of imagination. Every time I land somewhere I get to my hotel, log onto wifi and immediately check the Atlas Obscura entries for the city I’m visiting and make plans to see the ones I’m most interested in. This, to me, is the perfect way to travel. I prefer to operate from a place of ‘why wouldn’t you want to do that?’ I want to constantly try new things and expose myself to new information whether I enjoy it for not, because if I haven’t tried it before, how will I know for next time?

In any event, there’s no need to cultivate a whole new travel persona to inform the clothes you’re going to wear or freak out about doing various activities on a limited wardrobe. These are your clothes, you bought them, ostensibly with the goal of eventually wearing them. Trust yourself enough to put them in a bag and go. Ideally, the clothes should be comfortable and match each other in a number of different combinations. There is no magical pair of pants or dress that’s going to be the answer for everyone. For some, it will be a pair of white overalls, for others it might be some flowy linen pants with a matching tunic. Your job is to figure out what’s going to work for you. Everyone wants to be comfortable and look good on vacation.

The greatest crime is overthinking it. So just take a deep breath, put some stuff in a bag, and have fun.