Packing! (And losing all of the extra shit)

Months ago, I read a short article on Carryology called Inception Packing, in which Carryology contributor JamesJeffrey briefly describes his bags within bags approach to packing, so that he can easily switch between bags day to day depending upon his needs.  Some months after that, but still months ago from the current date, I was in Reno, at some dumpy airport motel and I discovered that there was an REI less than two miles away.  I was thinking about purchasing a rain jacket, because not having one would surely mean that I would at some point soon be caught in a rainstorm, and a co-worker highly recommended the Marmot PreCip, so I figured that I would wander over to REI and check one out.
This co-worker also had a small mesh stuff sack that his jacket lived in, so I thought that I might as well copy that too, and bought a package of three mesh stuff sacks, and used the smallest for the rain jacket.

Of course, this meant that I had two mesh stuff sacks left over, so I decided that I could further organize my gear by using one of them for socks, and one for underwear.  This cleared up a ton of clutter from my suitcase, but upon discovering the Eagle Creek Packing Cubes and remembering "Inception Packing," I decided that I could be even more organized and use space more efficiently, because I had at the same time decided that my large suitcase was simply too much, and would like to downsize, not necessarily to something that could be carried onto a plane, but smaller than the ridiculous complete-wardrobe-and-the-kitchen-sink suitcase that I am currently using.  I couldn't fill the entire thing, even for my two month summer tour.    I was also reading a lot about bicycle touring and backpacking at the time, and generally felt that after trying to move cross country in a small SUV and travelling all summer, I needed to minimize my personal possessions both at home and on the road.

I haven't been at home enough to act on the minimizing the extraneous BS that I currently own and don't need, and I'm not home right now, but later this week I intend to go through a large portion of the stuff that I carried back with me from Colorado when I moved this June, and acquire four large rubbermaid type plastic tubs.  The plan is to have three tubs for hobbies.  and one tub for out of season/extra clothing, and own basically nothing else, except for a TV and a small bookshelf that my grandfather built.  Still a lot of stuff, but that will also mean that I've cut down a lot of junk that I don't use.

What I have been able to act on, is the efficient packing.  I'm on a short trip right now, and this is what I brought with me:

I have full size Packing Cube with three T-Shirts, 4 pairs of underwear, and 4 pairs of socks, a pair of pants, a half-cube with a hard drive, some toiletries, a mouse, and various electronics cables, a Marmot PreCip rain jacket in a stuff sack, a generic REI stuff sack for dirty laundry, ye olde Macbook in a sleeve, a Kindle in a sleeve, and an REI "Travel Documents Case" with some cash and some "travel documents."

I obviously wore a set of clothes and a fleece pullover on the plane.  But, everything pictured here fit in my Mission Workshop "Vandal" backpack, in it's non-expanded 29 Liter size.

I was able to quite easily fit both packing cubes and the loose pants in the large rolltop pocket, with the Macbook going into the next largest pocket, and the various other small items going into the smallest of the horizontally zippered pockets.

I've had this backpack for a little over a year now, and it is a great pack.  It has its quirks, but I actually think it's a better pack to have in an airport than my Seagull backpack because it has more easily accessible exterior pockets. It's probably a little too tall for use as an everyday carry bag for someone of my height, and ironically, it is my least favorite bag for bicycling because of that height.  It's probably the most comfortable pack that I own for travel, and if I really needed to, I could open up the middle expansion section and probably live for a week out of this bag.