Hey guys,
I am heading to London from Montreal tomorrow and took advantage of actually having to pack to make a little packing tutorial. I will tell you how to fold clothes so they take minimal space and give you various tips on how to make your pack.
Here is the backpack I travel with.
It is a nice big 70L with an other smaller bag attached to it. Anyone that has a lot of experience traveling will advise against using one of those for 2 reasons.
- You will over pack because you have room for it.
- The attachable backpack makes the weight unbalanced.
But hey, I like to pack heavy and I am not planning to do that much walking with it.
I will still advise anyone against buying one of those and redirect you towards something smaller like 40 or 50 liters. Why? Because those will fit as a carry on reducing transport fees and also will be significantly lighter if you have a lot of walk to do, because you never know.
Why don't I listen to my own advise?
- Because I am stubborn over packer.
- Already bought it so it is too late.
Okay, let's pack.
The goal here is to be as practical as possible while taking the less space possible. Fortunately, there is a technique we can use for most piece of clothing that make things small and practical. This technique is called: the rolling.
Here we go, here is how to roll!
T shirts:
Fold the two sleeves in the middle of your shirt and roll up the bottom of it like in the last picture.
Then, fold your shirt in two, and start rolling the top part of it towards the fold up bottom.
When you get to the folded up part, put the roll inside of it so it holds everything together. Voila!!
Pants:
Same thing, fold up the top part of it, fold the legs on each other, roll up the bottom of the legs towards the top and get it in the folded part so it holds tight.
Shirts:
Button up, follow the exact same steps, but instead of folding your shirts in half, fold a quarter of each side to the middle like this.
This will protect your collar from ugly folds.
Underwear:
same principle, fold up the elastic, fold it in half and roll up!
You can also do the roll up technique with winter jackets and hoodies. You just have to follow the button up shirt way to do it.
And last but not least, socks:
I like to follow the roll up technique, so fold up the elastic part and then roll in, and then I just roll the other sock and put it in the other rolled up sock so they are stuck together.
Ends up like this:
An other technique that you can follow for socks is what I call the big sock bag. It consist of a very complex action of putting all your socks that are alike in one bigger sock. It ends up looking like this.
So whenever I need socks, I just find my sock bag in my bag, and take out a pair that I know will be alike.
Okay, now that you know how to pack, what should you pack should be your next logical question.
As I mentioned earlier, I am more of an over packer kind of traveler, so I am going to tell you what I pack and what the experienced traveler consensus is.
Feel free to pack in between those numbers, but definitely do not pack more, I can't stress this enough, I am a heavy packer and if you pack more than me, you will encounter some issues if you go on a backpacking trip.
- T shirts: 5. I packed 12.
- Underwear: 7. I packed 10
- Socks: 7 pairs. I packed 12.
- Shirts: 1. I packed 2. These are obviously interchangeable with t shirts depending on your style.
- board shorts/bikinis: 1. I packed 2.
- shorts: 2. I forgot to pack them and writing this made me remember I should go do that.
- Jeans: 2. I packed 2 and will wear an other one on the plane.
- Hoodie: 1. I packed 2.
Don't forget: A hat, sunglasses, a knife (can get really useful (don't use on people)), a first aid kit, and a camera!
That pretty much sums up this article, hope your learned a thing or two and if you have questions, feel free to ask them in the comments!
I'll talk to you guys next when I am in London,
Cheers!
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