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Everything I own fits in one 35 liter backpack that I lug with me around the world.

One reason everything fits is simply because I don’t own a lot of stuff. But that’s not all there is to it; the real reason I can cram everything in my backpack is because I figured out the best method of folding and packing my clothes.

Folding Clothes To Minimize Space

Travel nerds all over the web are having a heated debate over the subject of how to fold clothes to minimize space in a bag.

The Methods That Fail

Bundle Wrapping
One popular folding method in the travel community is the Bundle Wrapping method. This one is popular simply because it seems exotic. In reality, it’s retarded, and I doubt many people use it successfully. That doesn’t stop them from blogging about it, though.

The problem with the Bundle Wrapping method: the entire idea is that you wrap items of clothing within eachother. This supposedly saves space. On paper, this seems great. In reality, you end up with a giant bundled ball of clothes that’s impossible to fit in any standard-sized bag.

Rolling
God I wish everyone would stop fellating the rolling method. It’s awful, awful, awful. It takes up unnecessary amounts of space, saves nothing, and wrinkles your clothes like no other. Essentially you just roll your clothes up into little cylinders and hope for the best.

The problem with the rolling method: for one, your clothes end up taking up too much space vertically. The rolling method also leaves small, unused pockets of space between your clothes on either end, since your rolled clothes are naturally thicker in the middle.

The Method That Works

After failing with the other popular packing methods, I found one that worked, still works after seven months of traveling, and will continue to work into the future.

It’s not special at all, but I’m going to give it a special name anyway. It’s the Rational Packing Method.

How The Rational Packing Method Works

Along with your clothes, you’re going to need rubber bands and (optional but very handy) ziplock bags.

• For jeans, pants, and other thicker items: fold them completely normally as tight as you can. Wrap a thick rubber band around them to keep them from unfolding. Put them at the bottom of your bag.
• For underwear, socks, and thinner items: fold them as tightly as possible, putting a double-wrapped rubber band around each one, and put them in the small available creases to the sides of your pants in your bag. Put any extras wrapped together into a ziplocked bag.
• For shirts: fold them normally, folding them over into as tight a square as you can. Put a double-wrapped rubber band around each one. Pack the shirts together into a large ziplock bag, which will keep them fresh and help keep them from sliding around in your bag, taking up more space.
• All other items (scarves, jackets, etc): wrap them completely normally, as tight as you can with rubber bands around them. Fit them in on top of the other items in your bag.

Step 1. HOW WILL THAT GIANT SHIRT EVER FIT IN MY BAG?

Step 2. Keep folding the shirt into smaller and smaller squares, completely normally.

Step 3. Once you can't fold the shirt over anymore, wrap it tightly with a rubber band.

Step 4. Take a picture with your folded shirt and write a blog post about it.

Essentially, you’re just folding your clothes into tight squares (with the exception of pants, which go somewhat flat at the bottom of your bag) and keeping those squares tight with rubber bands and ziplock bags.  When you pack everything into your bag, it’ll all fit together like one giant, satisfying puzzle, and not into a bunch of nasty clumps like with the other popular methods.

This method is very space-efficient and makes packing light very simple.  I have no problems fitting a full wardrobe of clothes inside a 35 liter (school-sized) backpack.  A nice bonus is that, surprisingly, your clothes won’t wrinkle.

The biggest draw-back, though, is that you won’t be able to blog about how great the Bundle Wrapping method is, and how you’re a revolutionary backpack packer because you pack your bag like a futuristic spaceman.  Sorry.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under How-to, Minimalism, Tips and tricks, Traveling.