How to Pack a Carry-On for a Week

1. Decide the laundry question first. Committing to one wash mid-trip cuts your clothing requirement by roughly 40% and is the single decision that makes a week in a carry-on comfortable rather than tight.
2. Lay everything out and remove a quarter of it. Lay the full pile on a bed, then take away every item packed for a scenario you cannot name. Almost everything can be bought at the destination.
3. Wear the bulkiest items. Worn items do not count against your allowance. Wear the heavier shoes, the jacket and the heavier trousers; pack the flatter shoes and lighter trousers.
4. Shoes first, soles together, at the base. Pack the spare pair sole-to-sole along the bottom of the case, against the hinge. Fill them with socks and underwear — nothing else uses that space.
5. Roll soft items, fold structured ones. Roll t-shirts, underwear and knitwear into cylinders. Fold shirts and trousers flat and lay them on top, so the fold lines are ones you chose.
6. Cube the clothing into two blocks. One cube for clean clothes and one for worn, or a single cube with an internal divider. Two is the working number; six-piece sets mostly stay home.
7. Liquids in the outermost pocket you can reach. The quart bag comes out at every checkpoint. Anything you need in transit — documents, electronics, the quart bag — goes where you can reach it without opening the main compartment.
8. Weigh it, then measure it packed. Stand on a bathroom scale holding the bag, then without it; the difference is the bag. Then measure the packed bag, because a soft bag gains depth as it fills.

Step one is the only one that matters much

Everything else on this page is technique. The laundry decision is arithmetic, and it changes the size of the problem rather than how neatly you solve it.

A sink wash with travel detergent takes fifteen minutes and dries overnight if the fabrics are synthetic or merino. A laundrette costs a couple of hours and exists in every city. Either way, the decision has to be made before you pack, because it changes what goes in the pile.

Step two: the pile, minus a quarter

Lay everything on a bed. Then remove every item that is packed for a scenario you cannot name out loud. “In case it is cold” is a scenario; “in case something happens” is not.

The items that survive this test are almost always the same: things you will wear more than once, and the one layer that covers a weather outcome you did not plan for. The full one-bag list is here, with quantities.

Step three: wear the heavy things

Worn items do not count against any allowance, and they are usually the highest volume things you own. Shoes are around 6 L a pair — fifteen percent of a 40 L bag. A jacket is another 4 L.

On a carrier that publishes a weight cap this is worth several pounds and it costs nothing but a warm walk to the gate.

Steps four and five: the order things go in

Shoes at the base

Spare shoes go sole-to-sole along the bottom of the case, against the hinge in a suitcase or against the back panel in a pack. Two reasons: they are the densest thing you carry and weight belongs low and close to your back, and their interior volume is otherwise wasted. Socks and underwear go inside them.

Roll soft, fold structured

Roll t-shirts, underwear, knitwear and anything jersey — rolling removes the air gaps between folded layers and produces cylinders that pack into the awkward spaces a rectangular case leaves.

Fold shirts, trousers and anything with a structured shape, and lay them flat on top. The reason is creasing rather than volume: a folded garment creases along the line you chose, while a rolled shirt creases in a spiral. The mechanism of creasing is worth two minutes if you are carrying anything smart.

Step six: two cubes, not six

The useful configuration for a week is one cube for clean clothes and one for worn, or a single cube with an internal divider that does both. Six-piece sets look like value and mostly stay home.

Be clear about what the cubes are doing here. They are not saving space — a folded shirt occupies what a folded shirt occupies. They are stopping the bag becoming an excavation site by day three, which on a seven-day trip is the difference between packing once and packing every morning. The honest case for cubes and the ranking.

Cubes cost weight: 4 to 11 oz depending on the set. Two good ones is under a percent of a 35 lb allowance. A six-piece set is four percent, which is a day of clothing.

Step seven: what you need before you sit down

Everything you touch between the curb and the seat goes in the outermost pocket you can reach without opening the main compartment:

• The quart bag of liquids, which comes out at every checkpoint
• Documents, passport and boarding pass
• Laptop or tablet, if the checkpoint requires it separately
• Power bank and spare batteries, which must never be in a gate-checked bag
• Headphones, a layer for the cabin, and anything you want in flight

That last point has become more important as gate-checking has become routine. If the bag can be taken from you at the door, everything you need for the flight has to be somewhere else.

Step eight: weigh it and measure it

Stand on a bathroom scale holding the packed bag, note the number, put it down and weigh yourself again. The difference is the bag, accurate to within a pound — more precision than any gate enforcement applies.

Then measure it, packed. A hard case is the size it says it is; a soft bag gains depth as it fills, and depth is the dimension a sizer is tightest on. The measuring method, the way an airline does it.

What changes for a hard case

The method above assumes a soft bag or pack. In a hardside suitcase two things differ:

• The case has two sides. Use the shallow lid side for flat, structured items and the deep side for everything else — most cases include a divider panel and cross-straps precisely for this.
• It does not expand. A soft bag absorbs the extra jumper; a hard shell does not. The full trade between the two is worth reading before your next bag rather than your next trip.