How to Pack a Carry-On for a Weekend

Start by deciding whether you need the bin at all

A weekend is the one trip length where the free bag is genuinely enough. The published personal-item boxes in our airline table run from United’s 17 × 10 × 9 in to Southwest’s 18.5 × 13.5 × 8.5 in, and Frontier and Allegiant both publish 18 × 14 × 8 in, which is 33.0 L of geometry.

For context, that is three quarters of a standard 45.4 L carry-on box, and larger than most 30 L daypacks. On the five carriers that publish the overhead bag as a paid extra, packing to the free box saves the fee on every single trip — which carriers those are is worth two minutes before you book.

The list, for two or three nights

This is a volume exercise, so the list is written in what things occupy rather than what they are.

Total, packed sensibly: somewhere around 12 to 15 L, which is comfortably inside the free box on any carrier in our table. The line item that breaks it is always shoes — a second pair is 4 to 6 L, which on a weekend is a third of your volume for something you may wear once.

What a cube is actually doing here

On a weekend a cube is not saving space, and any page that tells you otherwise is selling something. A folded shirt takes up what a folded shirt takes up. What the cube does is make the bag rigid and sorted, so the contents stop redistributing themselves into the corners every time you pick the bag up — which is what makes a soft bag fail a sizer.

• Peak Design Packing Cube (Small) — a published 9 L at 0.25 lb, which is 0.03 lb per liter. One of these holds the entire clothing list above.
• Eagle Creek Pack-It Isolate Compression Set — a published $50 for a set, and compression is the version that does save volume, by expelling air from fleece and puffy layers.

Whether cubes are worth it at all is the honest long answer, and cube sizes in published liters is the sizing reference.

The liquid rule is the same for a weekend

One quart-sized bag, containers of 3.4 fl oz (100 ml) or less, one bag per passenger, out of the bag at the checkpoint unless you are in a lane that says otherwise. A weekend does not get an exemption for being short.

The practical trick is to stop carrying full-size anything: a published 3 fl oz flat pouch weighs 0.026 lb and lies flat against the side of a cube rather than rolling around as a cylinder. The full liquid method covers the checkpoint side.

If you are taking the carry-on anyway

Plenty of reasons to: the fare includes it, you are bringing a suit, you are flying somewhere cold. In that case the weekend version of the method is simply the week version with less in it — how to pack a carry-on for a week is the page, and the only change is that you skip the laundry planning entirely.

One thing not to do is fill the space because it is there. A half-empty bag is lighter, faster through security, and fits under the seat if the bins fill up before your row boards.