I stand staring at, what may sound like, an abysmal array of haphazardly arranged items containing extremely old, not so old, new, brand new and ‘I forgot I had these’ clothes; in other words, my wardrobe! So what brought me to this indecisive stare?
I had to pick few humble clothes for an out of town day’s visit and I couldn’t decide which ones to pack. This is when assumptions and theory surrounding packing started popping in my head. The time spent in picking and packing is directly proportional to the number of days of travel. The purpose of travel also has an influencing factor in deciding. More the casual or fun nature of travel, more the dilemma. Say, you are packing for a business travel, it is pretty much decided as to what you would wear because you have rules on what kind of formal wear are allowed and you have nothing left to your imagination. To say the least, you would pick few formal shirts and trousers. But, say you are packing for a vacation. Can you imagine the countless possibilities of the combination of mix and match you can do with all your clothes? Top with a skirt, a tee with casual pants, a shirt with jeans, so on and so-forth. After numerous permutation and combinations later, even if you decide on what to pack, the next problem that arises is in deciding if you are carrying enough? Are you the risk-taker who packs one clothing per day or the risk equipped who carries buffer stock for the unexpected? Both extremes being inefficient, how do we decide? The task certainly seems daunting to me!
It’s pretty obvious there is no one-size-fits-all policy that you can adopt here. Yes, there definitely is an experience factor which qualifies you to have mastered this art with time but for the inexperienced (like me) let’s just prepare ourselves in advance. Tagging and compartmentalization is a simple (slightly annoying) technique where you should sort out your clothes as per different criteria in order to save time in future. The criteria can be occasion, festival, season or purpose. This technique allows you to make preemptive decisions on what kind of clothing gets packed at the required time. For instance, if I am packing for a beach vacation, I can pick my clothes from the summer pile and if it’s a wedding that I am travelling for, I’ll choose from my festive pile.
Well, the above does solve the first problem of what to carry, but how about the dilemma on how many? To all the logic lovers, I would suggest a simple rule of 1.5. Factor in 1.5 to the number of travel days and voila you get the number of clothes to carry. So to speak, if I have to travel for 4 days, I need to carry 6 clothes. The number you get is neither too high nor too low with respect to your travel duration. You are best fitted and not at all overly-prepared. Wow, did you ever imagine how simple math will help you pack one day!
I am not sure if my travel woe addressed here is completely relatable but I am confident it does empathize with all the inexperienced packers like me. I would urge all of you to adopt this simple technique the next time you prepare for a trip and see if it eases your pain of packing. For the experienced travellers, you can probably sympathize with us!
He he.. Seems like a good idea.. Have never put a logic in clothes packing. Will surely try this out. 🤘
Good luck! Let me know how that goes 😊
Have spent ages packing, unpacking and trying to figure this one out. 1.5x the number of days – certainly makes sense!! 🙂
You should try it 🙂
Used to carry a spare I’ll try this logic 👍
Yes, give it a shot Anu 🙂
Good advice chechi.😀
THank you Abhijith 🙂