# Issue 30: what we pack, and what we stopped packing
Author: Jonah Reyes
Author URL: https://demosignal.superblog.click/author/jonah-reyes/
Published: 2026-06-14
Category: Letters
Category URL: https://demosignal.superblog.click/category/letters/
Meta Title: Issue 30: what we pack, and what we stopped packing · Signal
Meta Description: Readers asked. Here is the whole list, after eleven years of carrying too much.
Tags: packing, letters, gear
Tag URLs: packing (https://demosignal.superblog.click/tag/packing/), letters (https://demosignal.superblog.click/tag/letters/), gear (https://demosignal.superblog.click/tag/gear/)
URL: https://demosignal.superblog.click/issue-30-what-we-pack-and-what-we-stopped-packing/

![Travel gear laid out flat on a table](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1585365341416-307e4fa22402?ixid=M3w3OTAzOTJ8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwzfHxwYWNraW5nJTIwc3VpdGNhc2UlMjB0cmF2ZWwlMjBmbGF0JTIwbGF5fGVufDF8MHx8fDE3ODg2MzQ5MjR8MA&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop)

The most-asked question in the inbox, by a distance, is what is in the bag. So here is the bag.

## What is in it

- One bag, forty litres, that goes in the overhead. Never checked, not once, not since 2019.
- Three of everything that touches skin, and a sink.
- One jacket that does rain and one that does cold, which are not the same jacket.
- Shoes I can walk twenty kilometres in. The other pair stays home.
- A notebook, a pen, and the phone as a camera.

## What we stopped packing

- A second pair of anything.
- Guidebooks. The good ones are online and the bad ones were never worth carrying.
- The camera. The phone is enough and the bag is lighter.
- Just in case. Whatever it is, you can buy it there.

## The rule

If you have not used it in three trips, it leaves the bag. The bag has been getting lighter for eleven years and I have never once wished for the thing I left out.


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