I am very bad at packing.
Not just for travel occasions, I’m talking every time I need to leave my house or workplace. I will inevitably forget something, but only after I leave late because I drastically underestimated the amount of time it would take me to get everything together and ready to go.
Finally, I have found something that gets me out the door on time, and I call it “the bag strategy.”
I have a lot of bags: messenger bags, backpacks, laptop bags, duffel bags, shopping bags, camera bags, fanny packs, and so many more. Despite shedding quite a few via donating with every move, I counted over 40 bags among the things I boxed up in Minneapolis to meet me at my Vegas residence. I seem to collect them. I just love a good bag.
The obvious part is preemptive: now I pack early for the different occasions in my life. Political campaign phone-banking requires a different set of items than card game tournament.
The next part is duplication: I own enough pens/earbuds/notepads to have one for every occasion, plus a couple of cheap laptops or tablets and whatever else to cover everything I want to do. And I definitely have enough bags.
The last part is persistence: I don’t unpack. That means I have a bunch of packed bags, near my door, ready for me to sweep up the right one on the way out the door to whichever happening is happening that day.
I still think of that one last thing I’d like to have as I’m walking out the door, but I add it once and always have it going forward. The bag strategy requires so much less brain effort, and I’m a little less late a little more often.
