I’m a digital nomad who travels most of the year. This packing tip helps me stick to a carry-on only.

I’ll never forget the day I had just traveled over 12 hours back to New York from a week in Alaska. When i checked into the airport in Seattle on leg two of my long travel day, I decided to do something I seldom do: check my bag. I always pack my bag in a carry-on friendly suitcase, with my preferred being either Away or Samsonite, but sometimes, it gets annoying to lug my bag around, especially on long travel days. So, after having not checked a bag in nearly three years, I did just that.

Well, joke was on me, because when I landed in New York City, and with my bag at the time being bright pink, I immediately spotted it on the luggage carousel… to see that my bag had been completely destroyed somewhere along the way. The handle of my suitcase was jutting out, nearly hanging off, and I had to lug that back to my apartment in Queens on the subway. It was extremely annoying, and reiterated my point that carry-on is the way to go.

The product that makes carry-on a seamless choice

Many ask how I manage to travel through various climates in just a carry-on with plenty of outfit changes, and the answer is simple: compression bags! A compression bag allows me to put a hefty amount of clothes into one bag, and then seal it in either by putting physical pressure on them or using a pump to remove all of the air.

This saves a crazy amount of space, and while it’s important to still be mindful of weight limits when it comes to carry-ons, I have gotten anything from my metallic shiny snowsuits that I wore in Antarctica to packing for an African safari and a trip to Italy (in the same run) in a carry-on, all thanks to compression bags.

How do compression bags work?

I simply sit on the compression bags after packing in as much as I can fit in there without overstuffing, as opposed to using an air pump. While this takes a little bit of strategy, to me, it makes more sense to get used to traveling without the air pump, because carrying one, which takes up a decent amount of space, slightly defeats the purpose! You can see in both my video below and video above just exactly how I do it. An important thing to keep in mind is to not go above a certain line (many bags have it labeled), or else you risk popping the bag, in which case it loses its purpose.

If I’m traveling through various climates, I also use compression bags as an organization tool. I use these compression bags from Amazon, which comes in a variety pack of different sizes. I will sometimes use the smaller ones for things like gym clothes, PJs, and swimsuits, and larger ones for everyday wear. If I’m traveling to a warm destination followed by a cold destination, or perhaps a destination with more conservative clothing requirements followed by somewhere like Italy in the summertime, I will use two different bags to separate which outfits I need for respective destinations. Speaking of which, I have a flight to catch to Tunisia in just a few weeks, and afterward, I’m headed to Central Asia, so I better get packing!