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packing philosophy
I've been facing the challenge of packing up all my stuff again. Compared to when I moved here: all my T-shirts are larger, which adds up in bulk and weight; I've acquired yet more masks; I invested in a second pair of jeans; I have an air purifier, bathroom scale, and folding bike, all of which I might want to take along.
Verrry late in the process it occurred to me to try to be logical/mathematical about it. This turned out to help less than I'd hoped.
What's the goal? Ideally everything I care about fits in my backpack and one wheeled luggage, and I can take public transit. What if it doesn't? A second checked luggage seems to be around $45 on airlines these days, and might involve having to take a taxi, which in this case would mean at least +$50 (over transit costs) to get to SFO, and some lesser amount at my destination, in which case +$100+. A third piece would be +$150, and mandate taxi if I weren't taking one already.
Is, say, my air purifier worth it? It cost $100, and is $75 right now on Amazon, so not really. Granted it's just 8 pounds, so maybe I could put it in a carried bag (slung around my neck?) until the airport, avoiding taxis. $75 > $45, but < $100. OTOH, my bike was almost $400 straight up, and nearly $700 after add-ons, so it is worth it even as third luggage, but probably also mandates taxis. (Though I do have the rack with roller wheels, maybe I could manipulate it and my suitcase? I'm skeptical, but should experiment.)
But the order of consideration matters. As a second luggage the bike is very worth it, but would it then make sense to bring the purifier as 3rd luggage? Hell no. Of course, once I start I could boost value of third luggage by taking yet more things I was waffling about, like the Secure Click respirator worth about $80, that's light but bulky. OTOH, I know I'll use the purifier, while the respirator is very effective but awkward and painful, more of a last resort tool if air got reaaaaaaallly bad, so it's value should be discounted by the probability of being deadweight.
What about my clothes? Do I really need to haul them around, or could I just replace them? Turns out, when I do the math, that even cheap clothes add up: $200 of packed clothes, not counting what I was wearing, also not counting winter gear which I lack estimates for. Also, my idea of clothes as cheap rests on being in North America, with Amazon and a supply chain geared toward increasingly large people. If I were to land in Tokyo and seek to buy a bunch of clothes for a tall and overweight person, probably it wouldn't go so well even without the language barrier.
OTOH my total cost assumes 10 days of shirts and underwear. I know of people who have traveled with basically 3 sets, and doing hand washing. I've never been that extreme, but I have shower-washed clothes. OTOH it is nice to be able to use a laundry machine once a week or so.
A different approach: what's the value per weight of my stuff? If I regard myself as a shipping service, I should make efficient use of myself. Laptop: ~$200/lb. Virus-class water purifer (unused): $100/lb. Dental care tools: ~$70/lb. Vflex masks: $84/lb.
But: air purifier: $10-13/lb. Bicycle: $23/lb. Wool socks: dunno, up to $48/lb. Jeans: maybe $20/lb. T-shirts: $10/lb. Scale: maybe $14/lb? [Side note: the product page says weight of 0.11 oz, which is absurd.]
So it does look like, if I have to choose between shirts and masks which I'll eventually use up, I should choose the masks and order more shirts.
A thought: thanks to Via Rail, the train company that acts like an airline, I know my packed luggage can be 50 lbs. Maybe 10 of that is the luggage itself? 40 lbs, at $20/lb, would imply $800 of value inside the luggage. Can that be right? I didn't even have the water purifier or many of the masks back then, so we're talking like $200 of known value in clothes, plus winter gear, plus some masks, plus... I dunno.
I have some more time, and a scale; I should weigh bundles of stuff and see how it adds up. My suitcase went from 36 pounds at "this seems reasonable" to 50 pounds stuffed, and I should see whether that extra 14 pounds is really worth it.
Where does this leave me? Still in indecision. I'd hoped the math would make it clear "ah yes, you should live minimally and walk away from stuff", but in fact there's a reasonable value proposition for maxing out my luggage, even with the extra taxi and baggage fees. At the very least clothes and bike, and not, say, "bring folding bike and buy new clothes". (Though I don't think single-luggage is even an option with this bike and current gear, I doubt it'd fit in my case without wheel removal, and maybe even with removal.)
Of course, the other consideration is some upper bound of willingness to deal with stuff. Even if bringing more makes sense as a $/lb measure, at some point I'm just done with extra pounds. But I'm not sure what point, yet.
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