Efficient Packing Strategies: leaving nothing behind at the hotel in the fastest way possible

I travel a lot. Packing is not a problem anymore as everything's on a checklist and I just put everything in the luggage.

The challenge now is checking out and packing things as fast as I can. I stay long in a place when I travel, at least a week in a place. This means, I use extension cords, setup Apple TV or Chromecast for extra monitors, and use the drawers and cabinets for my clothes.

I notice it takes me around 3 hours to gather everything around and pack 2 large luggages for 2 pax. How come?

I tried to search online for tips, nothing solid yet. So I'll write the tips myself, in the hope of organizing my thoughts too.

Pre-packing

• Wake up 3 hours before leaving

There are extra stuff that needs to be done from an Airbnb before I pack ~

• Wash all dishes
• Prepare trash to dispose
• Empty the ref into my mouth or into the luggage

And before I pack my clothes ~

• Take a bath
• Dress up in my final clothes

Packing

The dilemma: do we clear out by category and go through the room by category. Or do we go from area to area and put it on a staging area?

I've always done by category, but it takes me 3 hours to pack everything. Now I will try sweeping the whole room at one time and putting everything on the bed (my staging area). From the bed, we will sort by luggage.

The categories

• Kitchen stuff - if I brought any
• Supplements
• Electronics - plugs, adaptors, screencasts
• Snacks
• Small personal bag - wallet, tickets
• Laptop bag - laptop, charger, batteries, carry-on electronics
• Clothes - pants, tops, winter, house wear, exercise
• Shoes
• Toiletries and skin care

Which luggage to put

Only applies if you have multiple luggages. In my case I have a soft shell, a hard shell and a small carry-on. So I have to strategically plan what to put in the shoft and the hard shell.

1. Soft shell - easy to open, and doesn't take up space
   1. clothes
   2. electronics
2. Hard shell - needs a lot of space, so we use this as the archive
   1. supplements
   2. winter wear
   3. shoes
   4. toiletries
   5. easy-to-break stuff like new things I bought
3. Carry on - limited to 7kg, so just heavy stuff
   1. electronics with batteries mostly
   2. slippers

Conclusion: Multi-sweep or 1-sweep?

With 1-sweep - I still spent a lot of time on the staging area fixing things, but feels like it's faster because I emptied out all locations first which was very quick and I didn't have to recursively go through my list over and over again so it was easier on my mental space.