Many times I will use a small cube to hold one or two days of clothes (pair sox, undies, one shirt etc). This is handy when you want to check in your carry on for a 23 hour stopover or if you do not want to open your luggage in a hotel room.

I went online to find better ways to pack. I am starting to use the military way to roll up clothes. This actually is a way of somewhat avoiding the use of the compression cubes.

They definitely can Eileen and I’m still not 100% sold on using packing cubes for every article of clothing either however here’s another 2 points to consider.

As you travel and your clothes get dirty you don’t want everything repacked together so a packing cube or bag helps keep them separate. For years we traveled with stuff sacs to hold our dirty clothes and keep them separate. They’re super light and conform to our bag. We don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Another thing no one mentions is that with packing cubes it makes it so much easier to grab a bunch of clothes and deal with packing them outside of the suitcase. We’ve been in places where we didn’t have a lot of room to fully open the suitcase or had to rearrange some things for an especially tight flight. At the airport we just pulled out a packing cube and plopped it into another bag and in the hotel with no storage space we simply stacked the cubes on a shelf and tucked our bag in the corner.

that’s a good point about keeping things soft and squishable. While I see the advantage of putting small items and shoes in a cube or pouch I’m not sure a see the advantage of putting your clothes in a big one that just takes up most of your suitcase. Seems to me those larger items can go right in the suitcase with your sacks positioned around them.

I roll things up before putting them in the stuff sacks just like I did with the cubes. Yet, they still remain loose enough to compress and fill in potential spaces in the pack. And there’s no zippers to break. Torn mesh is also easy to sew or tape back together (duct or GearAid repair tape). Also, the mesh sacks double as laundry bags. Nice getting two uses out of one item.

Glad you like your cubes. I used to like mine more than I do now.