Building a Travel Kit One Piece at a Time

Nobody assembles a travel setup in a single purchase, and the people who try usually end up with things they never use. A better approach is sequencing, buying the piece that removes the most friction from the way you currently travel and then waiting until the next annoyance makes itself obvious.

For most people the first purchase should be the bag, because everything else is organized inside it and the wrong bag limits what the rest can do. The Everyday Backpack covers the widest range of situations, from a commute to a three day trip, which makes it the safest single investment before you know exactly how you travel.

Second is compression, and this is where the improvement is most immediate. Packing Cubes change the amount you can fit and the speed at which you can find it, and they are the piece people most often say they should have bought years earlier.

Third is the Toiletry Bag, because it is the item that stays packed between trips. Once it exists, an entire step of pre-travel preparation disappears permanently.

After that the order depends on you. If you travel internationally, the Passport Holder comes next. If you pack shoes on most trips, the Shoe Bag does wonders. If you have ever spent an afternoon retracing your steps looking for a wallet, the Venner Wallet - Airtag earns its place before either.

The point of sequencing is that each piece should solve a problem you have actually had. Buy the one that fixes the last trip that went badly, and the kit builds itself.