Here’s an honest, unresolved question we’re working through as part of the accessories range: do packing cubes actually earn their place in a lightweight multi- day system, or is that solving a problem a simple stuff sack already handles at a fraction of the weight?
The case for packing cubes
They organise. Separate compartments for separate categories of gear mean you can find what you need without emptying half the pack onto the ground, which genuinely matters when you’re digging for something in the rain or trying to move quickly. That’s real value, and it’s why they’ve become standard in travel packing even outside the outdoor world.
The case against, for this specific use
They add weight and bulk that a system built around minimal carry doesn’t really have room for, and a lot of that organisational benefit assumes a kind of trip, longer, multi-stop, with genuinely varied categories of gear, that doesn’t describe most fast, lightweight multi-day trips. For a weekend wild camp, the organisation problem packing cubes solve may just not be big enough to justify what they cost in grams.
The case for stuff sacks instead
Stuff sacks compress well and weigh next to nothing, and they solve the specific problems that actually matter most on a lightweight trip: keeping a sleep system dry, keeping wet and dry gear apart, compressing bulky items down. What they don’t do is organise contents within themselves, everything in a given sack is still one undifferentiated pile.
The case for nothing at all
Loose-packing directly into the main compartment is the lightest option by definition, nothing to carry, nothing to compress, nothing extra to manage. The cost is time and friction: no separation between wet and dry, no quick way to find a specific item without unpacking more than you meant to. This is, in a lot of ways, the exact problem the accessories range exists to solve in the first place, so “nothing” isn’t really a neutral option, it’s just moving the friction somewhere less visible.
Where our thinking currently sits
Probably not general-purpose packing cubes in the travel-organiser sense, that feels closer to solving a travel problem than a trail one. More likely, if we add anything here at all, something narrower and purpose-specific, a way to keep genuinely wet and dry gear apart without the weight cost of a full cube system, for example.
Nothing about that is decided. This is a live question, not a settled one, and that’s deliberate. The accessories brief’s whole premise is that we don’t add a product just because the category is easy to fill.
The honest state of play
We don’t have an answer yet, and we’d rather say so than pretend a decision’s been made that hasn’t. If you’ve got a strong view on this one, particularly if you’ve tried and abandoned packing cubes for lightweight trips specifically, that’s exactly the kind of input worth having before we commit to a direction.
Over and Out