How to pack a carry-on for a week

To pack a carry-on for a week, build a small capsule wardrobe around one color palette, roll soft clothes and use packing cubes to compress them, wear your bulkiest items on the plane, and pack in order: shoes and heavy items at the wheel end, cubes of clothing in the middle, and flat or fragile items on top. Done right, seven days fits a 22 x 14 x 9 in bag with room to spare.

The reason most people cannot fit a week in a carry-on is not the bag — it is the wardrobe. They pack for every hypothetical instead of a plan. Fix the plan and the bag stops being the problem. Here is the whole method, in order.

The step-by-step method

1. Build a capsule around one palette. Pick a base color (navy, black, or khaki) and one accent, and choose pieces that all mix and match. Five tops, three bottoms, and one layer covers a week because everything works with everything.
2. Follow the 5-4-3-2-1 rule of thumb. Roughly five tops, four bottoms or dresses, three pairs of socks/underwear sets you re-wash, two pairs of shoes, one jacket. Adjust for your trip, but start from a plan, not a pile.
3. Wear your bulkiest items on the plane. Your heaviest shoes, jacket and any chunky knit ride on your body, not in the bag. This alone frees up a third of your space.
4. Roll soft clothes; fold structured ones. T-shirts, jeans, casual dresses and underwear roll tightly and resist creasing. Blazers and dress shirts fold flat and go on top.
5. Use packing cubes. Cubes compress a rolled stack and keep the bag organized so you unpack one cube instead of exploding the whole case. A compression cube squeezes out the dead air.
6. Pack heavy at the wheels. Put shoes (in a bag or shower cap) and the heaviest items at the wheel end so the weight sits low — the bag rolls upright and stable instead of tipping.
7. Fill the gaps. Socks and underwear go inside shoes; a rolled belt lines the edge. Dead space is wasted space.
8. Keep liquids and electronics on top. Your quart-size liquids bag and laptop go last, on top or in an outer pocket, so you can pull them at security without unpacking.

What to leave at home

The fastest way to save space is to not pack the "just in case" items. Leave the third pair of shoes, the full-size toiletries (buy or decant travel sizes), the books you will not read, and the outfits for events that are not on the itinerary. Almost everything can be bought at the destination if you truly need it; almost nothing you overpack gets used.

The bag makes it easier

Shoes are the densest, dirtiest and most awkwardly shaped thing in any case, and they deserve their own method - how to pack shoes in a suitcase.

Everything on this page optimizes for volume, because a cabin bag is measured against a rigid gate sizer and US carriers generally do not weigh it. A checked suitcase is the opposite problem - the binding constraint is the 50 lb scale, not the space - and it has a different method: how to pack a suitcase. If space is your constraint here, note that only compression cubes actually free any, which our packing cubes guide works through honestly.

For the capacity question rather than the method - how many liters you actually have and how many outfits that is - see how many outfits fit in a carry-on.