How Many Suitcases Should You Own?

Looking for an easy way to free up storage space? Look no further than your suitcase collection. Suitcases are big, hard to nest or stack, and relatively infrequently used. The fewer of them you own, the more storage space you free up for other things.

Don’t think you have too many suitcases? Think again. Even among my clients who are frequent travelers, I often see a collection of suitcases and bags that’s way bigger than it needs to be.

So how many suitcases should you own?

This rule is the same as for many other containers in your home, such as Tupperware: the maximum number that you could possibly use at once.

Think about the most complicated trip you’ve ever been on. Let’s call it a two week ski trip without access to laundry. For that kind of trip, we’re looking at a ski bag, a boot bag, a checked suitcase, a carry on suitcase, and a backpack. And now think about all the other trips you go on. For any other trip, you’ll just use a subset of those bags!

I once had a client who had a full complete set of high end luggage: three sizes of rolling suitcases plus an over the shoulder tote. And two more sets of the same. When asked why she had three sets, she told me that she wanted to have a backup in case something happened to her primary set. There are a couple of logical leaps she was making:

1) If you invest in good luggage, you don’t need a backup. It’s just really unlikely to break, and if it does, you can send it back to the company for a relatively inexpensive repair with a turnaround time of six weeks or less.

2) Sets of suitcases are sold to get you to buy more things, not because those are the sizes you need. Most people only use one or two pieces out of the set of four that’s sold - and in fact, that was the case for this client. She only ever used the medium and small rolling suitcases, because the large one became too heavy for her to handle and the over the shoulder tote was less useful than another backpack she liked.

If you are genuinely traveling with fewer than six weeks in between each trip on a regular basis, then yes, maybe you need one backup piece of luggage in each size that you use regularly. But that's really it!

Luggage is a great example of my rule: when it comes to keeping things around just in case, ask yourself, what's the just in case scenario?

LMW