I started taking a packable tote with me for travel. It comes in handy during airport snack stops when you buy slightly more than what fits in your bags. Or during strolls around cities when you pick up a few odds and ends and don’t want to be carrying around large branded store bags. Or if you live in a state where the norm is the use your own tote bag to carry anything you buy.
While I have a lot of thoughts on non-packable tote bags, today I want to talk about two packable ones which I think are quite excellent in different ways. I often carry one of these with me.
Epperson Mountaineering
I purchased a Packable Large Climb Tote ($140) from Epperson Mountaineering when I found it on sale for a steal of a price. I immediately tossed it in my work briefcase and used it a couple of times to help carry overflow crap home. But it wasn’t until I started using it more for gear and groceries when I realized how amazing this tote is.
This is a large tote at 19L in capacity. When deployed it comes in at 16” x 17.5” x 4.5” and is about 5oz. It packs back down into an internal zippered pocket (5.5” x 7” x 1.5”), but it doesn’t get that small. While it does pack into the pocket easily, it still is too large to stuff in a pocket or very small bag. I tend to let it sit flat at the bottom of my bag so it works to add extra padding if I set a bag down hard.
It’s made of nylon ripstop, with daisy chain webbing around it, and two large webbing handles, with a drawstring closer at the top. You can suck the top in and seal it up pretty well, and I have found it really nice to carry. It’s somewhat water repellent, as some groceries leaked one day and the bag contained the leak and rinsed clean later. I would not bank on it keeping things dry, but it should be fine in light rain.
This bag is my ‘I know I need something, so I want to make sure that I have enough something’ tote. Thus I don’t carry it around just in case, but I when I go into a grocery store, I’ll grab a main tote, and toss this inside that one as a backup in case I misjudge or overbuy. Both of which are common.
At $140, it’s a hard sell, but it is an extremely nice tote and if I were to lose this one, I would buy another. I very much recommend this tote.
Peak Design
At the suggestion of a friend, I picked up the Packable Tote ($20) from Peak Design. The price is staggeringly low, and I don’t know why because this tote is very nice.
It’s smaller, at 12L in capacity. Unpacked it is 16.5″ x 16.1″x 4.7″, while it packs down to 5.9″ x 3.5″x 1.6″. In other words is about the size of a really thick smart phone when packed down. In practice, 12L seems generous here, while the Epperson Tote seems about double the effective capacity here.
The bag is ripstop 70D nylon/poly blend. It is really wild as it has a touch of stretch in it while being very thin. It feels very durable overall. The entire kit comes in at 2.82oz.
This is the tote I carry with me in my bag whenever I am out and about. It means that if the kids or my wife buy something, I have a bag for them to carry without loading it in my bag. It’s very handy, stuffs away easily, and weighs nothing. To be quite clear about how good I think this is: I am considering getting a second one and carrying two of them with me as they are that handy.
The key benefits for this tote over the larger Epperson tote is that it folds down much smaller, and fully zips closed. And both of that make it a very different feeling bag. It also has only has one strap, which you can fit over your shoulder — I do wish there were two straps here. The zipped opening means it cannot swallow up gear as well as the larger Epperson with a wider top opening can. But what the Peak tote does swallow up, will stay inside the bag once it is zipped closed.
At $20, it feels silly for someone to not own this tote. It’s really good even if you rarely use it. In an airport it excels as you can fill it with any number of smaller things, zip it shut and toss it at your feet without worry for your gear running all around the cabin during take off.
Out and about, it’s slightly less versatile to carry and fit items in, but the compact size means that it’s almost trivial to keep it with you — and having something is almost always better than nothing.
If you have a suggestion for a packable tote you think I should try, shoot me a note.